Letters from WWII

When Liz's mother died last January, one of the treasures we found in her possessions was a box full of letters from her husband during WWII. Everyone was curious as to what they might contain, but the work of going through it and doing anything with it was too much for anybody to deal with - at least at that time. There was talk to dividing them up between all the siblings, but ultimately Liz offered to look through them and decide what to do next. As she read them, it became apparent that they are a real treasure, both historically and to the family.
When Mark Ashurst-McGee, who is a Doctor of History, visited us recently, he suggested that the first step is to take good quality scans of all of them, to preserve them and make it easier to share them. The originals can then be archived in a manner to preserve them, and the scans can be transcribed to make the text searchable and more easily read.
I happen to be waiting for my new job to begin, so I volunteered to do the scanning, which I just completed. There are 136 letters, each of 1 to 15 pages, so it was a very large project. I scanned the envelopes and anything included in the letters, too.
It has been fascinating to read these letters and get a better understanding of what the war really meant to be a typical American couple during that time of conflict. The letters begin before they were married, and since they were together quite a bit while Bill was in training in the states, they skip over some important events in their lives, such as their marriage. When he went to sea in the U. S. Navy, they became full of the yearnings of a young husband who missed his wife immensely, but they are also full of interesting views into life during the war years. The HAWAII dollar bill he included in one letter is fascinating all by itself, being marked to make it useless to the Japanese in case they captured additional U. S. territory and the cash in use there. It tells a lot about the fear of Americans for the Japanese who had attacked them.
Only a few of his letters were censored (words cut out of them with scissors, or in one case an entire page removed), but it is apparent he was always aware of the censor looking over his shoulders. After the war ended and censorship halted, the tone and content of his letters was radically different.
While I read the letters and wondered about his ship and the battles he mentioned, I took the time to read in published histories the larger view of what was happening. I found photographs with his ship (LSM-130), usually next to the ship being photographed, or in the background. I also found crew musters and other supporting documents for LSM-130, which are of some interest in themselves.
But the best part has simply been sharing my father-in-law's thoughts as he served his country. He would deny he was a hero, but he was to me.