that plagued the Army
in the first months of the war. In contrast to the Army's chaotic
situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from
Selective Service, the Navy's plans for its volunteers were disrupted
only because qualified Negroes showed little inclination to flock to
the Navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected.
The Bureau of Naval Personnel[3-36] reported that during the first three
weeks of recruitment only 1,261 Negroes volunteered for general
service, and 58 percent of these had to be rejected for physical and
other reasons. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Randall Jacobs,
was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below
the planners' expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the
next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary
target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the Army
over the Navy at a ratio of 10 to 1.[3-37] The Navy's personnel
officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of
intelligent and able Negroes but seemed unable to isolate the (p. 069)
cause of the disinterest. Admiral Jacobs blamed it on a lack of
publicity; the bureau's historians, perhaps unaware of the Navy's
nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it
to Negroes' "relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland
waters and their consequent fear of the water."[3-38]

[Footnote 3-36: In May 1942 the name of the Bureau of
Navigation was changed to the Bureau of Naval
Personnel to reflect more accurately the duties of
the organization.]

[Footnote 3-37: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for CO, Great
Lakes NTC, 23 Apr 43. P14-1, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-38: "BuPers Hist," p. 54.]

The fact was, of course, that Negroes shunned the Navy because of its
recent reputation as the exclusive preserve of white America. Only
when the Navy began assigning black recruiting specialists to the
numerous naval districts and using black chief petty officers,
reservists from World War I general service, at recruiting centers to
explain the new opportunities for Negroes in the Navy was the bureau
able to overcome some of the young men's natural reluctance to
volunteer. By 1 February 1943 the Navy had 26,909 Negroes (still 2
percent of the total enlisted): 6,66