naval ammunition depots at McAlester, Oklahoma, and Earle, New
Jersey, where Negroes would occupy separate barracks; to Guam and
Saipan, principally as antiaircraft artillery; and to a small training
cadre at Montford Point. Eighty stewards would also serve with units
outside the Fleet Marine Force. With the exception of the depot at
Earle, all these installations had been assigned Negroes during the
war. Speaking in particular about the assignment of Negroes to
McAlester, the Director of the Plans and Policies Division, Brig. Gen.
Gerald C. Thomas, commented that "this has proven to be a satisfactory
location and type of duty for these personnel."[10-1] Thomas's
conception of "satisfactory" duty for Negroes became the corps'
rationale for its postwar assignment policy.

[Footnote 10-1: Memos, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies,
for CMC, 25 Sep and 17 Oct 46, sub: Post War
Personnel Requirements, A0-1, MC files. Unless
otherwise noted, all the documents cited in this
chapter are located in Hist Div, HQMC. The
quotation is from the September memo.]

[Illustration: MARINE ARTILLERY TEAM. _Men of the 51st Defense
Battalion in training at Montford Point with 90-mm. antiaircraft
gun._]

To assign Negroes to unskilled jobs because they were accustomed to
such duties and because the jobs were located in communities that
would accept black marines might be satisfactory to Marine officials,
but it was considered racist by many civil rights spokesmen and left
the Marine Corps open to charges of discrimination. The policy of
tying the number of Negroes to the number of available, appropriate
slots also meant that the number of black marines, and consequently
the acceptability of black volunteers, was subject to chronic
fluctuation. More important, it permitted if not encouraged further
restrictions on the use of the remaining black marines who had combat
training, thereby allowing the traditionalists to press for a
segregated service in which the few black marines would be mostly
servants and laborers.

The process of reordering the assignment of black marines began just
eleven weeks after the commandant approved the staff's postwar policy
recommendations. Informing the commandant on 6 January 1947 that
"several changes have been made in concepts upon which such (p. 255)
planning was based," General Thomas exp