the development of
racial policy was the fact that the Coast Guard also retained
administrative control of the recruitment, training, and assignment of
personnel. Like the Marine Corps, it also had a staff agency for
manpower planning, the Commandant's Advisory Board, and one for
administration, the Personnel Division, independent of the Navy's
bureaus.[4-4] In theory, the Coast Guard's manpower policy, at least in
regard to those segments of the service that operated directly under
Navy control, had to be compatible with the racial directives of the
Navy's Bureau of Naval Personnel. In practice, the Commandant of the
Coast Guard, like his colleague in the Marine Corps, was left free to
develop his own racial policy in accordance with the general
directives of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval
Operations.

[Footnote 4-3: Ltr, SecNav to CominCh-CNO, 30 Mar 42,
sub: Administration of Coast Guard When Operating
Under Navy Department, quoted in Furer,
_Administration of the Navy Department in World War
II_, pp. 608-10.]

[Footnote 4-4: For a survey of the organization and
functions of the U.S. Coast Guard Personnel
Division, see USCG Historical Section, _Personnel_,
The Coast Guard at War, 25:16-27.]

_The First Black Marines_

These legal distinctions had no bearing on the Marine Corps' prewar
racial policy, which was designed to continue its tradition of
excluding Negroes. The views of the commandant, Maj. Gen. Thomas
Holcomb, on the subject of race were well known in the Navy. Negroes
did not have the "right" to demand a place in the corps, General
Holcomb told the Navy's General Board when that body was considering
the expansion of the corps in April 1941. "If it were a question of
having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would
rather have the whites."[4-5] He was more circumspect but no more
reasonable when he explained the racial exclusion publicly. Black
enlistment was impractical, he told one civil rights group, because
the Marine Corps was too small to form racially separate units.[4-6]
And, if some Negroes persisted in trying to volunteer after Pearl
Harbor, there was another deterrent, described by at least one senior
recruiter: the medical examiner was cautioned to disqualify the black
applicant during