ted.
The development of the Coast Guard's policy has had to be reconstructed,
painstakingly and laboriously, from other sources. The records of many
Army staff agencies for the period 1940-43 were destroyed on the
assumption that their materials were duplicated in The Adjutant
General's files, an assumption that frequently proved to be incorrect.
Although generally intact, the Navy's records of the immediate
post-World War II period also lack some of the background staff work
on the employment of black manpower. Fortunately for this writer, the
recent, inadvertent destruction of the bulk of the Bureau of Naval
Personnel's classified wartime records occurred after the basic
research for this volume had been completed, but this lamentable
accident will no doubt cause problems for future researchers.

Thanks to the efforts of the services' historical offices and the
wonder of photocopying, future historians may be spared some of the
labor connected with the preparation of this volume. Most of the
records surviving outside regular archives have been identified and
relocated for easy access. Copies of approximately 65 percent of all
documents cited in this volume have been collected and are presently
on file in the Center of Military History, from which they will be
retired for permanent preservation.

_Official Archival Material_

The bulk of the official records used in the preparation of this
volume is in the permanent custody of the National Archives and
Records Service, Washington, D.C. The records of most military
agencies for the period 1940-54 are located in the Modern Military
Records Branch or in the Navy and Old Army Branch of the National
Archives proper. Most documents dated after 1954, along with military
unit records (including ships' logs), are located in the General
Archives Division in the Washington National Records Center, Suitland,
Maryland. The Suitland center also holds the other major group of
official materials, that is, all those documents still administered by
the individual agencies but stored in the center prior to their
screening and acquisition by the National Archives. These records are
open to qualified researchers, but access to them is controlled by the
records managers of the individual agencies, a not altogether
felicitous arrangement for the researcher, considering the bulk of the
material and its lack of organization.

The largest single group of materials consulted were those of