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.

Letter from Bob, September 1942

Dearest Rosie:

I don't know what the Seattle papers are saying about our fight here in New Guinea. Not much, I suspect. News about the big doings in Stalingrad has reached even our steamy little corner of the Pacific, and of course Guadalcanal's right next door.


But I can tell you that whether the world's watching or not it's a vicious fight here and the mud's soaked with Aussie and Jap blood.
The Japs have been pushing south toward our headquarters in Port Moresby for weeks. If they take it, they've got a base for bombing Queensland and invading northern Australia. They seem to think Port Moresby's going the way of Singapore: They'll stab a port city in the back, where it's supposedly less stoutly defended.

Well, this time they didn't rekon with the Allies. The Aussies have been fighting them night and day on the passes over the Owen Stanley Mountains, on a narrow trail called the Kokoda Track.

Kokoda wouldn't even qualify as a hiking trail in the Cascade Mountains back home. It's narrow, steep and filled with glue-y mud. I've sent you a couple of pictures so you'll get the idea:


Here are the "Golden Stairs," made out of tree trunks stuck into the mud.




Australian War Museum PO2423009


Imagine climbing these in hundred-degree heat and humidity, carrying a full backpack, weapons and ammunition, fighting off malaria mosquitoes. Or maybe you don't care about the mosquitoes because you've already got malaria but you're fighting anyway.


And, Rosie, the fighting's awful. My fellow pilots and I are flying air support over the mountains, but it's the boys on the ground who are taking the brunt of it. I know you may not want to hear such things, but the Japs truly are savages. They kill their own wounded and leave snipers among their dead, waiting to spring up and shoot our fellows when they pass by. Other Jap snipers tie themselves into coconut trees and take potshots at the Australians. When the Aussies kill them, they just leave them dangling from their ropes.


At a place called Isurava the Aussies dug themselves into the mud using their steel helmets and bayonets.The Japs came at them with flamethrowers.

Everyone's grateful for the help and support of the New Guinea natives. Seems they don't like the Japs any better than we do. I have a couple of photos of the locals helping our boys out:




Australian War Museum PO2424.020




Australian War Museum 13600


The Aussies call the natives who've been assisting them "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels!"


Some of the wounded have been evacuated by air:




Australian War Museum PO2424.082


No one gets much rest, but when they do it's under pretty primitive conditions:




Australian War Museum O26727


One of those fellows might be reading one of the anti-American leaflets the Japs have dropped. I saved one for you. They're about the only reason to laugh around here, and I can tell you they make good toilet paper:




"So what's my husband doing in all of this," you're probably asking. Well, my buddies and I attacked the Jap fighters at their base on Buna on the north side of the island. And a good thing, too. The Jap high command apparently decided things weren't going well enough for them on the Kokoda Track, so they decided to attack closer to Port Moresby. In late August they landed a force at a place called Milne Bay, 40 miles from here. They must have figured they'd take the airfield there and get us by the throat. Big mistake. They pushed the Aussies back at first, but the boys from Down Under came roaring back with reinforcements the Japs must not have known they had. They pushed the Japs right back into the sea, with a little help from yours truly and the other fighter pilots. Our commanding officer says that as far as he knows it's the first outright victory against the Japs in a land battle. May it be the first of many!

And Rosie, you didn't know it but you were right there in the fight alongside me. There are B-17s stationed here at Port Moresby, and they gave the Japs a serious pounding. Every time a Flying Fortress went by I thought of how you and the others at Boeing riveted those planes together, and knew that they would be stronger than anything the Japs could ever throw at us.

Not a day goes by when I don't miss the cool gray of Seattle, the sound of your voice and our little house under the cedar tree. But when I look at those big planes you and your friends built for us and sent halfway around the world, I'm comforted that a little bit of home's here with me.

Love and kisses,

Bob

Silence

Every day we're loudly told to be quiet. "The Enemy's Listening," howls one poster. "Loose lips Sink Ships," shouts another.


They say silence is golden and I suppose that's mostly true. I confess that after months of Jane's domestic drama, Betty's catty grousing and Susan's mooning over first Grant and then Frank, I'm craving quiet. The rattle of the rivet guns is almost preferable to my co-workers' babbling.


But these days I find silence to be made of baser metal. Weeks crawl by with no news from Bob. Every day the paper's front page heralds the heroics and savagery in Guadalcanal and Stalingrad. Then the Times exhales, regains its composure and moves on to New Guinea on page two or three.


Of course I know those enormous battles in the Solomons and the Soviet Union are crucial to the generals. But here in one small bungalow under a towering old cedar tree in West Seattle, the most important fight's on a sultry island that exists for most Americans only on the pages of National Geographic. Somewhere over New Guinea my husband's hurling his plane around in dogfights while Japanese troops slash at the American and Australian forces below.


I keep silent, however. This war's given everyone a hard story to tell, and most are harder than mine. Millions can't tell stories at all because they're among the growing heaps of dead.

Tucked into my lunch kit is my copy of Beryl Markham's new book "West With the Night." I'm sitting out on the flightline on a break right now, under the last blue skies of summer, reading in the shade of a B-17's wing. I came across this passage today:

"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstances, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."

Whistle blows. Back to work.

The Home Front

A short, silent walk brought us to Ina's doorstep. Jane rang the bell, then pushed inside, dragging her suitcases. "Mother," she yelled, "I'm back! And I'm not leaving."

"Go away," said a thin, whispery voice from the parlor. "I have no daughter."

"Yes, you do!" said Jane, dropping the suitcases with a dust-stirring "whump."
"And like it or not, it's me."

I looked around. The house had grown shabbier in the servantless months since Pearl Harbor. The clock longer ticked, laundry was heaped on the fading mahogany furniture, and the houseplants were mummified into dry, brown stalks.

Jane stormed  into the parlor, her shoes raising little puffs of dust like the mortar shells in the newsreels. "Mother, you've got to face facts. Dad's gone, David's gone, and the money's gone. We both know that Tad's no help, so like it or not I'm all you've got." Ina's face crumpled. Tears of anguish or rage or both flooded into the lines creasing her cheeks.

Jane's voice softened. "You raised me to be proud of my family and I am. These are harsh times, but we're still Sullivans. We were here in Seattle long before those upstarts like the Boeings and we'll be here long after. I'm fighting to end the war for David's memory, and I won't rest until it's over. Every Flying Fortress dropping every bomb on every Jap and every Nazi had Sullivan hands on it, and I'm making damned sure those planes are worthy of the name."

A long silence. I notice a few leaves on the Japanese maple outside the window have the faintest hint of red.

Then Ina sobs. "Come here, I'm so sorry!" She hugs Jane tightly. I can't say for sure, but I thought something glistened on Jane's cheek.

I let myself out and walked back home though the warm, still evening.