Although a small contingent of WAVES was retained to help with the Navy's over-all demobilization plan, many of these women had volunteered to remain on active duty. At that point, Vice Admiral Louis Denfeld, chief of the Bureau of Personnel, announced, "Our plan is to keep a WAVE component in the Naval Reserve. Further, if Congress approves, we will seek to retain on active duty a reasonable number of WAVES who wish to do so and who may be needed in certain specialties ..." On July 30, 1948, the Women's Armed Services Integration Act (Public Law 625) was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, allowing the women to serve in the regular Army or Navy on a permanent basis. The wartime prohibition of women serving in any unit having a combat mission was carried over into the 1948 Act. While the legislation was an extraordinary advancement for women, it effectively kept them from being integrated into the mainstream of the military for more than a quarter of a century. Though the WAVES no longer existed, the obsolete acronym continued in popular and official usage until the 1970s.