Letters Home

During a flurry of activity in December, I came across a couple of bins of my Dad's stuff in our garage. We had loaded them with stuff when we moved him here and forgotten about them. I went through them a little and discovered a bunch of letters he had written home during World War II, dating from 1943-1946. They were written from Iowa, Mississippi, Texas, and California - places he went for basic training, air craft and pilot training, and all he needed to learn before being shipped out to the Pacific. Then there were letters written from various Pacific islands where he was stationed with his air rescue squadron. He told of some of the Filipino natives he saw, on being on leave in Tokyo after the fall of Japan, on missing his family and being home for the holidays, and various other things.

But one letter especially struck me: there was a letter written on August 11, 1945 from Mindinao in the Philippines - only five days and two days after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said that most of the men - even though it meant the quick end of the war - wished those things had never been developed. Their power and potential were frightening! We learn about those events so many years later and have our own thoughts about them, so how very interesting to hear the immediate reaction of someone so close to the events themselves.

There are more letters I need to go through - letters he wrote to his sisters. Perhaps there will be more interesting nuggets in those as well!