Ralph Crump was born and raised in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The years of the Great Depression were "terrible," Crump said, and from his family's mid-West point of view, things kept getting worse and worse. Luckily, they lived on a farm and had enough to eat. His father was into the new technology of welding and was recruited from fabricating steel rails for the railroads, where he could only get sporadic part-time work, to go out to the Kaiser yard on Terminal Island in Los Angeles harbor for a job building liberty ships. The family moved out to North Long Beach the summer before Crump finished high school. In Iowa, he had been a member of the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps], but there was no reciprocity in Long Beach and to his disappointment, there were no empty slots at his new school. By the time he graduated, Pearl Harbor was "behind him" by four or five months, and a lot of his buddies had already joined the service. Crump had been accepted into the engineering school at UCLA [Annotator's Note: University of California Los Angeles], but the United States was engaged in the war on both sides of the earth and shipyards were forming and expanding on the West Coast. In retrospect, it seemed to Crump that for months, the whole country had been revving up in anticipation of war.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Ralph Crump said there was "tremendous panic" in the Los Angeles area. They immediately heard, through a radio report, about the disaster. There were several aviation plants in California and Crump said there were many National Guard and Army planes in the air, and at night, spotlights were searching the skies for any trace of the enemy. On one occasion, Crump was impressed when the air raid sirens went off during the blackout, the sky was filled with airplanes, and the antiaircraft guns started firing, spraying shrapnel all over the neighborhood. It turned out to be preparedness maneuvers. But word had it that at least one sub had approached the coast a little north of Santa Barbara, news that was not published, but was acknowledged by the locals. Crump did not understand the politics of the actions at the time, but was witness to the reaction of the Americans to the Japanese population living in his environs. A nearby mom-and-pop grocery story run by a Japanese family suddenly closed up; crews of Japanese fishermen suddenly vanished from the docks. The daily produce market, operated primarily by successful Japanese farmers, was gone within days. Crump observed that there was an animosity toward the Japanese for what Japan had done; as well as a perceptible feeling that although the Japanese had assimilated economically, they had never blended in culturally or socially. He said there was always a "standoff between Occidentals and Orientals." As far as the interment movement, Crump said he was too young to comprehend what was going on, and doesn't think the average population knew, or much cared. The prevalent sentiment was that the Japanese could not be trusted. They might be just as loyal to Japan as they were to America. Crump said that he personally felt the vast majority of Japanese were just as patriotic as he was.

After he graduated from high school, Ralph Crump opted against college, because he considered it a low-cost recruitment system for the government. His grandfather had been a boat builder and his father was established in a shipyard, so he leaned in favor of that industry. Crump signed up for a course in general drafting, and after just a few weeks, he exaggerated his talents and applied for work at the Consolidated Steel shipyard in Wilmington, California. He was hired as a blueprint clerk. A curious kid, when he finished his work he would "roam around and shoot the breeze" with the professionals. A receptive engineer who was working on the launch of a Type C-1 cargo ship rewarded his acute interest by giving him a project operating a comptometer. Crump's enthusiasm for the work and the accuracy of his results were impressive, and he was promptly promoted to junior grade draftsman and junior computer operator in the engineering department, with a raise that tripled his income.

At 18, Ralph Crump was awed by the work and the caliber of the professionals with whom he interacted [Annotator's Note: while working at the Consolidated Steel shipyard in Wilmington, California]. He looked upon them as models of civilization and industry. Crump was involved in the launch operations of 14 Type C-1 cargo ship hulls, which took the better part of a year, and afterward he transferred to a job under one of his former bosses at a new shipyard in Astoria, Oregon, founded to build powerful ocean-going tug boats for the United States government. At the beginning of America's involvement in the war, ships were being sunk faster than they were being produced, but during Crump's initial foray into the business, production of sea craft on the West Coast was increasing exponentially. As Crump remembers it, something in excess of 5,000 hulls the approximate size of a liberty ship were built in very short order.

In the beginning of 1943, Ralph Crump's draft status required that his boss write a letter every six months to the draft board in Long Beach to establish the fact that he was productively involved in the war effort as a civilian. It became a source of some anxiety to await news as to whether or not he got a deferment. He was working among about a thousand employees at the shipyard in Astoria, Oregon, and living in a rented house that looked out on the ocean that also served as the offices for the business. One night, a fire at the salmon canning factory in a nearby town spread to a lumber yard and on to the shipyard. The facility was totally destroyed, and because it was not insured, the business was technically bankrupt. In the employees' naiveté, Crump said, sabotage had never been suspected, although the Portland FBI [Annotator's Note: Feberal Bureau of Investigation] came in and questioned everybody. It was later revealed that at least one sub [Annotator's Note: submarine], maybe two, had come over the Columbia River Bar into the area. One of the FBI investigators even held a suspicion that Crump was somehow involved in the tragedy because he had been last to leave the shipyard that night. To complete the government contract, the ship building operation was reassigned to another shipyard in the region, and Crump moved to Seattle to continue the work. While he was there, an enlisted man that Crump became acquainted with socially told him about being a gunnery officer on a cargo ship that was moving war material in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Crump said he was “tiring of being a civilian,” and getting looks from people on the street who assumed that something was wrong with him. He completed recruitment forms, underwent physical exams, had a tooth capped and his tonsils removed, and qualified for a gunnery position.

Ralph Crump had passed all the tests, but all the gunnery training billets were full, and he was told that he would be in the Navy reserves while waiting for an assignment. Another possibility was that after a 90-day training program, he could become an officer in the Merchant Marine. He did basic training at San Mateo, California, which was mostly bookwork, with a little seamanship, and he chose an engineering path in the Merchant Marines for what he called "obvious reasons." Crump said they had liberty in San Francisco, which was "kind of fun." He went back to Los Angeles and was assigned to a new liberty ship as an engineering cadet. Crump learned a lot working with the chief engineer and taking a correspondence course, and served out an apprenticeship which was the wartime equivalent of attending the Merchant Marine Academy. In due time, his ship sailed out solo to the South Pacific and stopped at Bora Bora, where they picked up fresh produce. From there, they sailed to Australia where MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] had moved his headquarters. Crump commented that only historians know how effective the Japanese were in the Pacific following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and how they "beat the hell out of the Philippines and MacArthur's establishment."

A few days after leaving Australia, the ship 25 miles ahead of Ralph Crump's radioed that it had been under torpedo fire from a sub [Annotator's Note: submarine], and the crew was abandoning ship. General quarters was sounded and Crump's ship's lifeboats went out to look for survivors. After spotting several butter tins and crates of fruit, but no survivors, the ship traveled on to the next port, Hobart, Tasmania, where the ship delivered cargo for an American submarine base there. The sailors enjoyed shore time with ladies who worked in a jam factory on the waterfront. From there, the ship moved to the west coast of Australia, then ultimately to Colombo, Ceylon. While going through the Great Australian Bight, the seas became violent and the cargo on deck, aircraft, was at risk. Surviving that, they moved on, intersecting with what appeared to be a large cargo ship that asked for their identification. Soon after they gave false information in answer, a British Navy ship put out a radio broadcast that a German surface raider was sinking ships in the area, and if anyone in hearing of the message encountered it they should bear north to the British Navy base at Port Onslow, Australia. Crump's ship altered course northward, but by daybreak learned that they were out of danger.

The British admiralty had headquarters in Colombo, Ceylon [Annotator's Note: present day Sri Lanka], and Ralph Crump said his ship was under aerial surveillance when they approached the port. The chief was worried about the ship's bearings and called for a repair stop of about 25 or 30 days. Crump remembered Colombo as an interesting spot. Its main exports were Ceylonese teas and gems and he traded money, cigarettes and butter for gemstones. One of the stones became his wedding present to his wife. Next they went to Madras, India, and offloaded almost all of their cargo. From there they convoyed through the Bay of Bengal with destroyer escorts. They listened to Tokyo Rose tell about how dangerous it was to transit the Bay of Bengal; it was entertaining, but it was also frightening. He traveled on to Calcutta, and up the Hooghly River, one of the branches of the Ganges, where they docked for about a month and offloaded ammunition, gasoline and engines. Crump took a train excursion that had to divert because the tracks were blown along the intended route. He celebrated his safe return in a "spasm of gratitude," distributing his remaining rupees to the beggars at the Calcutta station.

Ralph Crump's ship returned to Colombo, Ceylon [Annotator's Note: present day Sri Lanka], then headed to Aden, Arabia, and on into the Red Sea as far as Tufik, Africa. There was a huge ammo dump at Tufik, and his ship took on several thousand tons of bulk gun powder and went through the Suez Canal headed toward Alexandria. In the elegant inner harbor, Crump's ship tied up to a buoy, and he drew liberty and went ashore. On the dock, great blocks of German and Italian POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] from the fighting at El Alamein were being rounded up and put into military formation by black American soldiers from the "Big Red One." The prisoners were being put on LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and brought out to ships in the harbor that would transport them to the United States. Crump took time while he was in port to visit El Alamein and the pyramids. As it turned out, his ship took 100 of the prisoners aboard to bring them to the United States. On their return route, the invasions of Sicily and Italy were underway, another of Churchill's [Annotator's Note: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] follies, in Crump's opinion, and the ship came under aerial bombardment from Italian Stukas [Annotator's Note: German Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber], reducing the convoy from 100 to 66 ships. During one of the surprise attacks, Crump and his buddies were reclining in deck chairs and the fellow next to him was hit. Crump picked the guy up and brought him to his cabin, and came away with bone fragments in his fingers when he put the dead guy down. They stopped in Pantelleria, where the POWs unloaded the cargo, then stopped, inexplicably from Crump's point of view, in Naples before returning to America.

Ralph Crump arrived in Philadelphia in mid-summer 1944, and was supposed to report to the Merchant Marine Academy, but was told that unless there was a replacement for him, he was not going to leave the ship. None came, so Crump was appointed Third Engineer, and stayed with his crew. They took on cargo along the East Coast, and headed east in a convoy of 25 or 30 ships. One day after getting into the Mediterranean, they met heavy resistance, and took on a survivor from within their own convoy. Crump had a brief shore liberty at Port Said, and underway again, the ship sailed until it reached what Crump called a "pest hole," Bandar Shahpur, in the Persian Gulf, to deliver locomotives to the Russians. After unloading, they returned by way of the African coast through an area that was suspected to have Japanese submarine activity; they lowered nets in hopes of protecting part of the ship. When they raised them, they found a Japanese torpedo lodged in the nets. Crump said no one would volunteer to go down and cut it away. [Annotator's Note: Crump chuckles.] They re-crossed the Atlantic, picking up two survivors, female volunteer pilots who had ferried fighter planes from Baltimore to Recifi, along the way.