g men was not
acute. In Korea the need became acute. Ironically, the Gillem Board,
whose work became anathema to the integrationists, accurately
predicted the demise of segregation in its final report, which
declared that in the event of another major war the Army would use its
manpower "without regard to antecedents or race."

CHAPTER 18 (p. 460)

Integration of the Marine Corps

Even more so than in the Army, the history of racial equality in the
Marine Corps demonstrates the effect of the exigencies of war on the
integration of the armed forces. The Truman order, the Fahy Committee,
even the demands of civil rights leaders and the mandates of the draft
law, all exerted pressure for reform and assured the presence of some
black marines. But the Marine Corps was for years able to stave off
the logical outcome of such pressures, and in the end it was the
manpower demands of the Korean War that finally brought integration.

In the first place the Korean War caused a sudden and dramatic rise in
the number of black marines: from 1,525 men, almost half of them
stewards, in May 1949, to some 17,000 men, only 500 of them serving in
separate stewards duty, in October 1953.[18-1] Whereas the careful
designation of a few segregated service units sufficed to handle the
token black representation in 1949, no such organization was possible
in 1952, when thousands of black marines on active duty constituted
more than 5 percent of the total enlistment. The decision to integrate
the new black marines throughout the corps was the natural outcome of
the service's early experiences in Korea. Ordered to field a full
division, the corps out of necessity turned to the existing black
service units, among others, for men to augment the peacetime strength
of its combat units. These men were assigned to any unit in the Far
East that needed them. As the need for more units and replacements
grew during the war, newly enlisted black marines were more and more
often pressed into integrated service both in the Far East and at
home.

[Footnote 18-1: All statistics from official Marine
Corps sources, Hist Div, HQMC.]

Most significantly, the war provided a rising generation of Marine
Corps officers with a first combat experience with black marines. The
competence of these Negroes and the general absence of racial tension
during their integratio