decision in
1963 to push for equal opportunity for black servicemen outside the
gates of the military base.[24-5]

[Footnote 24-5: Portions of the following discussion
have been published in somewhat different form
under the title "Armed Forces Integration--Forced
or Free?" in _The Military and Society, Proceedings
of the Fifth Military Symposium_ (U.S. Air Force
Academy, 1972).]

The Navy was the acknowledged pioneer in integration. Its decision
during World War II to assign black and white sailors to certain ships
was not entirely a response to pressures from civil rights advocates,
although Secretary James Forrestal relied on his friends in the Urban
League, particularly Lester Granger, to teach him the techniques of
integrating a large organization. Nor was the decision solely the work
of racial reformers in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, although this
small group was undoubtedly responsible for drafting the regulations
that governed the changes in the wartime Navy. Rather, the Navy began
integrating its general service because segregation proved painfully
inefficient. The decision was largely the result of the impersonal
operation of the 1940 draft law. Although imperfectly applied during
the war, the anti-discrimination provision of that law produced a
massive infusion of black inductees. The Army, with its larger (p. 615)
manpower base and expandable black units, could evade the implications
of a nondiscrimination clause, but the sheer presence of large numbers
of Negroes in the service, more than any other force, breached the
walls of segregation in the Navy.

[Illustration: LOADING A ROCKET LAUNCHER. _Crewmen of the USS
Carronade participating in a coordinated gunfire support action near
Chu Lai, Vietnam._]

The Navy experiment with an all-black crew had proved unsatisfactory,
and only so many shore-based jobs were considered suitable for large
segregated units. Bowing to the argument that two navies--one black,
one white--were both inefficient and expensive, Secretary Forrestal
began to experiment with integration during the last months of the war
and finally announced a policy of integration in February 1946. The
full application of this new policy would wait for some years while
the Navy's traditional racial attitudes warred with its practical
desire for efficiency.

The Air Force was