WWII Navy Dentist writes his wife every day.
My dad kept his promise and wrote daily letters to my mom during WWII. I blog them along with photos and other memorabilia.
I’ve been reading posts occasionally on the ‘You know you’re from Santa Monica when…’ Facebook page. The blog is in order of latest post. Here’s a link to the start. From what little I’ve read, it’s fascinating. By ‘fascinating’, I mean that it’s a virtual diary of Navy life in the Pacific Theatre, including the mundane and banal. We’ve all read about WWII in history books, and many of us have taken special interest in the period and place. It’s interesting to read the thoughts of someone who was there, and writing at the very time.
These are fascinating. And kind of racy!
Thanks for the link! I’ve been reading them. They are racier than I would’ve thought, knowing the censors were reading every word.
StG
Officers weren’t censored (except by random sampling by staff officers). Enlisted mail was censored, and it was often somebody like the dentist who got saddled with the job…
Not a historian. Could be wrong.
He was censored - not only can you see where the censor has cut things, he talks about why he can’t answer questions about location, people, etc, because of the censor. And Gil takes his turn as censor, too.
StG
During his WW2 Air Force stay in the UK (1943-45), my father wrote home (to Canada) a couple of times a week (and vice versa). They kept them all - a couple of shoeboxes full of thin blue airmail letters which we have transcribed for posterity. The daily life in the Air Force when there was already a surplus of pilots, and thus lots of free time - well documented in the letters.
I didn’t see any censored, although he was warned not to specify exact locations of embarkations/debarkations and such. (there were enough clues that we were able to figure them out). As time went by - he seemed to be more liberal in describing the countryside, etc. My father acted as a volunteer censor on his base for a couple of months, but didn’t mention many details in his letters.
Is there any simple way to read the letters in chronological order? I guess clicking the “Newer Post” link should do it?
Here’s a link to the start . That takes you to the last page, and you read up from the bottom.
On the front page today, Dr. Steingart tells his wife of a typhoon they just went through.
Saturday, 13 October 1945, 11:00 AM
snip
We beached at about 11:00 AM. Suddenly the wind caught the stern of the ship and swung her around so that the sea and wind were hitting us broadside and rolling the ship from side to side with the jagged reef giving the hull a terrific beating. The holds began to flood so we decided to abandon ship.
My Dad was a POW in Germany for four years. Communication was sparse and there wasn’t much that could be told anyway. My mother used to laugh that the first she heard after he’d been missing for months was a standard tick-box postcard with only the tiniest space for a personal message, in which all he wrote was “Please send curry powder”.