Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The crew of USS Mason's action in the North Atlantic was a showing of a well disiplined well led brave group of men. Being from Boston, Mass. I am aware of thier heroic actions,the DE Mason was built here at the Charlestown Navy Yard when I was about 6 years old. I personally feel the Captain on down took a real royal screwing.The Captain's log showed reason enough to be reconized but it was ignored by some predjudice Brass higher up the chain of command. The book well presented! A USMarine(caucasion)Korean Vet

During World War II, James A. Dunn was a signalman on the USS Mason, a destroyer escort and the only ocean-going warship in the American navy to employ African Americans in positions other than cook or messmate. Manned by African American seamen (and commanded by white officers), the USS Mason made ten crossings of the Atlantic from 1944 to 1945, escorting convoys of merchant ships to and from the United Kingdom and North African, and operating in hunter-killer groups searching for German submarines. Dunn kept a day-to-day diary during his spare time on board the Masson. He recorded the daily life aborad the ship, including the duties and pastimes that made shipboard life endurable. The diary also reveals what it meant to be an African American in a white navy within a segregated American society -- including the shipboard tensions, cooperation and sense of unity. On Board The USS Mason is a unique and invaluable contribution to the growing body of World War II literature and eye-witness accounts, and will be of immense interest to students of Black Studies and American military history.