Recent racial incidents aboard Pacific Fleet ships have been most unsettling to old salts and to all who had been lulled into a state of complacency from seeing the Navy remain calm while the Army was plagued by fraggings, refusals to obey orders, investigations of massacres and corruption, and other scandalous events during the Vietnam conflict. Now that that conflict is approaching its end, the Navy is having to bear most of the load of our commitment in Southeast Asia; and the burden has proven too much in some cases. Crews of destroyers find themselves at general quarters at all hours of the day conducting shore bombardments of enemy installations; the men of the carriers are at flight quarters for long periods as aircraft attack targets further inland; the increased level of operations also places a heavier burden on the crews of oilers and other support ships. The work is tedious, hours are long, tensions are great. Under such circumstances, the weak links quickly make their presence known.
Although “psychological demobilization”—recognition that the war is all but over—is widespread among the civilian population and in the lower ranks of the military, men of the Pacific Fleet still find themselves engaging in, or training vigorously for, operations in a war that could end at any moment. Under such circumstances, demoralization and unrest would appear to be inevitable. Nevertheless, disturbances have been few, considering the number of ships and men in the Fleet, and have been confined almost entirely to black sailors. One suspects, then, that the present high level of operations simultaneous with widespread psychological demobilization is not the cause of disturbances, but merely the occasion that has brought them to the surface.
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