[Footnote 3-101: Memo, Lt Cmdr John Tyree (White
House aide) for Forrestal, 9 Aug 44, 54-1-4,
GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-102: Navy Dept Press Release, 19 Oct 44.]

The first two black WAVE officers graduated from training at Smith
College on 21 December, and the enlistment of black women began a week
later. The program turned out to be more racially progressive than
initially outlined by Forrestal. He had explained to the President
that the women would be quartered separately, a provision (p. 088)
interpreted in the Bureau of Naval Personnel to mean that black
recruits would be organized into separate companies. Since a recruit
company numbered 250 women, and since it quickly became apparent that
such a large group of black volunteers would not soon be forthcoming,
some of the bureau staff decided that the Navy would continue to bar
black women. In this they reckoned without Captain McAfee who insisted
on a personal ruling by Forrestal. She warned the secretary that his
order was necessary because the concept "was so strange to Navy
practice."[3-103] He agreed with her that the Negroes would be
integrated along with the rest of the incoming recruits, and the
Bureau of Naval Personnel subsequently ordered that the WAVES be
assimilated without making either special or separate arrangements.[3-104]

[Footnote 3-103: Oral History Interview, Mildred
McAfee Horton, 25 Aug 69, Center of Naval History.]

[Footnote 3-104: Ltr, Asst Chief, NavPers, to CO,
NavTraScol (WR), Bronx, N.Y., 8 Dec 44, sub:
Colored WAVE Recruits, Pers-107, BuPersRecs.]

[Illustration: LIEUTENANT PICKENS AND ENSIGN WILLS. _First black WAVE
officers, members of the final graduating class at Naval Reserve
Midshipmen's School (WR), Northhampton, Massachusetts._]

By July 1945 the Navy had trained seventy-two black WAVES at Hunter
College Naval Training School in a fully integrated and routine
manner. Although black WAVES were restricted somewhat in specialty
assignments and a certain amount of separate quartering within
integrated barracks prevailed at some duty stations, the Special
Programs Unit came to consider the WAVE program, which established a
forceful precedent for the integration of male recruit training, its
most important wartime breakthrough, crediting Captain McAfee