ings in the Regular Navy to such
transfers and offered reservists special inducements for changeover in
the form of ratings, allowance extras, and, temporarily, short-term
enlistments. So successful was the program that by July 1947 the
strength of the Regular Navy had climbed to 488,712, only a few
thousand short of the postwar authorization. The Navy ended its
changeover program in early 1947.[9-12] While it lasted, black
reservists and inductees shared in the program, although the chief of
the personnel recruiting division found it necessary to amplify the
recruiting instructions to make this point clear.[9-13] The Regular Navy
included 7,066 enlisted Negroes on V-J day, 2.1 percent of the total
enlisted strength. This figure nearly tripled in the next year to
20,610, although the percentage of Negroes only doubled.[9-14]

[Footnote 9-12: "BuPers Narrative," 1:141, 192; see
also BuPers Cir Ltr 41-46, 15 Feb 46.]

[Footnote 9-13: See Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to CO, Naval
Barracks, NAD, Seal Beach, Calif., 8 Oct 45, sub:
Eligibility of Negroes for Enlistment in USN, P16
MM, BuPersRecs; Recruiting Dir, BuPers, Directive
to Recruiting Officers, 25 Jan 46, quoted in
Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 58.]

[Footnote 9-14: BuPers, "Enlisted Strength--U.S.
Navy," 26 Jul 46, Pers 215-BL.]

_The Steward's Branch_

The major concern of the civil rights groups was not so much the
number of Negroes in the Regular Navy, although this remained far
below the proportion of Negroes in the civilian population, but that
the majority of Negroes were being accepted for duty in the nonwhite
Steward's Branch. More than 97 percent of all black sailors in the
Regular Navy in December 1945 were in this branch. The ratio improved
somewhat in the next six months when 3,000 black general service
personnel (out of a wartime high of 90,000) transferred into the
Regular Navy while more than 10,000 black reservists and draftees
joined the 7,000 regulars already in the Steward's Branch.[9-15] The
statistical low point in terms of the ratio of Negroes in the postwar
regular general service and the Steward's Branch occurred in fiscal
year 1947 when only 19.21 percent of the Navy's regular black
personnel were assigned outside the Steward's Branch.[9-16] In sh