Exercise Nanook
Initially, it had been planned to decommission Alcona at Norfolk so that she might be returned to the War Shipping Administration and laid up in the James River to await further disposition. However, on 18 April 1946, Capt. Richard H. Cruzen, prospective commanding officer of an Arctic exercise, code named "Nanook" requested that Alcona be assigned to his task force. The approval of his request prolonged the ship's naval career and, on 27 April the Chief of Naval Operations ordered her assigned to "Nanook."
Alcona arrived at Boston, Massachusetts, shortly before noon on 3 May and moored alongside the destroyer, Willard Keith (DD-775). Five days later, Capt. Robert J. Esslinger (who had won a Navy Cross in Kearny (DD-432) and a Silver Star for command of Sproston (DD-577) off Okinawa in 1945) relieved Lt. Comdr. H. D. Byington USNR, in command.
(Data on Arctic assignment missing from Navy file.)
Read more about this topic: USS Alcona (AK-157)
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“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
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