Archive for September, 1944

Letter Home, September 27, 1944

Note the “see code” reference. It looks like Frank’s handwriting. Again, I haven’t attempted decoding any of the letters yet.

In this letter, Chuck is already thinking about what he wants to do after the war he hasn’t even been in yet. He mentions drumming. Playing in a jazz band was something he enjoyed through his life, actually playing weekly until his death in his 80s. He never worked on rail, as he mentions. I’m not sure what he did immediately post-war, but the bulk of the work he talked about was at the Coors canning plant.

Envelope (front); September 27, 1944

Envelope (front); September 27, 1944

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Letter Home, September 8, 1944

It is peculiar how the postal system worked at this time. There are several addresses crossed out and rewritten, along with the associated stamps that let you know the envelope actually went through each of these relays before making it to their recipient.

There are some fun terms in this letter as well. I translated “cow’s age” but didn’t find any definition online for it. Both “cow’s age” and “crow’s age” seem to be used in extreme rarity and I couldn’t figure out a better translation, thinking it possible that neither of those is what is written. If you know it is another saying, please let me know. Otherwise, it sure looks like “cow’s age”.

“Fishful” is another odd term, meaning something is abounding with fish and usually used as an adjective. CDP uses it as a noun in this situation, meaning he is taking some liberties with the word and using it as a measurement for a lot.

Keep in mind CDP was as close to a farm boy as you can be, without actually working on a farm. His family was in the West, where much of the area was still pretty close to wild, even in the last century. Idaho and Utah, even now, are not dominantly suburban. His letters and journal are littered with misspellings for words we might find mundane. One that keep tricking me is his use of “kneed”, actually being “need”…presumably hyper-correcting for “know”.

In addition to mundane words, when we get into the journal and the later war letters, all of the military terminologies and names of Japanese locales are spelled incorrectly. This was commonplace amongst soldiers, many of whom knew nothing of the Orient prior to being shipped out. Due to secrecy of the situation, soldiers would likely have never seen the names of targets or military terms written or printed on anything, left solely to translate phonetically.

You can see the censor has been tightening down. There are multiple references in this letter to wanting to say more, but being bound not to.

Envelope (front); September 8, 1944

Envelope (front); September 8, 1944

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Letter Home, September 3, 1944

Chuck mentions his code in this letter, somewhat conspicuously even though it was going through the censor. I’m having trouble figuring out his decoder from the previous letter, so I haven’t tried to pull out the hidden message yet.

The “fantail” is a an extension off the back of aircraft-carrying ships that extended the runway for takeoff and landing. The runway on landing ships was just long enough for takeoff, with planes usually dipping before rising as they fell off of the fantail. Inversely, in landing, there was an “arrester” that caught planes (rather abruptly and non-gracefully from accounts I’ve read) before they wrecked into anything else on the deck. Landing was particularly dangerous in night sorties, as turning runway lights on left the ship vulnerable to the enemy ships. Pilots would have to land in the dark, leading to a high volume of wrecked planes. Fortunately, the US was mass producing planes in such force by 1944 that when they became damaged or corroded from the salty air, they would simply get pushed overboard and written off. The flyboys were accustomed to making sea “landings” near their ship, with their cockpit locked open so they wouldn’t get sucked down and could be picked up.

Chuck laments his drumming. Chuck was an avid drummer from his youth up until his death in his 80’s. His favorite music was ballroom jazz and naturally Hawaiian music. Into old age, he played in a senior band every weekend. A sense of percussion runs in the family. My father drummed the steering wheel and I do the same, often making up my own counter rhythm to songs…despite never doing anything significantly musical. I could see how, if I had, I’d have naturally followed in Chuck’s path.

I’m not sure what he means by making his “rate”. Obviously it is a pay rate of some kind, but from the envelope it doesn’t look like his rank has changed since the last letters.

I’m not sure what is going on with the photo from home. He has been requesting it in several letters, obviously not having received it yet. I have a handful of photos of the family from this time period, so it isn’t that one didn’t exist. I wonder if perhaps he was simply not receiving many letters from home. I do not have the reciprocated letters in this dialogue.

Letter home, envelope (front); September 3, 1944

Letter home, envelope (front); September 3, 1944

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