Topeka (CL 67) - Naval Cruise Book

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Japanese Fishermen Greet V Us as We Enter 3 Tokyo Bay The Clouds Parted . . And There Was Fujiama . . d

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MNA Anyone who has served on a ship knows the truth of an old sailors' saying that a ship has a so11l. An old chief who had served on many ships during his navy career said that the Topeka was a thoroughbred from the start and always would be. The soul of a ship is what her officers and men make it. It is a spirit, an esprit de corps. There are friendly ships and unfriendly ships, efficient and inefficient ships. clean and dirty, good feeders and poor, sharp ships and indolent ships. She is like people having that mysterious thing called personality. She is attractive or unattractive, and as inex- plicable so as any person. She has that certain something or she does not. As we said her personality comes from her men. lt is not anything the shipbuilders can give her. Ships? com- panies are different so ships are different. The thing we are talking about usually starts at the top with the Captain and the Executive officer. The first skipper, exec, and crew give the ship her soul which is mighty hard to change for good or bad thereafter. The Topeka was a champion at the start with Captain Thomas L. Wattles as her commanding officer, and Comman- der 0. H. Dodson as her Executive Officer, with a ward- room and compartments full of eager, smart, and energetic American youngsters. Youngsters is right, too, because the average age of the officers hardly touched twenty five, and the men's was barely twenty. The story of the Topeka officers and men is really amaz- ing. The large majority of the officers were civilian reserv- ists. Many of them were bearrdless collegiates who had never been to sea. The others were professional and busi- ness men, some long in the war, and veterans of many sea campaigns all over the lworld when they reported for duty to the Topeka. The men, too, were mostly civilians, from everywhere, and nowhere, with conglomerate and varied occupations that more than rivaled the officers'. Most of the men were high school graduates. There were a few collegiates, and a number of college graduates. One man had been a high school principal, one edited a mag- azine, another was a successful artist, others were farmers, ranchers, glass blowers, policemen, clerks, accountants, draftsmen, printers, photographers, musicians, newspaper reporters, radio announcers, and entertainers. Some were rich and some were poor, but most of them came from the substantial American middle class homes. They came from nearly every state in the Union, though the preponderant majority was from the East coast. The men from New England and the Middle Atlantic States out- numbered those from any other section. A slightly larger number came from the cities than from the towns and country. But the score was surprisingly close. There were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists, in that order as far as numbers were concerned, and about in the same proportion as the population of the 66 East from which most of them came. As a perfect cross section of American manhood, the crew had as many national and racial backgrounds as there are nations and races in the world. If all the men who were bilingual had spoken their second languages in concert there would have been greater confusion aboard the Topeka than occurred at the Tower of Babel. Russian, Philipino Czech, German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Hebrew, and Japanese, are some of the languages spoken-while every dialect of English from broad Oxfordian and Boston Ameri can counterpart to the throaty mid-western of the great plains, up-state New York twang, soft Southern drawl, and the inimitable Brooklynese afforded a daily linguistic sym phony beyond musical comparison. The menis names were American to a syllable, Smith Llewllyn, etc, etc. There were tall men and short men, lean and fat, light and dark. The average Topeka sailor about five feet ten inches tall, weighed about 160 pounds, was fair with light brown hair, more than likely curly, and blue eyes. He was a handsome lad which was attested to by the uncommon at tention he received from the young fairer sex wherever he went. He jitter-bugged and Zombied with usual American zest and agility, while he was serious about his work and ambitious for promotion and advancement. His favorite pastime aboard ship was sleeping-according to his own unblushing account. His favorite movie star was as likely to be Bing Crosby as Hedy Lamar-which should give Hedy something to worry about, and the producers something to think about. His choice of authors ran the gamut from Burroughs to Shakespeare, and magazines from Pic to Mercury. On the average he read twenty magazines and two books a month. As a sportsman he was more of a participant than a spec tator. His favorite-right in the American tradition--was baseball. He played the game with average skill, and lots of pep. The whole truth is that he was a seasonal sports enthusiast. In the summer it was baseball,,tennis, golf swimming, in the fall football and hunting, in the winter skiing and ice skating, in the spring fishing. He handled his fists- fearlessly, developed a better than average boxing team, was an inveterate fight fan, and gave his team active as well as articulate support. The fact is that you know this man very well. He may be your son, brother or sweetheart. He may be the father of some of you old enough to read. All of you have met him on the street in his disheveled school attire looking as irre sponsible as an ancient ant-eater. Or he is the boy who de livered your paper, getting it to your door with a bang just after the clang of the milkman had half brought you to unwilling consciousness. It may be that he was the milk man. He could have been the kid who cut your lawn--as grudgingly as you work for your own dollars-or washed your car, or fixed your favorite sundae or ushakei' at the Brown, Jones, Love, Lopez, Cohen, Mashinski, Dwyer,