“A Few Beers Ain’t All Bad”

Although the Navy gave me a choice of V-12 units to go to, I just simply wrote on my application, “no choice.” When my orders came I was sent to the University of Southern Cal in Los Angeles. I reported there on the first of October 1943. I registered and was assigned five roommates—all white—who were, of course, also in the V-12 program. The next morning I was quite surprised when I was called down to the administration office and told that I had been transferred to UCLA. So they put my gear in a truck and drove me to the University of California at Los Angeles, which was just across town. The only reason I can think of is the fact that in those prewar days, blacks— for example, the incredible Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson— predominantly went to UCLA. That was before O. J. Simpson’s phenomenal success at USC.

At UCLA a couple of things really hit me. One was that here I had an opportunity, and I had to take advantage of it. Number two, I felt that I couldn’t screw it up for the other people who might come along. So I watched my decorum, I watched everything. I made sure I was going to do everything right. I guess I did. I got out successfully.

I was quite taken aback by a couple of things. One was that I was put into a company with a group of kids from Stanford. They were all premed students, and most of them were going to be doctors. Another was that, for no reason that I can think of, I was assigned to the basement, with other rooms available all over that building. But apart from that, there were no major incidents, or even minor incidents. I was treated just like any other V-12 student. Of course, there was no off- duty contact between me and any of my classmates. V-12 was regimented much more so than the ROTC is today, in that we were wearing a uniform all the time. I marched with these guys, I played with these guys, we did everything together, but there was no social interchange over weekends.

As a student I kept my grades up well enough to pass. I didn’t work too hard at it, but I wasn’t going to fail. It was a concentrated, speeded- up program, and we basically took college courses. Every Saturday morning, however, we had about three hours of Navy orientation. The program was basically designed so that the guy who had finished only high school would be able to pick up about 70 hours in two and a half years, and from there go to a midshipman school and be commissioned. In fact, I had about 40 or so hours— maybe 50 hours—when I entered the program, so I stayed only two semesters. I left UCLA in June 1944.

I got out in good stead, and left there en route to what they called pre-midshipman school. They had something like four midshipman schools: Columbia, Notre Dame, Fort Schuyler, and Northwestern. A new class went into midshipman school every two months, for four months of study. They had so many V-12ers that they had to funnel some through the pre-midshipman school. So I went through Asbury Park, New Jersey, where I stayed for two months.

I was the only black in that unit down at Asbury Park. I went through all the normal wickets that everybody else went through. There was no problem. I had five white roommates. Nobody said anything, no slurs or that kind of crap. I did take a turn at mess cooking. It was just another training camp where nothing untoward happened.

For the first time I was in a world where I had to compete with the people I would be competing with the rest of my life. I knew then it was a little different from what I’d been going through up to that time. And I knew that if I were to compete successfully, then I had to do it just like everybody else did it. I think I discovered for the first time that all men put their pants on one leg at a time, no matter what their complexion. I was approaching 22 at this point, and I cut the strings. I knew that I was on my own at that point, and that I would do it, and do it successfully.

About mid-August 1944 we were transferred up to midshipman school at Columbia University in New York City. Midshipman school was tough. There were some subjects like navigation that I hadn’t had before. I didn’t know very much about ordnance. We got into some fairly specific data on the 5-inch guns, the 16-inch guns, and engineering, of course. But I’d already told myself I wasn’t going to fail the thing. Normally, if you didn’t pass a subject. you had to stay there some extra time on a Saturday. The course was 16 weeks, and I think I got caught one Saturday.

It was a fleet-oriented training program that I think you could equate to officer candidate school. It wasn’t a destroyer school, or anything like that. But Navy traditions, customs, and navigation were covered. You were not a navigator when you left there, but you knew a couple of instruments you were going to use. We had a recognition course; so we could tell friendly ships and aircraft from enemy ones. That was a very, very good course, fairly intensive, highly competitive, because guys were dropping out of there every week. As I recall, my company was originally at about 1,600, and when we graduated we were at about 1,030. So roughly a third had dropped out.

At that point the only thing that I was really aware of was that the Navy had commissioned 12 black officers and one warrant in March 1944. I saw the Life magazine story on that. And that was the only thing that I knew at that point in time. I was on my own. I knew a couple of the “Golden 13.” Johnny Reagan, for example, was in the class ahead of me at Hampton Institute in Virginia, and he and I were in San Diego together, played on the same softball team. Midshipman school kept us so busy that you didn’t have time to think about race.

I got my set of orders and I was very, very disappointed. You talk about patriotism! Here were 1,000 guys ready to go out and fight the war, fight the Japanese, the whole bit. And most people had orders that either took them to sea or to some school for a short course, then to the war. My orders directed me to proceed to Great Lakes, Illinois, to train Negro recruits. I was let down.

Well, my platoon decided that we would go out one night and just have a ball. At one bar a fellow from Pennsylvania asked, “How many of you belong to the 50-beer club?” I didn’t even know what the 50-beer club was. Well, in any event, apparently you were to drink 50 mugs of beer at one sitting, without ducking out to the head, and so everybody wanted to join, I in particular. I’m not sure I got past about 20, but I got pretty well loaded. So we all got back to the barracks, and here I was on the top floor of the hall, in the passageway, yelling and screaming, “Goddamn it, if all of my friends are going to sea, I ought to go to sea too.” The duty officer heard this down on the first floor, and he put me to bed. But I have always been convinced that something good came out of that, because I went to Great Lakes, and six weeks later I was on my way to sea! I think it all came as the result of raising a stink under the influence of the beer!