Letter From Bob - The Battle of the Bismarck Sea

Dearest Rosie.

It's a long trip over the Owen Stanley Mountains to the Bismarck Sea, especially when your beloved P-38's cockpit cooling doesn't work. Like most of the fellows here I've been flying in nothing more than shorts, shoes and a parachute, but it's still a sweaty business.

As you may imagine, though, the perspiration isn't all from the jungle heat. Our CO says the newspaper boys have been crawling all over MacArthur's headquarters, so I expect you've already read about our big scrap with the Japs last week. How they were trying to ferry thousands of fresh troops to New Guinea from their big base in Rabaul, and how we stopped them.

But I doubt those newsboys wrote much about what we really did. They like to make everything look easier and simpler than it is.

A lot of the work was done by the fellows in light bombers like B-25s, A-20s and Bristol Beaufighters, retrofitted with heavy guns so they could attack like fighters. The Aussies and Americans flew right at the Japanese transports a just a few dozen feet above the waves, veering back and forth so their guns raked a wide swath of the ships' decks. At the last instant they'd drop their bombs, which had fuses just long enough to allow the bombers to escape the blast.

My buddies and I were mostly protecting the big Flying Fortresses, which dropped bombs on the Japanese transports in the more usual way. I have to tell you, Rosie, things didn't go all our way the first day. A pack of Zeros jumped one of the Fortresses and damaged it so badly the crew bailed out. And what did the godforsaken Japs do? Why, they shot the crewmen as they parachuted down. Three of my squadron peeled away to go after the Japs, and they were shot down as well. These were guys were my friends. We ate together, played cards together in the barracks during thundering jungle downpours, drank beer together and talked about what we'd do when we got home. Now they're gone, and I watched them die.

I've enclosed a picture of one of my buddies. His name was Bob, too.




Capt. Robert Faurot with his P-38, before he was shot down in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.


But I had no time to mourn. We were back at it the second day. I remember thinking of my buddies as we flew back over the mountains, my heart hardening with each steamy mile. I'd be lying if I said revenge wasn't on our minds.

This time the convoy broke formation when the bombers arrived, which made the transports' anti-aircraft defenses less concentrated. The ships twisted and turned violently, trying to escape. We saw two burning transports collide. The bomber crews saw Japanese troops on the ships' decks lined up with rifles, but the guns on the planes had greater range so the Japs were mowed down before they could fire back.

It was over in 20 minutes, most of their fleet sinking. We returned in the afternoon for another 20 minutes and finished the job. Eight transports and three destroyers went to Davy Jones' Locker.

Now comes the part that's harder to write about: For the next couple of days, we had orders to "mop up." This meant shooting up any lifeboats, barges or rafts we found. Our guns raked the sea whenever we saw anything floating that looked like it had Japs on it, throwing up red fountains. I didn't enjoy it, but whenever I hesitated to pull the trigger I thought of my dead friends.


I suspect the Japs will never try big convoys like this again; I suppose they'll stick to submarines, though how they'll be able to move large numbers of troops that way only Hirohito knows.


I'm sorry to write such grisly things to you, but war is changing all of us here, as I imagine it's changing you. I only hope we can forget all of these things when it's over.

Love,

Bob.

Letter to Bob, February 1943

Dear Bob:

I'll do my best to follow the letter-writing tips set out in the pamphlet you sent me. I imagine the last thing you want is tidings from the bomber factory (the most interesting part of the day is when the foreman yells at one of the girls for sinking a row of rivets too deep), so I'll try one of the other recommended subjects: "Pets."

Stormy and I miss you to pieces but we're getting along all right. We're both engaged in useful war work: While I'm away building Flying Fortresses she's curled up in a box next to the furnace, dozing in the warmth of the pilot light. She needs to rest up from an exhausting night's labor of keeping the bed warm enough for me to turn the heat down to government-recommended levels.

We both enjoy listening to the radio, but we seem to have different tastes. I dance around the kitchen to Artie Shaw while I'm cooking, but Stormy hides under the coffee table and won't come out until I put on something quieter like Glenn Miller. We do sit together on the couch during news broadcasts. Stormy seems particularly attentive when Churchill's on; it must be the British accent.

Of course we both hang on every word about New Guinea. It seems you and the other flyers and Allied troops are having great success. I'm glad the Japanese have been pushed out of Buna (I know more now about the geography of New Guinea than I do of New York), and I hope they'll soon be gone from the rest of the island and the whole of the Pacific.

I know you've got to be brave, but please fly carefully. Stormy and I are counting on you to come home in one piece. When you do, we'll dance around the kitchen together like this whole war never happened.

Your loving wife,
Rosie

Letter from Bob, January 1943

Image courtesy @son_of_sandor




Dearest Rosie:

Well, my big news is that I've made my first "kill." I see as I write that line it's a horrible way to start a letter to my wife. I nearly tore up the page and started over, but I suppose there's really no hiding what war has made of us, and you might as well know.

I'd been in a few inconclusive dogfights; the Jap Zeros can turn more tightly than our P-38s, but we're faster and can climb higher. It's taken us a while but we've finally figured out how to fight those sons of the Rising Sun. We climb above them and pounce. Our C.O. says we're falcons nabbing pigeons. And that's exactly what I did to to that Jap. I fired my guns at him while he sped beneath me. His wing shattered and the plane spun to the ground like a maple seed. I didn't see a parachute but I didn't stick around to look, either.

On a pleasanter note, I've met some interesting people here. There's a pilot by the name of Richard Bong who hails from Wisconsin and seems to have quite a knack for flying a P-38. The other fellows told me that when he was in training in California he got grounded for flying a loop around the Golden Gate Bridge, making a low-level pass down Market Street in San Francisco, and blowing a woman's laundry right off the clothesline in Oakland. Boy, would I like to have seen that! He's already gotten two kills, a Zero and a Nakajima, even though he claims he's not a good shot. I think he's just being modest the way so many from the Midwest are.

I know I haven't been much of a correspondent. My New Year's resolution is to do better, and it seems the Army's here to help. They've distributed a handy letter-writing guide, which we're supposed to pass along to our families. I'm happy to oblige, though I hardly think you need any assistance. Anyway, I wouldn't care if your letters were nothing more than weather reports - anything you've written is my most treasured possession.

Well, that's all for now. I promise I'll be writing more frequently.

All my love, Bob.

Letter From Bob, December 1942

Dearest Rosie:

This time I hope I haven't let you down the way I did on your birthday. I made sure to send this package ahead of time, and the clerk told me it should get to Seattle by Christmas. So if it's late, you can blame him!

I'll get to the enclosed book in a minute but first I'll tell you about what's been happening here. I gather from all the newspapermen we see running around Port Moresby that you folks back home have already heard about the big battle going on at Buna up on the north side of the island. We've just about got the Japs licked, but at a price. I'll give you a strange example: Our boys took a beating from the snipers at first because their uniforms were the wrong color, if you can believe that! The brass got them died the proper shade of jungle green at a dry cleaner in Brisbane, Australia, but that made the fabric so impenetrable the fellows started getting skin rot.

Everyone on the ground on our side's been hungry, but not as hungry as the Japs, whose supplies have been almost completely cut off by the Navy. I wrote before that the troops of the Rising Sun have been resorting to cannibalism of their fallen comrades. Now it's come out that they were eating captured Allied soldiers as well, after first using them for bayonet practice.

We're hearing that another reason the Japs here on New Guinea aren't getting supplies or reinforcements is the thrashing the Marines are giving them on Guadalcanal. The Japs have been trying to retake an airfield there called Henderson Field ever since the Americans captured it in August, and in October they made a last-ditch effort. The fliers based at Henderson drove off Jap air assaults, shooting down eleven fighters and two bombers in one day. And some sergeant named John Basilone made quite an impression on the enemy. His unit was attacked by a big force during one of the assaults on Henderson. Basilone oversaw two sets of machine guns. He kept firing and kept the gunners supplied with ammunition for three days straight without sleep. Eventually it was just Basilone and two other soldiers fighting, and finally Basilone was just shooting his pistol. At the end of the battle 3,000 Japs were dead.

Well, I've gone on long enough with the battle stories, and I expect you've had your fill of them by now in the papers anyway. So I'll tell you about the book. It's not the most romantic present in the world, but I hope you'll find it interesting. As I've written before there's not much in New Guinea that a fellow can send to the most beautiful girl in any bomber factory, but I hope I can make up in possible historic interest what's lacking in the hearts-and-flowers department.




It's a pictorial yearbook of some kind put out by the Imperial Japanese government, celebrating their "achievements" in 1942. The book is partly in Japanese and partly in English, for the benefit of their subjects in "liberated" Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines. One of my buddies got it from a friend who got it off a dead Japanese officer in Buna. It's a pack of lies fresh off the press. Our C.O. gave me the go-ahead to send it to you; he said there were no secrets in it. Just, as he put it, "old news and old lies." He said you should show it to the girls at the plant so they can get a good look at what the enemy thinks of us.




As always, I would give anything to be in Seattle with you if I didn't have a job to do here. I'd throw away every coconut and every orchid for one hour under a plain old Douglas fir tree with my darling wife at my side.

Merry Christmas, and here's hoping the Japs don't get to make a yearbook like this one for 1943.

All my love,

Bob.

Letter From Bob, November 1942

Dearest Rosie:

I am sorry beyond words that it's been so long since I've written to you. All I can say is that it's a measure of the kind of hell we're seeing that I've been kept from the most important person in the world, even on her birthday.

This "Kokoda Track campaign" as the brass are now calling it, has been frightful on both sides. We're flying air support over the jungle and the mountains, threading the needle through narrow valleys carpeted with trees that seem like they're reaching up to grab you out of the sky even as you're roaring by at hundreds of miles an hour. All the while another fellow's chasing you in a plane with Rising Sun "meatballs" painted on its wings, trying to kill you while you try to kill him. It takes a lot out of a fellow.

But it's the Japs on the ground who are really taking it on the chin. The Aussie troops are telling us they've found hideous things as they advance toward the Japs' main base at Buna. It turns out our enemies are running short on supplies. The few who've been captured are clearly starving, all ribs and bones and hollow eyes. They've eaten their pack horses and now they're devouring the corpses of their dead comrades. The Aussies say the Japs call the latter "white pork."

It pains me to write these things to you, but I cannot be anything other than honest about how it is here. If any good comes of these tales, maybe it will be to inspire you and your friends to keep fighting as hard for victory on the home front as we do here in the jungle.

But I should stop being all gloom and doom! I can tell you I scratched my head for a good long time trying to figure out what to get you for your birthday. As you might imagine the shopping opportunities in Port Moresby leave a lot to be desired. No matter how hard I looked they were fresh out of Mainbocher dresses, every single time! And although we're surrounded by beautiful tropical flowers that make even the sorriest corrugated tin shack look like a Matisse painting when the sun's out, there's no way to send any of them to you. You'll have to wait as always for the rhododendrons and cherries to bloom in Seattle.

I finally hit on an idea: It turns out a few of the fellows here are pretty good artists. In their small bits of free time they've taken to painting what we see around us every day. I got a watercolor for you from a sailor. I call it "Landscape With Coconuts and PT Boats." I hope it survived the journey unscathed and that you like it. It's a pretty sure bet that you're the only gal on Tillicum Road SW who's got one!

Well, I've got to finish this letter and try to get as much shut-eye as I can in this furnace-like heat and drumming rain (the other fellows in the unit have been joking that since I'm from Seattle the rain shouldn't bother me, but these firehose downpours are nothing like the misty drizzle we're used to in the Northwest). I've got another mission early tomorrow and the Zeroes will be waiting. Just know that the Japs may slow me down from writing but they'll never stop me from thinking of you as long as I'm breathing.

Your loving husband,

Bob

Letter from Joe, November 1942

Dearest Bess:


We did it! After eight months up here in this freezing, burning, mosquito- and grizzly-bear-infested wasteland, we've finished the Alaska Highway!


I should say, "sort of finished." We got slowed down plenty the last few weeks by something the engineer-types call "permafrost." Turns out that just underneath the ordinary-looking dirt there's big layers of ice that lasts all year round. And the craziest thing about it is that we have to insulate it and keep it frozen! If we don't, it melts and opens up giant sinkholes in our road.


So the boys with the pencils and transits scratched their heads for a while and finally decided that those "corduroy roads" we've been building out of logs would have to do. I guess what works for mud works for ice.


Things got a little tense in our camp. We got so far behind that the Army brass decided to bring in Negro engineering brigades to add to our manpower. Some of the fellows from the South took offense, and I heard one officer say that it was ridiculous to send blacks up here because they'd never stand the cold. But the Negro troops worked plenty hard and personally I was happy to see anything happen to make this wretched job go faster.


So we bulldozed and felled trees and built bridges, racing south toward the northbound crews. It started getting really cold again. A few of the fellows were going around with their down sleeping bags wrapped around themselves, leaving trails of feathers wherever they went. It was the usual circus of bulldozers breaking down and trucks tumbling into rivers or snapping axles that froze brittle if they sat still for too long. But night and day we kept at it, fixing whatever broke and pushing forward.


Finally at the end of September one of our advance clearing crews broke through to an advance party from the northbound unit, near the British Columbia/Yukon border.  We're calling that spot Contact Creek now, and a few days ago my brigade arrived there as well. You've never seen such jubilation! There were a heap of what the newspaper boys call "photo opportunities," and I got permission to send you a few pictures.




















Our C. O. says there's still a few weeks' work left to do before the highway officially opens, but I've saved the best news for last: I'm coming home on furlough! Should be home just in time for Thanksgiving, though probably not long enough for Christmas as well. I don't know whether they're rationing turkeys these days but I wouldn't care if we had nothing but cold beans and water as long as I was kissing you and holding you in my arms again. Till then, take care and keep 'em flying!


Your loving husband,


Joe

(Images from National World War II Museum)

Minidoka

Camp Minidoka:


It sounds like a place where kids tie lanyards, swim in an icy lake and sing silly songs around a roaring fire. Well, in our case it isn't.


We arrived here in southern Idaho after a two-day bus trip from Puyallup. Everyone's tired, irritable and homesick (in that respect I suppose, it is like summer camp), but prepared to make the best of it. The landscape is a stark, wind-whipped desert surrounded by jagged mountains and irrigated fields of sugar beets. The camp itself consists of rows of tarpaper bunkhouses lined up as far as the eye can see like ranks of soldiers at attention. We're surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers that we're doing our best to ignore.




Aunt Michiko's especially bothered by the weather. The air's so sharp and dry, she says that every time she steps out of the bunkhouse she feels like she's been slapped in the face. We have no running water and will have to fetch coal by hand when it gets cold, which I gather will be soon.


But Jack's more upset about privacy. The three of us are in one room, with no furniture except Army cots and a pot-bellied stove. I'm getting together with some of the other fellows to try to build tables and chairs out of scrap lumber, but it will be a while before we're even slightly comfortable. Worse, we have communal showers and toilets, used by our entire block of twelve barracks. And of course there's a dining hall, just as we had in Puyallup.


We're trying to stay useful. The men are setting about farming, though these conditions are strange to most of us. All the internees in Camp Minidoka are from Oregon and Washington, where we're blessed with abundant rain and gentle temperatures. None of us has ever tried to grow anything in a place like this. But I believe we're up to the challenge.


I try to remind Jack that we're contributing to the war effort in our own way, by freeing up the Army from policing the risk of sabotage. "But we're all loyal," he retorts. "Yes," I say, "but if people were worrying about us all the time, that would be a big distraction."


But no matter how many times we have this argument Jack's never convinced. I think nothing will satisfy him until he can join the Army.


I hope all remains well with you and your friends at the Boeing factory. I wish I could see you, but I'm sure now that won't happen until the war's over. Do your best to make sure it's soon.


Love, Uncle Orren.