[Footnote 3-110: BuPers Cir Ltr 72-44, 13 Mar 44, sub: Negro Personnel of the Commissary Branch, Assignment to Duty of.] [Footnote 3-111: Idem, 182-44, 29 Jun 44, "Uniform for Chief Cooks and Chief Stewards and Cooks and Stewards."] [Footnote 3-112: Idem, 45-18, 21 Feb 45, and 45-46, 31 May 45, sub: Negro Enlisted Personnel--Limitation on Assignment of to Naval Ammunition Depots and Naval Magazines.] In the reform atmosphere slowly permeating the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Special Programs Unit found it relatively easy to end segregation in the specialist training program.[3-113] From the first, the number of Negroes eligible for specialist training had been too small to make costly duplication of equipment and services practical. In 1943, for example, the black aviation metalsmith school at Great Lakes had an average enrollment of eight students. The school was quietly closed and its students integrated with white students. Thus, when the _Mason's_ complement was assembled in early 1944, Negroes were put into the destroyer school at Norfolk side by side with whites, and the black and white petty officers were quartered together. As a natural consequence of the decision to place Negroes in the auxiliary fleet, the Bureau of Naval Personnel opened training in seagoing rates to Negroes on an integrated basis. Citing the practicality of the move, the bureau closed the last of the black schools in June 1945.[3-114] [Footnote 3-113: There is some indication that integration was already going on unofficially in some specialist schools; see Ltr, Dr. M. A. F. Ritchie to James C. Evans, 13 Aug 65, CMH files.] [Footnote 3-114: BuPers Cir Ltr 194-44, sub: Advanced Schools, Nondiscrimination in Selection of Personnel for Training in; Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to CO, AdComd, NavTraCen, 12 Jun 45, sub: Selection of Negro Personnel for Instruction in Class "A" Schools, 54-1-21, GenRecsNav.]