CNO Dispatch 142105Z Dec
45 to CINCPAC&POA, quoted in Nelson, "Integration
of the Negro," p. 58.]

[Footnote 6-42: Memo, CINCPAC&POA for CNO, 5 Jan 46,
sub: Negro Naval Personnel--Pacific Ocean Areas,
P10/P11, OpNavArchives.]

In the end the decision to integrate the general service came not from
the secretary but from that bastion of military tradition, the Bureau
of Naval Personnel. Despite the general reluctance of the bureau to
liberalize the Navy's racial policy, there had been all along some
manpower experts who wanted to increase the number of specialties open
to black sailors. Capt. Hunter Wood, Jr., for example, suggested in
January 1946 that the bureau make plans for an expansion in
assignments for Negroes. Wood's proposal fell on the sympathetic ears
of Admiral Denfeld, who considered the Granger recommendations (p. 168)
practical for the postwar Navy. Denfeld, of course, was well aware
that these recommendations had been endorsed by Admirals King and
Nimitz as well as Forrestal, and he himself had gone on record as
believing that Negroes in the peacetime Navy should lose none of the
opportunities opened to them during the war.[6-43]

[Footnote 6-43: Admiral Denfeld's statement to the
black press representatives in this regard is
referred to in Memo, Capt H. Wood, Jr., for Chief,
NavPers, 2 Jan 46, P16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

Denfeld had had considerable experience with the Navy's evolving
racial policy in his wartime assignment as assistant chief of
personnel where his principal concern had been the efficient
distribution and assignment of men. He particularly objected to the
fact that current regulations complicated what should have been the
routine transfer of sailors. Simple control procedures for the
segregation of Negroes in general service had been effective when
Negroes were restricted to particular shore stations and duties, he
told Admiral Nimitz on 4 January 1946, but now that Negroes were
frequently being transferred from shore to sea and from ship to ship
the restriction of Negroes to auxiliary ships was becoming extremely
difficult to manage and was also "noticeably contrary to the
non-differentiation policy enunciated by the Secretary of the Navy."
The only way to execute that policy effectively and maintain
efficiency,