ack field artillery battalion was attached to each of the
three occupation divisions. The Alaskan Department and the Okinawa
Base Command had black units, both separate and grouped with white
units, but the Yokohama Base Command continued to use specially
skilled Negroes in black units because of the great demand for
qualified persons in those units.[7-65]

[Footnote 7-65: Memo, D/O&T for ASW, 18 Jul 46, sub:
Organization of Negro Manpower in Postwar Army,
WDGOT 291.2.]

To claim, as Hall did to Assistant Secretary Petersen, that black
units were being used like white units was misleading. Despite the
examples cited in the survey, many black units still remained
independent organizations, and with one major exception black combat
units grouped with white units were attached rather than assigned as
organizational elements of a parent unit. This was an important
distinction.[7-66] The constant imposition of attached status on a unit
that under normal circumstances would be assigned as an organic
element of a division introduced a sense of impermanence and
alienation just as it relieved the division commander of considerable
administrative control and hence proprietary interest in the unit.

[Footnote 7-66: An attached unit, such as a tank
destroyer battalion, is one temporarily included in
a larger organization; an assigned unit is one
permanently given to a larger organization as part
of its organic establishment. On the distinction
between attached and assigned status, see Ltr, CSA
to CG, CONARC, 21 Jul 55, CSUSA 322.17 (Div), and
CMH, "Lineages and Honors: History, Principles, and
Preparation," June 1962, in CMH.]

Attached status, so common for black units, thus weakened morale and
hampered training as Petersen well understood. Noting the favorable
attitude of the division commander, he had asked in April 1946 if it
was possible to assign the black 555th Parachute Battalion to the
celebrated 82d Airborne Division.[7-67] The answer was no. The
commanding general of the Army Ground Forces, General Devers,
justified attachment rather than assignment of the black battalion to
the 82d on the grounds that the Army's race policy called for the
progressive adoption of the composite unit and attachm