Proudly We Served

by Kelly, Mary Pat

  Now the men could actually walk on their ship and get to know other crew members. They waited for the ship to be ready for the shakedown cruise.

  Buchanan: We had about forty white crew members, noncoms. All of the officers at one point were white. And we had about 160 black sailors. We manned all of the positions, all of the ranks: radiomen, signalmen, quartermasters, sonar men, motor machinists. Some people came aboard radio third class, but when they left they were chief petty officers—quite a few of them.

  Garrison: There was another ship, a smaller one, with a black crew, called the 1264. But this ship didn’t go overseas like we did. They ran up and down the coast. I think they went to the Caribbean a couple of times. But the Mason was the very first warship with a predominantly black crew that the navy ever commissioned. Destroyer escort or any ship, really.

  Peters: I went aboard that ship with stars in my eyes. This was a great opportunity. It fit in more with what I wanted to do, as opposed to maybe just sitting on some base somewhere, having a sedentary job. It was an opportunity for travel, for adventure—all of the usual things that an eighteen-year-old has in mind.

  The Mason was challenging. I went aboard as a rated person, which was quite different from going aboard without a rate. I had already proven myself, so I didn’t have a lot to prove when I got there.

  Grant: We were handpicked, all of the black and white guys: 180 black and about 40 white. We were all handpicked from throughout the navy, all bases.

  Divers: We were called “Eleanor’s Folly.” The whole nation was pushed by Eleanor Roosevelt. It wasn’t only the Mason, there were other integrated outfits in the other services—the Ninety-Ninth Pursuit Squadron, called the Tuskegee Airmen, and others. But I think the powers that be that opposed integration had programmed us to fail. The USS Mason was not expected to succeed. But when we started proving them wrong and succeeding, rather than eat crow, they downplayed all our accomplishments and all our virtues.

  But the ship’s log didn’t. The official record of their service began on commissioning day. The war diary summarized each day’s events, while the deck log reported on each four-hour watch. On April 3, 1944, Lt. Charles M. Dillon—in compliance with Bureau of Naval Personnel orders—came aboard to observe the black crewmen. (Dillon later served in the navy’s special program’s unit and played a central role in reversing the discriminatory policies of the navy.)

  DuFau: You had these people, observers, come aboard; they were personnel officers. But we knew they were there to see how we’d do. And we were fully aware that we would be under the microscope, and we realized the load that was on us. And looking back, I’m glad I didn’t know as much then as I know now, because I probably would have been shaken up a bit to know what weight we had to carry. But it was a puzzle to me why we had to be studied like something in a laboratory. We were human beings, blood running in our veins, loyal American citizens doing everything that was required. You know, living by the rules and everything. But when it came to working in the service, all of a sudden we were only qualified to serve meals or do just menial stuff. But the weight of proving our ability was on us and opening the doors for those who would come behind. It was really a double front that we were up against.

  Garrison: Apart from some people thinking that we couldn’t do the job, I think the whole basis of segregation itself was that you had to mingle and be close to each other. On a ship, you’re sleeping here, I’m sleeping there. That’s what I think people objected to more than anything else. I don’t think they doubted that we could do the job, but to do the job, you had to have that close association. And a lot of the white sailors and those in command were not willing to have that. So I think that’s what it really was.

  Farrell: Shortly after she was commissioned, we took her down to Bermuda on shakedown. We didn’t go on shakedown twice, we went once. But you usually stay on shakedown for a month. We stayed a week or two longer, but that had nothing to do with the crew needing any more training than anyone else. What gave me gray hairs was the evaporator. It was the sole piece of equipment that you had only one of on the ship. And when the evaporator was down, you would suddenly get thirsty. I think all of the DEs really had problems with them on shakedown.

  That was the first time we got away from the public water supplies, but the crew would still go in and turn the shower on full force, and just bathe there for a long while. And we had to make all that water. We could make less than four thousand gallons a day, and the crew was over two hundred people, so we ran pretty short. Down in Bermuda, where we had the shakedown, there’s no water. During peacetime they used to lug the water down from New York. What you depend on for water down there normally is the rainwater collected into cisterns. If you ran out of water, you would have to go to the commander of the area there and explain that your ship didn’t have any water. I used to tell the crew, “I am not going to go over there and beg for water. We’ve got to learn how to live on it.”

  We did pretty good, really, but I knew the crew wanted showers. We put in saltwater showers on the deck, because we had a lot of that. But the crew didn’t want the saltwater showers; they wanted the freshwater showers.

  Divers: You’ve got to remember, we had almost three hundred guys on a small ship. And we had to be clean. We couldn’t afford to be untidy. When we caught a guy who even halfway didn’t smell right, we’d give him a G.I. bath with a big, stiff brush, and we’d almost take the skin off of him with salt water. He got the message pretty fast.

  We kept our ship clean and tidy and our personal health up to snuff. We saw to that. You had to in a ship, with that many guys in a ship that small.

  Graham: Our quarters were down below—just about at the waterline. Our bunks folded up against the side, and we’d sleep in tiers. So, if you came in from watch and someone was in his sack, you’d have to wake him up to pull down your bunk. Some compartments became mess halls during the day. Our head was just a trough that water flowed down. There were wooden slat things that fit over the trough so you could sit down, with room for about ten.

  During her shakedown period the observers from the navy’s Bureau of Personnel watched the Mason closely. “Re-fueling, towing, hedgehog, gunnery and underwater exercises were satisfactorily performed and the ship was well handled in day and night maneuvers” (44). There was only one area that the bureau seemed extremely concerned about—cleanliness. The report’s discussion of the Mason’s shakedown cruise (and later of her convoy service) devotes more space to scrubbing the decks than the real achievement of the ship. Interestingly, though, the observers traced some of this deficiency to the white chief petty officers assigned to the ship, who were not performing their duties well. Their behavior was seemingly excused because they “were not volunteers for the duty. . . . there was evidence that the white petty officers in general did not like their duty and apparently accepted it primarily with the hope that it meant more rapid advancement in ratings (an expectation lacking in foundation)” (43).

  Happily for the Mason crew, their captain shared the attitudes they themselves had: ignore the naysayer and get on with the job at hand. Let the observers poke and prod; let the navy worry about dust on footlockers; we have a war to win. While in Bermuda, Captain Blackford demonstrated a willingness to, when necessary, ignore the navy’s petitioners, which would endear him to his men. The bureau’s report described one such incident in Bermuda. “At the request of the DE-DD Shakedown Task Group Commander, no liberty was granted the MASON’s crew during the scheduled period of exercises. This was a discrimination, since crews from other ships present were granted liberty; but the inequality of course caused special resentment among the Negro personnel, with whom the issue of discrimination is always particularly sensitive” (44). (Not to mention the “issue” of liberty, which seems “particularly sensitive” for all sailors!)

  The report goes on: “Finally during the MASON’s fifth and last week in the area, the Commanding Officer wisely took it upon himself to grant
liberty. The ship’s liberty parties were well behaved” (44). Whatever the problems with the white chiefs, the man in charge was someone the crew knew would stand up for them, and under his leadership, the ship’s crew began to coalesce.

  DuFau: Once the other ships found out who we were, it always was this challenge situation. We were on a training trip as part of the shakedown. We were pretending to be escorting a convoy. For some reason or another, we had to be the center of communications. I think four or five ships were sending signals to us by signal light at the same time. Some officer looked over the side and wanted to know, “DuFau, what the heck’s going on down there?”

  Without thinking, I told him, “Shut up!”

  The thing stayed in my mind. I said, “Oh, God, I told an officer to shut up.” But he stayed quiet. He wanted to know what the heck we were doing down there. It seemed like confusion, you know, all these ships flashing lights at us. And I told him, “Every one of them is under control.” We were using anybody we could grab to record the signals. Guys from the C-Division, for example, used to be up on the bridge, hanging out. And we would make them recorders because we had only four signalmen. So we would use the other guys as recorders. And we did it. We relayed all those signals. Later on our trips we would teach them all the code. I remember the radiomen practicing with flashlights.

  War Diary (20 April 1944): USS MASON (DE 529) Narrative Remarks: Completed fourteen (14) simulated depth charges attacks. Allowed seven hits by spotters. Various other scheduled and unscheduled exercises conducted. Operations conducted with USS HAYTER (DE 212) and SS VORTICE.

  War Diary (21 April 1944): USS MASON (DE 529) Narrative Remarks: Underway at 0648 for A.S.W. (Anti Submarine Warfare) exercise with Italian submarine using advanced evasive tactics. Fired patterns of four (4) plaster loaded Mark 10 projectiles each run. Echo ranging condition very poor limiting number of runs for the day to eleven. Five hits scored.

  Garrison: Teamwork is especially important. Every man must be a specialist in what he does. You have no fire department, so if a fire breaks out, you have to know how to put it out. We had collision drills. We had abandon-ship drills. We would drill so much that you could do it just at the snap of the fingers.

  Watkins: I heard about the Mason when she was on her shakedown, but I also heard, “Don’t volunteer for anything!”—so I didn’t. I went home that evening, and coming back on the train to Great Lakes there was another guy with me who said, “You know, I think maybe we’re goofy if we don’t volunteer for the Mason. Let’s go at lunchtime and sign up.”

  I said, “All right.” But before we could, the word came over, “Watkins, report to the office.” And that was it. I was assigned to the Mason.

  I had left all of my clothes at home because I was more or less commuting to Great Lakes from my home on the south side. But I was told, “Catch the train; you’re going to New York.” I lived way out on the south side of Chicago, and it was kind of rough to get my things and get back to the station. I remember running for the train with my wife. She was working at Palmer House and she ran to meet me at the train. Then we were both running down the tracks to catch the train!

  The Mason had left on her shakedown, so they sent me to Norfolk, then to Charleston, to try to catch the ship. Finally, I got aboard ship, and the engineering officer said he needed three guys. A guy named Cook—we called him Big Cook—said to me, “Take the job, take the job.”

  That’s how I got in the E-division (they called engineering E-division). I learned about the engines and the evaporators.

  First I worked in the after engine room—that was fine. But the engine room itself was terrible. On the first voyage, I was pretty seasick, and the engine room didn’t help at all! It got pretty hot. But we survived. And then they wanted a striker for the guy in charge of fuel and oil—they called him the oil king. So I became the striker for the oil king and, eventually, the oil king myself.

  We did maintenance on board too so that we wouldn’t have to do it after we were in port.

  Garrison: But as much progress as we were making on board ship, we still had to face the outside. After the shakedown we were in port at Norfolk, I think. On the Chesapeake Bay ferry they had a snack bar. I was sitting with a shipmate who was white. I ordered something, and the woman served me. But then a man came out and told me I had to get up and leave. At that point, some of my shipmates, who were white, were ready to turn the place out. But I asked them not to do it. Because see, coming from the South, I knew what would happen. They wouldn’t care whether you were white, black, purple, or green—something would happen. And so I just left it there.

  Gordon: Only once did I ever have any real problems from the guys in the ship. I was talking to a white guy about this not long ago, about being categorized black. He was white. His response was, “Well, a little dab will do it.” I don’t know who set these rules. My percentage of Negro blood was one-sixteenth, and that was enough to make me a Negro.

  But racism didn’t go in the reverse in those days. Black people were so used to being mistreated, it never occurred to them to mistreat anybody else.

  That’s how I found it once I was mixed with the black crew. The guys never gave me too much trouble, except when we were in Charleston, South Carolina. The ship was not welcome there. The first night on liberty there was some kind of a riot. Here were all of these black sailors running around with rating badges. This was not something seen down there. The rest of the navy was black servants, period. The guys got in a fight ashore, and when they came back to the ship, they were ready to kill. I mean, they were very angry. And three of them came to my bunk and said, “We want some white blood” (of course, they had been drinking).

  I just boldly told them, “Well, you’re not going to get it here.” But I was very scared, because I thought anything could happen. But being a shipmate—we’d been at sea and we’d been through the shakedown cruise and everything—I was one of the guys, so that didn’t turn into anything.

  I have had my share of racism from both sides of the table, but I don’t recognize racism, period. To me, it’s the ultimate in ignorance to consider somebody by the color of their skin. The men of the Mason ranged from real black to myself, in all shades. We were just human beings. The navy did not consider us just human beings, and that’s why we were treated as some kind of an experiment or something. I never did understand why, because I went to mixed schools, and I never found anybody in schools that was smarter than I was. In my classes, nobody ever got higher grades than I did. So to me, I never considered myself limited. Of course, the obvious response to that was that I didn’t have enough black blood in me! But I found that the sailors on the Mason were as smart as, and a lot of them a lot smarter than, I was—so it had nothing to do with color.

  I have been very offended by the way the men on the Mason were treated because of the color of their skin, as though they were something less than human.

  Watkins: I didn’t know anything about segregation. I’d heard about it, but I hadn’t experienced it. The first time was in Norfolk, I think. A guy named Johnson, from Oregon, and I caught the ferry. I said, “Johnson, look at all the black dudes over here.” It turned out, we were on the wrong side of the ferry!

  And still I didn’t get it. We went down the street, and we saw this pretty little girl sitting by the orange-aid cooler in a restaurant. We decided to go in there. “We’ll have some of that orange-aid,” we told her.

  This redneck came in behind us. “Yeah, but you’ll drink it outside!”

  She said, “I can’t serve you here.”

  So I said, “Well . . .” but the guy behind us growled, so we said, “Okay. Bye-bye.” Then I said, “Johnson, you’re from Portland, Oregon, and I’m from Chicago. Look what we’re getting into!”

  Then there was the bus. If we were going into Charleston or into any other town, they’d stop in the city and collect the fare. One time the bus was loaded, and I was sitting by the window, a white sailor sitting next
to me. The driver said to the white sailor, “You’ll have to get up or I won’t move the bus.”

  The white sailor started to argue, but I said, “Hey, kid, go sit over there. We don’t want to get into anything we can’t win.”

  We were fairly angry, but there wasn’t a win for us. The drivers made sure before they got into town that everybody was seated properly, and then they’d collect the fares.

  It puzzled me that they didn’t want you to sit side by side on the bus, but you could live side by side in the housing there, in Charleston, in Norfolk, in all of them. That was the thing that bothered me.

  I remember there was a transfer in a town in Virginia, and we stopped for awhile. One of the guys said, “Hey, let’s go get some beer.” So we go into this place, and we go through the kitchen, and here’s a big black cook.

  “Where are you guys going?” he asked.

  We said, “We want to go get some beer.”

  “All right. What do you want? What do you want?”

  I said, “You mean I can’t get it to take it out?”

  “No, I have to get it for you.”

  “You keep it,” I said and I busted outdoors. The rest of the guys stayed there. They got back and they were opening the beer on the train. Finally they said, “Oh, we bought you one. We knew you didn’t have sense enough to know what was going on down there.”

  DuFau: Integration had begun when I went in in ’42. But it really took an order from Truman in ’48. He put his foot down. My understanding was that in the beginning they were going to train us and then eventually integrate. But that process was going on at such a slow speed. Even with a commander in chief behind you, by the time the order goes down to the little guy who has you isolated on a ship somewhere, they can do what they want to do. And then, by the time the chain of command hears from you, you may be in trouble for just going over his head and making a complaint.