Thomas Jefferson (APA 30) - Naval Cruise Book

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W H and PE IIE in the PI-IEIFIII 1 Spurrier was chilled. The Captain asked him: Spurrier, are you cold Pl' and Spurrier was so cold he couldnit even reply. So the Captain dispatched his orderly to get a foul weather jacket for the slender yeoman. It was hard to believe that anywhere in the United States could it be so severely cold in the summer. Inside the Golden Gate, under which the ship had just passed, the air was clear and balmy, the winds had been channeled up ,the green California valleys, sweeping up the warmth of the land. But suddenly, as if thirty degrees of latitude had been traversed in five minutes, the weather descended upon the officers and men of the Thomas Iefcrson and upon the pilot who was conducting her to the outer buoys of the channel. It was Iuly 18, 1945, and after three days in San Francisco, the ship was underway again. It was hard to take. Only three days in Frisco after so long! And worse, the war had still to be fought to completion, the Iap had to be dug out of every foxhole, perhaps even in his native village on Honshu, and the enemy was reported to have nine thousand planes in reserve for the suicide assault on the invasion. It would be a long time before the ship returned home, thoughts like these were in the mind of every man who sailed with the Thomas Icfferson that day. Did anyone notice, in the greyish mist, the for- midable shape of the heavy cruiser Indianapolis that Wednesday morning, cautiously bound for Saipan, and later for a grave in the Philippine Sea P If so, no one reported her to the Captain. There is no entry in the log. But now, when the talk takes a fanciful turn on the midnight watches, you'll find a man here or there who says he saw her, practically following in the T. l.'s wake, so the story goes. The frightful atomic bomb she carried 'to the waiting 20th Air Force on Saipan was well buried in her guts, however, and even if she had passed us close aboard, it would have seemed just another heavy cruiser on its way to fight the Iaps. So then, twenty-seven days before final catas- trophe hit the Iapanese, the USS Thomas leffcr- son sailed for the war zone. The route was devious. After leaving San Fran- cisco, 'the ship headed south Qfor which Spurrier was gratefulj and in a day's time, put in at San Diego for the loading of Marines. Then, the six- day voyage to Pearl Harbor. In the ship's news- paper, the morning following our departure from San Diego, appeared the news that the USS Thomas Iejerson was to become an APA-H, to be converted in the Navy Yard at Pearl to a new K A f , I f., , ,, fx 5 A Wwfawhy- ' .'- -V , I ,f an , ' --ww 'sf-sznff y 7' . I I ' ' I Lyn! 'U' , W . ' ' ' , , ,,V, V ,jj f H V , . , . -. 14 . ,sa in t. X W 'rs L. .W ,,5:.,3s1wa, -wh , ,mf ,mf , .. it X-my Ag -,ifiz-r,jj! X .X rggrf 3 f' 4,6-.p.,,Lf,.y 'gawk ...f -if 1, Q- wkwz1'.-gi-,augsywqsgts-in , .gc f-agw: 4, f 5 ,gf-13 g ,gy ,j 2 f, ,, f -N X -, , f 1- K- or -r- iff ',j,2.i2,4i-fggfzi, ,'ff-ag,-f-,gQg,:QZ,LL f'-VL' , X 5 X- f '

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type the Navy felt was needed in a large scale operation. The APA-H was to have large bays for the sick and injured, and special facilities for medical treatment. This would involve internal structural changes on the main deck amidships, tearing out of bulkheads, enlarging of other med- ical centers, and the addition to shipis company of a large force of doctors and corpsmen. To most of the ofhcers and men, it also meant that the duty would become perhaps more hazardous than ever before. Lying off the hostile coast, day after day, waiting for casualties to be embarked, and once on board, away with them to a hospital ship, and back again for more punishment. But no one was particularly perturbed. Had not the T. I. taken the worst the Germans could throw, in the grimmest days of the war? Had not she gone through two sessions at Oki- nawa? Was she not a lucky ship? Spirits rose with the gradual approach of the emergency, a phenomenon reported often during the course of the war in every phase of every service. It was at Pearl Harbor, while the ship was tied up near the battleship N cw York, that the end of the war could be discerned approaching swiftly. It didn't come in a single day of collapse-one noticed only that people didn't laugh any more when somebody said it would be over in two weeks- mark my words! But the awful en- gulfing of the enemy, the beating down of the will to fight, the shattering of Iapan's remaining resources in the tremendous last days of the war was plain to everyone. At last, on the 14th of Au- gust, the end was ofiicially proclaimed. At Pearl Harbor, where the war had started, all hell broke loose. rKsN Vif.e-2 , Y Eff? fax lk, by 7 r rrfslflildl 44Q kr, ,,',L- H , .V -5 f WQ7' i XrxS y ll 1. ml 1 'll if l lr .9 -... , C lk -wp I V FOR VICTORY, SIR!