ON BOARD THE USS MASON: THE WORLD WAR II DIARY OF JAMES A. DUNN

by John Sibley Butler, MANSEL G. BLACKFORD (Introduction), James A. Dunn (Introduction)

Overview

James A. Dunn was a signalman on the USS Mason, a destroyer escort during World War II, the only oceangoing warship in the navy to employ African Americans in positions other than cook or messmate. Manned by African American seamen (and commanded by white officers), the ship made ten crossings of the Atlantic from 1944 to 1945, escorting convoys of merchant ships to and from the United Kingdom and North Africa and operating in hunter-killer groups searching for German submarines.
Dunn kept a day-to-day diary during his spare time on board the Mason. Such diaries are a rarity, for the navy (and other armed services) forbade the keeping of diaries, fearful lest secret information fall into enemy hands. The diary chronicles the Mason’s wartime activities, from the first convoy to the final return to the United States. It captures the feeling and meaning of life on board with an immediacy not fully found in retrospective accounts. The diary accurately records the mortal danger Dunn and his shipmates were in while attacking enemy submarines or dealing with extreme weather conditions in the North Atlantic. It conveys the boredom the men encountered while confined on long, tedious convoys and the joy of shore leaves. Here is the daily life aboard ship—the duties and the pastimes that made shipboard life endurable.
Equally interesting, the diary reveals what it meant to be an African American in a white navy within a segregated American society, the shipboard tensions, and the shipboard cooperation and sense of unity. It also portrays the life of an African American onshore in the United States, Great Britain, and North Africa and the love story that unfolded between James and his wife, Jane.
Supplemented by additional sources, including interviews with Dunn, this diary is a personal view into an important part of American history. Like the Tuskegee airmen, the men of the USS Mason paved the way for desegregation in America’s armed forces, contributing to a civil rights movement that changed the face of a nation.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814206997
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2016
Edition description:	1
Pages:	171
Sales rank:	694,673
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

James A. Dunn was the first black high school quarterback in Columbus, Ohio, and the only black player on the all-city team in 1931. In 1995, Dunn and his shipmates on theMason were recognized for their service and heroism on one particular convoy by the secretary of the navy, who presented them with letters of commendation at a special ceremony in Washington, DC. James A. Dunn died in 1996.
Mansel G. Blackford is emeritus professor of history at The Ohio State University and most recently the author of Columbus, Ohio: Two Centuries of Business and Environmental Change. His father, William M. Blackford, was captain of the USS Mason.
John Sibley Butler holds the Gale Chair in Entrepreneurship and Small Business in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author ofInequality in the Military and Entrepreneurship and Self-Help among Black Americans.
 

Read an Excerpt

On Board the USS Mason: The World War II Diary of James A. Dunn tells the story of the lives of the men on a destroyer escort during World War II, as seen through the eyes of one of the ship’s sailors, Signalman James A. Dunn. This volume reprints Dunn’s daily diary. Dunn and the other men of the Mason made ten crossings of the Atlantic, protecting merchantmen and troopships from attacks by German submarines and shepherding ships in convoys through horrific weather conditions, including a full-force hurricane.

What set the Mason apart from other naval vessels of that time was her crew: most of the crew members were African Americans. In fact, the Mason was unique. She was the only sizeable, oceangoing warship during World War II to employ African Americans in positions other than that of cook or messmate. The men of the Mason were, thus, like the much-better-known Tuskegee airmen in the army airforce. They were pioneers in creating new places for African Americans in the armed forces of the United States. However, there was an important difference: while the airmen had black officers, the sailors had white ones. My father, William M. Blackford, served as the captain of the Mason during all of that ship’s crossings of the Atlantic.

...

For me, learning about the Mason, mainly from surviving crew members, was a profoundly moving experience. That I would have that opportunity was most unlikely. I owe heartfelt thanks to Mary Pat Kelly, a freelance writer and filmmaker in New York City, for first bringing me together with the men of the Mason. In the late winter of 1995, Kelly published an account of the history of the Mason titled Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason, with the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, using as the words for her book’s title those suggested by the sailors of the ship. She later produced a one-hour documentary film and then a first-run film about the men and their experiences on board the Mason. While Kelly was researching her book, she contacted me for information about my father. As it had happened, my mother had recently passed away (my father had died four years before), and, with my sister, I had just finished going through their house in Seattle to prepare it for sale. In several old, musty cartons in a corner of the basement, I found letters my father had written home during World War II, along with various navy reports. I was happy to supply Kelly with the materials I had for use in her writing. In turn, Kelly introduced me to about a dozen surviving crew members, all that she could locate, at a gathering in her apartment in New York City in the winter of 1994. That get-together, which lasted for several days, was quite an affair for me.

Two particular developments still stand out from our initial meeting. First, at the various lunches and dinners, the former sailors took me aside to tell me anecdotes about “the captain” or “the boss”; they never said “your father.” My father had never told me much about his wartime experiences, but I learned about some of them from his crewmen: from ramming what they thought was a German submarine in the Straits of Gibraltar (it turned out to probably be a half-sunken barge) to having lively picnics on beaches at Oran in North Africa (where flies were everywhere). Second, navy officers had mounted a museum display about the Mason on board an aircraft carrier temporarily docked in New York City, which I toured with my father’s former crewmen. For me, the highlight of that visit came when present-day African American sailors going through the display recognized the World War II men of the Mason, high-fived them, and asked question after question about their experiences. I simply stepped back, watched, and listened. The young men received a personal tutorial from their seniors, then in their seventies and eighties, about what the navy and American society had been like some fifty years before. We left the display about ninety minutes later.
 

Table of Contents

Historical introduction John Sibley Butler ix

Original Preface xxix

Preface for the Paperback Edition xxxi

Introduction xxvii

1 The First Crossing of the Atlantic: June 14-July 25, 1944 5

2 Hunter-Killer: July 26-September 1, 1994 26

3 The Raging Sea: Convoy N.Y. 119: September 19-November 5, 1994 32

4 Returning to America: November 6-November 22, 1944 57

5 To Oran, Africa, and Back: December 18, 1944-February 11, 1945 65

6 To Oran Again: February 12-March 7, 1945 76

7 Returning to New York City: March 8-March 26, 1945 90

8 A Final Trip to Oran: April 3-May 7, 1945 100

9 Coming Home at Last: May 8-May 23, 1945 118

Afterword: On Land 127

Bibliographic Note 129