Note (Back) — CHAPTER 15

Its ruling under attack from the services, the board made a hasty appeal to authority. Its chief of staff, Vice Adm. John L. McCrea,[15-8] recommended that the Army and Navy consult Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary for specific definitions of the five racial categories. That source, the admiral explained to the Under Secretary of the Navy, listed Polynesian in the Malayan category, and if the Navy decided to add race to its shipping articles, the five categories should be sufficient. The board, he added, had not meant to encourage additional use of racial information. The Navy had always used the old color categories on its shipping articles forms, the ones, incidentally, favored by Evans, and McCrea thought they generally corresponded to the categories developed by the board.[15-9] The admiral also suggested that the Army use the color system to help clarify the board's categories. He offered some generalizations on specific Army questions: "a) Puerto Ricans are officially Caucasian, unless of Indian or Negro birth; b) Filipinos are Malayan; c) Hawaiians are Malayan; d) Latin Americans are Caucasian or Indian; and e) Indian-Negro and White-Negro mixtures should be classified in accordance with the laws of the states of their birth."[15-10] The lessons on definition of race so painfully learned during World War II were ignored. Henceforth race was to be determined by a dictionary, a color scheme, and the legal vagaries found in the race laws of the several states.