Divers: It’s peacetime hokum. And why he would get so much publicity and so much ink on it is beyond my understanding.
Meyer: The problem had been one of leadership. They reflected their boss (Captain Blackford) and the standards that the boss set. We’re all sort of innately lazy, and if we’re permitted to get away with being lazy, we’re lazy.
Within the first couple of months, I had three men who were discharged from the navy for bad conduct. For instance, one of them came up to me, and I saw that he had a long list of offenses—Captain’s Mast. So I said, “I see you’ve got all of this. If you come up here again, I am not going to do anything. You are going to discharge yourself from the navy.”
“Oh,” he says, “Captain, don’t you worry. I’m not coming up here again.”
Three weeks later, he was there. And I said, “Johnny, remember you were here three weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“Remember what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you just did it. You just kicked yourself out of the navy.”
Craig: He demoted the executive officer, Ed Ross, and in effect took his job away from him, although he was the senior officer next to Blackford when Meyer arrived. Ross was a lieutenant.
We had a good crew, and we had an experienced bunch of officers who had been with the ship since she had been commissioned, back in the spring, I guess, of ’43. He made Phillips his executive officer. Phillips was rather friendly to Meyer. He tended to be a little bit more of a disciplinarian than some of the other guys. He had been the communications officer.
Meyer: I got a new executive officer, and I got rid of another officer. I had invited one officer after another down to my cabin for a cup of coffee to talk. Well, a couple of them just told me nothing. But the third officer, John Phillips, just exploded, and told me about some troubles that were partly a reflection on the earlier captain. So I made him exec.
Lieutenant Anderson, the engineering officer, was superb. And as a result, the engineering gang was superb. The communications officer was so-so, and as a result we had lousy communicators. You know, it comes down to leadership. The men reflect their leaders just like a mirror. I was trying to do what I could for better relations between whites and Negroes. There was a stereotype that Negroes had lots of body odor. And it wasn’t true. So I said to John, “I think you and I should write an article for The Saturday Evening Post stating that it isn’t true about body odor with Negroes.”
“Norm,” he says, “you’re gonna write an article about body odor? You fool!”
Farrell: I was the engineering officer. There was no officer named Anderson in the E section.
Meyer: I very much wanted to have a black officer on board—at least one, or maybe more. One day, the Mason was going into a dock in New Jersey near Sandy Hook, and a tug helped us come in, which was normal. I looked down, and that ship just sparkled. Just in every way: the way it performed and its cleanliness and so on. And I looked, and as far as I could see, everyone on board was black. Actually, that’s not true, but the skipper, indeed, was black. So I quickly invited him over for lunch, and his crew was very happy that their very outstanding skipper, Jim Hair, who had been an enlisted man on a tug before he went to training, was being invited over to have lunch with a superior, or with a senior officer.
And I had the Myrdal book under my arm, and we talked a lot about it. And when he got back to his ship, everybody said, “What happened, Captain? What happened?” I immediately called Washington, and I said, “I want Jim Hair transferred to my ship.” And then his crew was very unhappy, because they loved Jim Hair, he was such a good officer. But Jim came on board. And immediately he and I bonded as . . . had the same feelings, the same standards, the same concerns, and were absolutely open. He was not Negro and me white; we were two officers.
And he was a tremendous . . . He was a catalyst, you see. No matter what my feelings might have been towards Negroes . . . Undoubtedly, some of them sort of wondered, “What’s this honky Meyer up to?” whereas Jim could interpret me to the crew.
One thing I never really understood was how patriotic the blacks were. Their attitude was very openly, “This is my country and I want to fight for it.” I used to ask Jim, “How can you be so damned patriotic when you saw your own brother-in-law lynched in front of you?”
Jim would just reply, “You have to go on living.”
James Hair: Moving to the Mason was another one of those cases of mixed feelings. I was going to a bigger ship, one that was part of the fighting Navy, but I was sorry to lose the satisfaction of having my own command. I know the men of the tugboat were sorry to see me go, and I felt a sense of regret about that, but they realized this was a step upward. On board the Mason, the enlisted crew was all black, and the officers were all white until I got there. I was the first lieutenant, in charge of all deck operations and the topside appearance of the ship. Everything had to be shipshape, including the boats, the hatches, portholes, rigging, anchors, and so forth. We had a very fine crew in the destroyer escort, although I have to admit that there wasn’t as much closeness and feeling of family as there had been in the tugboat. That’s one of the things you lose when you go to a larger ship (taken from The Golden Thirteen, pp. 232, 234).
Divers: But the reason he [Meyer] got Hair was because he needed somebody to run the boat. Hair was the skipper of a tugboat, and this guy Meyer had never run a boat.
Watkins: That’s right.
Divers: He was running other ships over, he couldn’t dock a ship. That’s why he got Hair. When he found out Hair could dock a ship or handle a ship pretty good, that’s why he got him. That’s my opinion, anyhow. In fact, I didn’t know Hair was black until I saw that discharge. I didn’t know Hair was a black guy; I always thought he was white. He didn’t tell anybody. He appeared white. I mean, if he was black, he sure didn’t let anybody know. It didn’t get out among the general population. I never held it against him, though. He’s still all right. I met him at the reunion.
Watkins: He was all right. He paid for all the cab fares. Nice fellow.
War Diary (8–17 July 1945): Undergoing refresher training as scheduled by ComDesLant. All exercises conducted in Casco Bay operating areas, following schedule conducted underway:
11 July 1945: Ship handling and general drills.
12 July 1945: Tactical maneuvers, towing breeches buoy, visit and search, underway damage control.
13 July 1945: ASW.
16 July 1945: AA firing, damage control, night illumination.
Meyer: One of the first jobs we did was to test four hundred sonic depth charges, which would be set off by the sound of the screws of the submarine. But if we dropped them off ours, and our own screws set them off, we’d blow ourselves up—and I wouldn’t be here. And these were big, heavy, three hundred-pound depth charges: two hundred one day, then we went back and reloaded, and two hundred the next day. First off, I thought, “Gee, this is great. They’re giving us immediately a chance to show how good we are,” which we were. But then I said, “Maybe they figure, ‘That damn nigger ship isn’t worth anything; let it blow up and we haven’t lost anything.’” But we got a letter of commendation of how . . . what a good performance we had done. And we were pretty proud and happy about it.
James Hair left the ship on July 21 and returned four weeks later. Norman Meyer would leave on September 20, turning command over to John Phillips. So Meyer spent only six weeks with Hair.
Meyer: At Fort Lauderdale we were having a contest with the submarine during the day, and then at night we’d tie up. Every time when I went to a southern port, I would go to the police and I would say, “This ship is here. We’ve got a whole lot of black people. They are not steward’s mates, they are not cooks and stuff, no more than one or two. They are people that have been out here fighting the war for you, and I expect them to be treated with respect.”
Well, this one time, at 2:00 A.M., they called me. “Captain, Captain, the police g
ot Willie, and they’re gonna lynch him.” So I got down to the police station, and sure enough, they had Willie. It turns out eight of the buddies had gotten in a cab and come through from black town to white town. Going through the white town, the police said Willie had yelled at this white woman, at two o’clock in the morning. But Willie was so scared he could hardly breathe, much less . . . Anyhow, what sort of a woman is walking down the street alone at 2:00 A.M.? SO I got Willie back to the ship because, as I told the police, “You know, I was here yesterday and told you I wouldn’t stand for this,” and I stood up for the crew’s being treated with respect.
The next day, though, I got the crew together and I said, “This happened, it’s wrong, but we’re down South and we’re going to have to live within this context. And furthermore,” I said, “if we do have an incident, I’ll restrict all of you to the ship.” I think that’s the day they gave me the nickname of being “The Warden,” which is not a term of endearment amongst black people.
War Diary (22–27 July 1945): Operating with other ships of TG 28.4. ASW and counter measures conducted 22, 23, 25, 27 July. Total time 19 hours operating with submerged sub.
War Diary (August 1945): Conducted Training Cruises as follows: (In Miami except when underway)
(a)2 August: Off Miami for AA Gunnery.
(b)3, 4 August: PT Vectoring exercises off Miami.
(c)6–11, 13–15, and 17 August: Underway in area from Miami to Dry Tortugas carrying out scheduled officer training.
Craig: Ross was the navigator as well as the deck officer. He certainly knew how to bring the ship in. But when we went into Bermuda one time, Meyer was on the bridge, and we damn near ran into a shoal. I was standing on the lower part of the ship with Ross, and he said, “See you in a minute,” and he went running up to the bridge and warned the captain that he was going off course. He happened to be familiar with the Bermuda harbor because he’d been there before.
Meyer: A certain submarine had been developing evasive tactics to avoid the Japanese surface ships. But they wanted a ship that had never experienced that so they could scrimmage, like a football team. So they designated us. The first day, the submarine was ten miles away, restricted and so on, and we were to find it. Well, Monday we found it. Friday of that week was graduation day, and they could practically do anything they wanted to evade us. Of course, in order not to waste time, if the sonar operator got a contact, he would say “Contact,” and I would say “Bearing,” back and forth. The sonar team was superb, just superb! One fellow was sounding out Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep-Beep, and instead of saying “Contact,” he said, “Who dat?” Heh. Heh. But I knew what he meant.
Also, I thought that going around with shirttails out looked sloppy and unmilitary. So I’d go around with the scissors and cut the shirttails off square.
Divers: Captain Meyer was never in a situation where he could prove his leadership because it was all peacetime when he came in. It was all back to the peacetime navy. He kind of reminds me of Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny. Shirttails, what nit-picking. The Mason had always passed inspection. I know because I used to log it. I’ve never known one time for us to come up short. We were a DE. We’d been at war.
Meyer: They were in charge of playing records, music over the P.A. system. And I had to pass a rule that they couldn’t play one record, any one record, more than ten times in a day, otherwise they’d play the damn thing thirty times. You could go crazy.
Divers: You’ve got to remember, we were nineteen-, twenty-, twenty-one-year old guys! You put a bunch of guys like that together, and they’ve got a song they like, they’ll play it over and over and over. They’ll play it from now on, if you let ’em. Like the kids nowadays. How many times does the little guy come in here and play a rap song? I say, “Lance, can’t you play something else?”
“I like it, I like it!”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“No! No!” That’s the way we were. We had Dinah Washington with Lionel Hampton. She used to sing “The Old Salty Papa Blues.”
Buchanan: “I’ll Walk Alone,” that was the song I loved. Anybody who was in the war remembers that song. I played it because it made me feel good. It helped the other guys too. We even used to dance together sometimes on the fantail. Good thing Captain Meyer never saw that.
Meyer: Way at the end, we were at the Charleston Navy Yard for decommissioning. I said, “Jim [Hair] and John [MacIntosh], I want to take you to the Officers Club and have a drink.”
“Well, Captain,” they said, “we want to go to the Officers Club, but we don’t want to go with you.”
“What the hell is this? Reverse discrimination? You want to go but you don’t want . . .”
“No, no,” they said. “The reason we don’t want to go is we know that you’re going to get in trouble if you take us there, and we don’t want you to get in trouble.” Which I guess you might say is an evidence of the affection that Jim felt for me—and vice versa.
So we went to the most conspicuous place in the Officers Club and ordered a drink. Service almost stopped because all the help—the cooks and so on—were black. We could see the guys looking around the corner. “My God, what is this? A black officer in our club?” So we had our drink, and then Jim Hair said, “Well, Captain, you had your fun. Can we now go to black town and relax with our people?” And that was that.
But the division commander was in a different part of the club, and when he saw me, he said, “That was a goddamn stupid thing for you to do.” People didn’t take blacks to an Officers Club.
Hair: I know that Norman Meyer has told you about the time he took me and John MacIntosh to the Officers’ Club for dinner. It was an uncomfortable situation, but Commander Meyer’s presence kept us from getting any direct heat. On the other hand, if we had gone there without him, just the two of us, the whole thing might have been okay because it would have been less ostentatious. He was deliberately putting us on display. He strongly believed in doing the right thing, no matter what the consequences were (taken from The Golden Thirteen, p. 234).
Watkins: There was the story about Meyer taking Hair to the Officers Club, where they didn’t want him.
Divers: A lot of times you don’t like being first.
Watkins: That’s right.
Divers: Yeah, you can get your ass whipped being first. Or die. Let somebody else be first. That’s what I used to say all the time! Why would Meyer want to take Hair there with all them rednecks? The rednecks would be down there, and they’d get half full of that beer and start whoopin’ and whoopin’ and hollerin’ that rebel yell. That’s the last place you’d want to be! I’d say, “I’ll pass this time.”
Watkins: Really.
Divers: I don’t ever want to be first. I’ll be second.
I certainly wish I could have seen Captain Blackford after the war, but he died in 1970, before we started having reunions. You know, gotten together with him, had a reunion with the guy. He was a marvelous guy. And I thought many a time that I wished I could have seen him and thanked him for seeing us through. I went all through the war without a scratch, and I think a lot of that was his doing. A whole lot of it was his doing, his handling of the ship. And I’m quite sure that Skipper Meyer couldn’t have done a fabulous job like Skipper Blackford did.
DuFau: We had already had six trips overseas, convoy duty with submarines, and after all that, he [Meyer] came aboard to teach us how to do it right! It was such an insult to us. Meyer insists that he is right. Yet, he apologized to us. But then he turned around and made the same statements again, degrading us!
Garrison: He [Meyer] implied that Lieutenant Hair was the one who was needed to bring us in line.
DuFau: [Meyer] said that Hair was the catalyst. We didn’t even know him. He just came aboard when Meyer came aboard, and Hair wouldn’t have been aboard if Meyer didn’t need him, need to learn from Hair.
10
Aweigh
The war ended. The navy offered the crew
men of the Mason a chance to stay on, but the highest rank they could aspire to was that of petty officer in a navy that was still segregated. The lack of opportunity kept some from pursuing a naval career. Others just wanted to get out.
Grant: I wouldn’t have stayed even if they had made me an admiral. I was ready to go home.
Buchanan: Oh, I was ready to stay! I was ready to stay in the navy. But I was afraid that I was going to get shipped to Norfolk. That’s where I got sick. That’s where I spent thirty days in the hospital for scarlet fever. No way would you get me back there. And I only needed a half-credit more to get out of the navy. I told them no. I went in and saw the officer and said, “Look, I think I’m sick,” and they sent me down to sick bay.
“Nothing wrong with you,” they told me.
I said, “I know, but man, all I need is half-a-point and I’m out. I’m out. I’m dying to get out now, because I know that my name is on the list to go to Norfolk.” Norfolk! The hellhole of the navy on the East Coast. I wasn’t going back there, no kind of way. I had been in the different southern ports. I found out how I was going to be treated.
Now, I was already a second-class petty officer. They were going to give me first-class petty officer, and I would have been very happy with that if there was some place I could stay. But not Norfolk. No way. After I came out I became a New York City policeman. I did a lot of undercover work. I was shot while on duty and had to retire.
In the last years I’ve gone back to school to study liberal arts: art courses, ancient history, Egypt. I was studying all this, and I realized I didn’t know anything about the Jews. NYU had a course about the history of the Jews. Not only did I grab the course, I started learning Yiddish and Hebrew. I got into Hebrew so good that I wanted to read the Bible in Hebrew.
Proudly We Served Page 20