ficers are commissioned."[3-77]

[Footnote 3-76: Memo, SecNav for Chief, NavPers, 20
Nov 43, 54-1-50; Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav,
2 Dec 43, sub: Negro Officers. Both in GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-77: Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm Jacobs, 15
Dec 43, quoted in "BuPers Hist," p. 33.]

On 1 January 1944 the first sixteen black officer candidates, selected
from among qualified enlisted applicants, entered Great Lakes for
segregated training. All sixteen survived the course, but only twelve
were commissioned. In the last week of the course, three candidates
were returned to the ranks, not because they had failed but because
the Bureau of Naval Personnel had suddenly decided to limit the number
of black officers in this first group to twelve. The twelve entered
the U.S. Naval Reserve as line officers on 17 March. A thirteenth man,
the only candidate who lacked a college degree, was made a warrant
officer because of his outstanding work in the course.

Two of the twelve new ensigns were assigned to the faculty at Hampton
training school, four others to yard and harbor craft duty, and the
rest to training duty at Great Lakes. All carried the label "Deck
Officers Limited--only," a designation usually reserved for officers
whose physical or educational deficiencies kept them from performing
all the duties of a line officer. The Bureau of Naval Personnel never
explained why the men were placed in this category, but it was clear
that none of them lacked the physical requirements of a line officer
and all had had business or professional careers in civil life.

Operating duplicate training facilities for officer candidates was
costly, and the bureau decided shortly after the first group of black
candidates was trained that future candidates of both races would be
trained together. By early summer ten more Negroes, this time
civilians with special professional qualifications, had been trained
with whites and were commissioned as staff officers in the Medical,
Dental, Chaplain, Civil Engineer, and Supply Corps. These twenty-two
men were the first of some sixty Negroes to be commissioned during the
war.

Since only a handful of the Negroes in the Navy were officers, the
preponderance of the race problems concerned relations between black
enlisted men and their white officers. The problem of selecting the
proper officers to command black