ned
strong, and this figure was soon reduced. The corps also ignored the
Navy's integration measures, adopting instead a pattern of segregation
that Marine officials claimed was a variation on the Army's historic
"separate but equal" black units. In fact, separation was real enough
in the postwar corps; equality remained elusive.

_Racial Quotas and Assignments_

The problem was that any "separate but equal" race policy, no matter
how loosely enforced, was incompatible with the corps' postwar
manpower resources and mission and would conflict with its
determination to restrict black units to a token number. The dramatic
manpower reductions of 1946 were felt immediately in the two major
elements of the Marine Corps. The Fleet Marine Force, the main
operating unit of the corps and usually under control of the Chief of
Naval Operations, retained three divisions, but lost a number of its
combat battalions. The divisions kept a few organic and attached
service and miscellaneous units. Under such severe manpower
restrictions, planners could not reserve one of the large organic
elements of these divisions for black marines, thus leaving the
smaller attached and miscellaneous units as the only place to
accommodate self-contained black organizations. At first the Plans and
Policies Division decided to assign roughly half the black marines to
the Fleet Marine Force. Of these some were slated for an antiaircraft
artillery battalion at Montford Point which would provide training as
well as an opportunity for Negroes' overseas to be rotated home.
Others were placed in three combat service groups and one service
depot where they would act as divisional service troops, and the rest
went into 182 slots, later increased to 216, for stewards, the
majority in aviation units.

The other half of the black marines was to be absorbed by the so
called non-Fleet Marine Force, a term used to cover training,
security, and miscellaneous Marine units, all noncombat, which
normally remained under the control of the commandant. This part of
the corps was composed of many small and usually self-contained units,
but in a number of activities, particularly in the logistical
establishment and the units afloat, reductions in manpower would (p. 254)
necessitate considerable sharing of living and working facilities,
thus making racial separation impossible. The planners decided,
therefore, to limit black assignments outside the Fleet Marine Force
to