To smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the Bureau of Naval Personnel developed two operating rules: Negroes would be assigned only where need existed, and, whenever possible, those from northern communities would not be used in the south. These rules caused some peculiar adjustments in administration. Negroes were not assigned to naval districts for distribution according to the discretion of the commander, as were white recruits. Rather, after conferring with local commanders, the bureau decided on the number of Negroes to be included in station complements and the types of jobs they would fill. It then assigned the men to duty accordingly, and the districts were instructed not to change the orders without consulting the bureau. Subsequently the bureau reinforced this rule by enjoining the commanders to use Negroes in the ratings for which they had been trained and by sending bureau representatives to the various commands to check on compliance.
Some planners feared that the concentration of Negroes at shore stations might prove detrimental to efficiency and morale. Proposals were circulated in the Bureau of Naval Personnel for the inclusion of Negroes in small numbers in the crews of large combat ships—for example, they might be used as firemen and ordinary seamen on the new aircraft carriers—but Admiral Jacobs rejected the recommendations.[3-52] The Navy was not yet ready to try integration, it seemed, even though racial disturbances were becoming a distinct possibility in 1943. For as Negroes became a larger part of the Navy, they also became a greater source of tension. The reasons for the tension were readily apparent. Negroes were restricted for the most part to shore duty, concentrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige and few chances of promotion. They were excluded from the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Nurse Corps, and the commissioned ranks. And they were rigidly segregated.
Although the Navy boasted that Negroes served in every rating and at every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of occupations. Denied general service assignments on warships, trained Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although assigning Negroes to these duties met the President's request for variety of opportunity, the small craft could employ only 7,700 men at most, a minuscule part of the Navy's black strength.
Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a segregated servants' branch. In an effort to standardize the training of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge, Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among many stewards.
Laborers at Naval Ammunition Depot.
Sailors passing 5-inch canisters, St. Julien's Creek, Virginia.
Another 12,000 Negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas bases. Over 7,000 of these were Seabees, who, with the exception of two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in the Pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo and supplies. The rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the South Pacific area. These units were commanded by white officers, and almost all the petty officers were white.
Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]