war. The Bureau of Naval Personnel insisted they
be given the privileges of rank in wardroom and ashore, thus crushing
an attempt by authorities at Great Lakes to underwrite a tacit ban on
the use of the officers' club by Negroes. In fact, integration proved
to be more the rule than the exception in training black officers. The
small number of black candidates made segregated classes impractical,
and after graduation of the first group of black officers at Great
Lakes, Negroes were accepted in all officer candidate classes. As part
of this change, the Special Programs Unit successfully integrated the
Navy's officer candidate school in the posh hotels of still-segregated
Miami Beach.

The officers graduated into a number of assignments. Some saw duty
aboard district and yard craft, others at departmental headquarters in
Washington. A few served in recruit training assignments at Great
Lakes and Hampton Institute, but the majority went overseas to work in
logistical and advanced base companies, the stevedore-type outfits
composed exclusively of Negroes. Nelson, for example, was sent to the
Marshall Islands where he was assigned to a logistic support company
composed of some three hundred black sailors and noncommissioned
officers with a racially mixed group of officers. Black staff
officers, engineers, doctors, dentists, and chaplains were also
attached to these units, where they had limited responsibilities and
little chance for advancement.[9-34]

[Footnote 9-34: Nelson, "Integration of the Negro,"
pp. 156-58.]

Exceptions to the assignment rule increased during the last months (p. 245)
of the war. The Special Programs Unit had concluded that restricting
black officers to district craft and shore billets might further
encourage the tendency to build an inshore black Navy, and the Bureau
of Naval Personnel began assigning black officers to seagoing vessels
when they completed their sea duty training. By July 1945 several were
serving in the fleet. To avoid embarrassment, the Chief of Naval
Personnel made it a practice to alert the commanding officers of a
ship about to receive a black officer so that he might indoctrinate
his officers. As his assistant, Rear Adm. William M. Fechteler,
explained to one such commander, "if such officers are accorded the
proper respect and are required to discharge the duties commensurate
with their rank they should be equally competent to white offi