Tinian, M.I.
Dear Mom, Dad & all,
This is a much overdue letter to "you all",
but I presume Eve has kept you informed of my good health and hours of
labor, which are about the only thing there is to write about on an island
eleven miles long and two and a half to three miles wide.
Love,
17 July 1945
I received your letter yesterday, Mom, and
the birthday package you sent me about two days ago. A million thanks
for the pipe and the very excellent tobacco. I've been telling myself
I'd have to cut down on my cigarette smoking and this gives me an excellent
reason for doing so. The candy was also tasty and in first class
condition. In fact, one layer has already been consumed, and the
second is following it quite rapidly. The crackers and cheese go
well with our beer ration of a bottle a day, too.
The temperature here is conducive to beer drinking,
it being 81 degrees at the moment at 8:40 P.M. It usually cracks
a hundred in the afternoon, the highest so far being, I think, 114.
The sky can be clear as a bell one minute and the next it will be pouring
down. Two minutes later it will be all clear again. I've gotten
drenched with the sun still shining brightly. On such occasions there
are brilliant huge rainbows stretching up from the ocean on the opposite
side of our island. It's supposed to be the rainy season now, but
it doesn't seem much different than any other season, except the showers
come more frequently. I swear it can rain six inches in an hour.
The average yearly rainfall here is 100 inches.
From my tent I can look across the two and
a half mile wide channel and see the Island of Saipan with it's mountain
in the background. We have one high point here which is 600 feet
above sealevel while the average is closer to 100 feet. Saipan is
NE us and a little larger, but we have the most air fields and planes.
The mountain at Saipan takes up a lot of room. I was over there just
that one time and hope to make it again to see Maurice. You must
have orders to go anywhere now.
The pre-war population of Tinian was about
thirty thousand, I hear, but there are fewer than that now. The natives
all live in a camp in the center of the island called Camp Churo.
When you drive by all you can see is kids, most of them naked. The
women, or the older children, carry the babies around on their backs in
a sling, papoose style. The men work on the roads and buildings and
receive 25 cents a day. They also have large gardens and raise their
own food. They're all Japanese, of course, and certainiy picturesque
in their queer get-ups. Most of the men wear fatigues and hats woven
from the sugar cane leaves. Prior to the war the raising of sugar
cane was the principle means of livelihood and there was a large sugar
factory on the edge of the one town the island boasted. There was
a narrow gauge railroad running around the island, too, for transporting
the cane to the factory. The town, the factory, and the railroad
were all destroyed in taking the island. Pre-war, too, there were
eighty automobiles on the island and about eighty people who could drive
them. If one quit anywhere they would have to walk to the nearest
farm and send for help, even if it was only to change a tire, since only
the few mechanics knew how to do it. The natives were amazed at the
Americans, because every one of them could drive and we must have seemed
like the men from Mars with our huge tractors, bulldozers, steam shovels,
etc. as the CB's went to work on the airfields. They had built the
Jap ones by hand and their whole airfield could be put on one of our runways,
which go from one side of the island to the other.
Lt. McMorrow, one of my buddies, went for a
fishing trip yesterday with the gooks. They are run by the Military
Government. He arose at 3:30 AM and at four thirty they set out in
a large motor launch, first they hunted for minnows. They went along
near the shore and every now and then a gook would diveoff and swim around
looking for them. Suddenly one of them let out a shout to show he
had found some and then all the gooks, about thirty of them, dived in and
swam toward him. The boat then went in toward shore and started dropping
a net, stretching it out from the shore into the sea. The gooks all
got together by this time and were heading the minnows toward the net by
swimming around them like a bunch of cowboys. Pretty soon they had
them all chased into the nets and they were hauled aboard the boat.
The gooks then climbed in, too, refreshed, I guess, after their sunrise
swim in the cold water. The boat then took off to hunt for fish.
They were after Bonitas, but they didn't look in the water for them, they
looked at the sky. Surprised? Well, that's the truth, they
were looking for albatross. The albatross always fly over the schools
of fish. Well, pretty soon they saw one and sure enough there were
the fish swimming around under it. They threw a bunch of the minnows
overboard to attract the fish and they came over near the boat after them.
But Mac says it was then that the funniest thing happened. The albatross
likes the minnows too, and they swooped down to get some and the fish and
the birds fought for the minnows. As soon as the Bonitas started
after the minnows the gooks hauled out fish poles with short lines and
hooks without barbs. They baited them with the minnows and a red
feather to attract more attention and, lined up along both sides of the
boat, began throwing their lines into the water. They'd no sooner
hit than a bonita would grab them. They would then give a yank on
the pole and, with a dexterous flip of the line, deposit the fish in the
bottom of the boat, the fish coming off of the hook at the same time.
As soon as they had caught all they could, they went off looking for more
albatross. The sun had come up nice and bright and the boat bobbed
around in the waves like a cork. Mac looked rather french fried,
when he got back, as they stayed out until about two-thirty in the afternoon.
I asked him if he had taken a lunch and he said, "no", as they had expected
to come in before noon. He was sure a wreck. He said along
about noon the gooks began to get hungry, so when they caught a fish they
would cut off a piece of the meat between the eye and the jaw, there's
just a little strip of it there, and gobble it down raw and smack their
lips over it like a kid with a gum drop. Ugh! Since he didn't
care for it he had to go hungry. The Bonitas weighed about four or
five pounds each and he said they must have got about eight hundred of
them in the ten hours they were fishing.
But that's enough about the island for one
letter, I guess, so I'll get back to more personal things.
I don't know how your package got through,
Mom, since I haven't had a newspaper, a Life Magazine, or a package from
Eve for six weeks, nor has anyone else gotten any. Guess they have
all the ships in the Atlantic bringing troops this way. Today I received
Eve's 127th letter since the first of February and she seems very happy
and pleased with her new home. We were indeed fortunate to get such
a good place in a good location. She said Mr. Jansen said he would
keep an eye on Ray while she went to Church, but she left him asleep and
he was still sleeping when she returned (Ray I mean, not Mr. Jansen, Ha!)
I can't get over how big Ray is now, as I see
by his pictures, and I'd sure like to be there to play with him and enjoy
the thrill of having a place of our own. Eve is certainly thrilled
about it, too, and she has done pretty well in getting furniture and accessories
like she has. It all sounds pretty fine in her letters to me and,
since her tastes and mine coincide pretty well, I'm quite satisfied that
I will share her enthusiasm when I come home.
I'm quite alone in the tent tonight since my
bunk-mates, Lt. Raleigh and Morris, have gone down to Guam for a couple
of days on business.
Hope to get there myself, some time, but I've
too much to do here to go gadding about the Pacific.
One thing Pop would enjoy here is the cheap
liquor, or should I say the good liquor we get so cheap, since it is tax
free. Bols dry gin is 65 cents a fifth, Lord Calvert, Schenleys Reserve
(Black Label) $1.10, Old Crow $1.20, Old Taylor $1.30, Old Grandad $1.50,
Three Feathers $1.10. All the prices are for a fifth. Ouite
different from those at home, eh Dad? You could sure get drunk for
a dollar, and no fooling.
You asked what I wanted you to send me, Mom.
Well, the thing we miss most here is soda crackers. Nothing like
crackers and cheese to go with that daily bottle of beer, so you can send
me a box of those plus a glass of Pabst American Cheese spread and some
pretzels. I don't know of anything else. Eve is going to send
cookies ahd she keeps me pretty well in Fanny Farmers. We can get
candy bars and peanuts at the PX. Say, that licorice is okay, too,
so include some of that. We get all the cigarettes we need at 5 cents
a pack, but cigars are a bit scarce. I suppose they are there, too,
but if you or Dad see any you might send some.
Just listening to the ten o'clock news now.
Its five AM today in St. Paul right now so you're all asleep. When you
get up at seven it will be midnight here and I'll be asleep. The
fleet is sure pouring it on the Japs. The more the merrier and the
sooner I'll be home. Sure hope I can for Eve's twenty-first birthday
and Ray's second. Seems like years since I've seen them. I've
got sixty-seven points, since they don't count my service with the R.A.F.
I'd have 87 if they did. But it wouldn't make any difference since
I am one of those "essential personnel" who can't be replaced (so they
say), so I'm in for the duration right here. I don't expect to be
making any moves in the near future, as Okinawa isn't much closer to Tokyo
than we are and it's a whole lot more subject to aerial attack. We
haven't had a raid here since the middle of January. We don't even
have dim out, so I'm certainly in no danger.
Well, I guess that about finishes me off for
tonight so I'll sign off. Write when you can find time and I'll try
to do better along that line myself. How about you knocking out a
few lines Dad? And Pete & Jerry? Give my regards to all
the relatives and the boys who are lucky enough to be home. George
Knoll, Laurie Ellingsen, and whoever else makes it. Maybe Bug will
surprise you one day and call from New York.
Goodnight for now and thanks again for the
package and letter,
Thatch.