A young Black Navy sailor in a work shirt sits between chain-hung bunks below decks, reading a worn Bible by lamplight

Steward’s Mate Second Class James Lee Frazer reads his Bible the night before a raid on Manila Bay, World War II. U.S. Navy, National Archives. Click the photo to see it larger.

Below decks on a Navy ship, Steward’s Mate Second Class James Lee Frazer sits between the bunks with his Bible open across his knees. The Navy’s caption reads, “However pressing his duties STM2/c James Lee Frazer always finds time to read a few chapters from his Bible each day. In this study he is especially intense about his devotional routine…it was the night before the opening strike of a raid on Manila Bay.” The book in his hands is worn soft at the edges, with thumb tabs cut into the pages so he could find each book of the Bible fast.

The Night Before the Strike

The caption doesn’t name Frazer’s ship or give the night. The National Archives dates the photo January 9, 1945, and lists it with its pictures of African Americans during World War II. Two numbers away on that same list is another Navy photo taken in a bunkroom below decks, with the same canvas bunks hung from chains. Its caption says it was taken aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga “on eve of the Battle of Manila,” on November 4, 1944, by Lt. Wayne Miller. In it, Steward’s Mate First Class Thomas L. Crenshaw “looks at a picture of his three children, while a bunkmate writes a letter home.” The Archives doesn’t say whether the two photos were taken on the same night.

Ticonderoga sailed with the carriers of Task Force 38 and launched her first air strike on the morning of November 5, 1944. Her planes spent two days hitting Japanese ships and airfields around Luzon, in the Philippines. On November 6, her airmen came back claiming 35 Japanese planes destroyed and attacks on six enemy ships in Manila Bay. That afternoon of November 5, kamikaze planes struck the carrier Lexington, sailing nearby, and Ticonderoga’s gunners claimed two of the attackers.

Steward’s Mates at War

Frazer’s rating, STM2/c, means steward’s mate second class. Steward’s mates served the officers. Another Navy photo from Ticonderoga in November 1944 shows steward’s mates joking as they dry silverware in the officers’ wardroom. In battle, some of them manned the guns. A Navy caption from July 1942 describes Black messmen on a cruiser in the Pacific “who volunteered for additional duty as gunners” and were “doing proficient work under battle conditions.”

Behind Frazer, the bunks hang one above another from chains, with a shaded lamp glowing in the dark. He wears a work shirt with its sleeves rolled up and a chain around his neck. The caption says he read a few chapters every day, “however pressing his duties,” and on this night he read them with a raid coming the next day.

About This Photo

  • Archive title: “However pressing his duties STM2/c James Lee Frazer always finds time to read a few chapters from his Bible each day. In this study he is especially intense about his devotional routine…it was the night before the opening strike of a raid on Manila Bay.”
  • Date: January 9, 1945, the date the National Archives gives the photo. The caption says it was taken the night before a raid on Manila Bay.
  • Place: Aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Pacific. The caption doesn’t name the ship.
  • Photographer: U.S. Navy (the record doesn’t give a name)
  • Collection: General Photographic Files, General Records of the Department of the Navy (Record Group 80), National Archives at College Park, Maryland
  • Photo number: Archives number 80-G-305241, National Archives Identifier 520675
  • Also listed in: Pictures of African Americans During World War II, National Archives, number 195
  • Rights: Public domain, a work of the U.S. government
  • Restoration: KNOWOL, 2026, from the Archives’ scan of the print

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