of the USCG Historian; and "Coast Guard Personnel
Growth Chart," _Report of the Secretary of the
Navy-Fiscal 1945_, p. A-15.]

[Footnote 4-42: Memo, Chmn of Gen Bd for SecNav, 20
Mar 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of the Colored Race
in Other Than Messman Branch, G.B. No. 421 (Serial
204), OpNavArchives.]

The General Board was overruled, and the Coast Guard proceeded to
recruit its first group of 150 black volunteers, sending them to
Manhattan Beach for basic training in the spring of 1942. The small
size of the black general service program precluded the establishment
of a separate training station, but the Negroes were formed into a
separate training company at Manhattan Beach. While training classes
and other duty activities were integrated, sleeping and messing
facilities were segregated. Although not geographically separated as
were the black sailors at Camp Smalls or the marines at Montford
Point, the black recruits of the separate training company at
Manhattan Beach were effectively impressed with the reality of
segregation in the armed forces.[4-43]

[Footnote 4-43: Interv, author with Ira H. Coakley,
26 Feb 75, CMH files. Coakley was a recruit in one
of the first black training companies at Manhattan
Beach.]

After taking a four-week basic course, those who qualified were
trained as radiomen, pharmacists, yeomen, coxswains, fire controlmen,
or in other skills in the seaman branch.[4-44] Those who did not so
qualify were transferred for further training in preparation for their
assignment to the captains of the ports. Groups of black Coast
Guardsmen, for example, were sent to the Pea Island Station after
their recruit training for several weeks' training in beach duties.
Similar groups of white recruits were also sent to the Pea Island
Station for training under the black chief boatswain's mate in
charge.[4-45] By August 1942 some three hundred Negroes had been
recruited, trained, and assigned to general service duties under the
new program. At the same time the Coast Guard continued to recruit
hundreds of Negroes for its separate Steward's Branch.

[Footnote 4-44: For a brief account of the Coast
Guard recruit training program, see Nelson,
"Integra