“Other than honorable” discharge became the new moniker, with recipients receiving the same expulsion and consequences. 5 This inspired public engagement to such a degree that the Armed Forces got rid of blue discharge in 1947. The paper called them, “a vicious instrument which should not be perpetrated against the American Soldier.” The newspaper contacted the Secretary of War and brought the American Legion into the fight. In 1945 the most widely read Black newspaper in the country, The Pittsburgh Courier, investigated blue discharges. This was because of how the Veteran’s Administration interpreted the bill’s broad language. After Congress passed the GI Bill of Rights, blue discharges were even barred from receiving the benefits of veterans. Unlike a court-martial, there was no right to appeal. Because discharge records were public, LGBTQ servicemen were forced “out of the closet” and finding employment became difficult. The ‘blue’ discharge process could include abusive interrogations about personal relationships, or solitary confinement in hospitals and “queer stockades”. Soldiers unload a gun at Aquatic Park, San Francisco.
