Letter 3/4/45

It's been awhile since we updated, our apologies.  Life sometimes gets in the way, and before you know it two months have passed.

Today's letter is one of the first times that my grandfather references a date and time on his letter home.  It looks like he pulled the night shift and has taken some of the time to write home.  I can hear the loneliness in his voice, partially because he has been up all night and partially because he's 18 and fighting a war on international soil.  Sometimes I fear that Hollywood tends to glorify wars, especially WWII, but in letters like this one we see what the war really was: a battle being waged by teens and young men in a country that wasn't there own, passing time communicating home to those they've left behind.

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend!  We will post more frequently now that the weather is warmer again! :-)

Mr. and Mrs. A. Kumasaka
287 Main St.
Keansburg, N.J.
U.S.A.

T/5 A. Kumasaka
ASN 32609377
Hq Btry 863 FA Bn
APO 140 c/o P.M.
New York, N.Y.

6 A.M.
3 March 1945

Dear Folks,

I thought I'd write a few lines to you during these quiet hours when I must stay awake.  I had my sleep in the later afternoon and evening, so I hope you don't think that I'm kept awake day and night.

Yesterday afternoon, I had some time off, so I went to visit one of the larger towns nearby (can't tell you what town now).  While there, we stopped at a bakery shop and bought a bag full of cookies and a couple of loaves of bread.  The cookies cost 5 francs a piece, and weren't too tasty; the bread, however, was good, especially since we had cheese for supper which I saved for a sandwich later on.  The loaf of bread cost 15 francs, or about 30 cents, which is a cheap price to pay for bread even here.  Other than bakery and grocery stores, there were very few stores of other kinds open.

Nothing new to report about myself.  Oh yes, recently the electricity was restored to our rooms -- it looks nice and cozy now.  We also have tables and chairs in the room, so my set up isn't bad at all.

I plan to go to church today.  Protestant services are now 130 in the afternoon at a different place.  So long for now.  Hope you're all well.

Archie.

Letter 3/1/45

I must admit, I've been putting off this post for awhile now, mainly because the letter I'm transcribing today is one of the more difficult letters to decipher in my grandfather's collection.  He already has pretty awful handwriting (which he has since blessed my mother with), and on top of that the V-Mail cameras that captured this letter were a bit funky, and that's putting it nicely.  The right side of the page is quite darkened, and there's a lovely black line running through the page from top to bottom slightly to the right of center.  My grandpa's already hard to read notes home have become decidedly harder to read with this letter.

Nevertheless, my eyes will take the strain today and see if we can't make it through this.  After all, our eyes are only young once, right?

Mr. A Kumasaka
287 Main St
Keansburg, NJ
U.S.A.

T/5 A. Kumasaka
ASN32609377
Hq Btry 863 FA Bn
APO 410, c/o P.M. N.Y.

1 March

Dear Folks,

I received Dad's letter of Feb 19 yesterday, in which he said that he hadn't received any letters from me in over a week.  I'm sure there was a mail delay, because I have been writing at least twice a week since I came over here.  I hope my letters have caught up by this time.

Things are about the usual with me just now.  I'm keeping up pretty well with my sleep, getting enough to eat, and getting cleaned now and then.  Today I had a shower -- a hot shower -- and my second one since I came to these parts.  The shower belongs to the Infantry, but the attendant lets us use it when it isn't crowded.  The water it uses is taken from a nearby river, and heated by a special unit on a tractor.  Then it is piped inside a tent to us eager Joes.

In closing, I want to wish Dad a happy birthday.  I'm sorry I can't be there to celebrate.

So long for now.  I hope everything is O.K.

Love,
Archie

Letter 2/26/45

Happy New Year!

2014 is here, which means, we're fast approaching the 69th anniversary of these letters being written.  Yes, you read that right...69 years ago!!  Yikes!

I hope your New Year's celebrations were fun, and safe, and most of all relaxing.  Since I have a little time to spare, I thought I'd upload the next letter from my grandfather for your reading pleasure.  I mean, nothing says Happy New Year like nerding out on some WWII letters, amiright?

This is one of my favorite letters because my grandpa admits that he's been getting mail from some women while he's away.  It's funny for a granddaughter to think of her grandpa having an active dating life, but there you have it, I guess he did.  The fun continues a few letters later, and I won't ruin the surprise, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'm dying to know who "Kay" is and whatever happened to her...

Have a great day!  And a great year!

Mr. A Kumasaka

287 Main St.

Keansburg N.J.

U.S.A.

T/5 A. Kumasaka

32609377

Hq Btry 863 FA Bn

APO 410 c/o PM

N.Y. N.Y.

23 Feb 45

"Somewhere on the Alsatian Sector"

Dear Folks,

I received your letter of the 4th the other day.  I still haven't decided whether air mail is faster than V-mail, be-cause both seem to have periods of delay.  To compare things further, I saw a letter today which was sent from Chicago by regular mail on Feb 12 -- 11 days is fast time even for air mail.  One thing I have observed, though, is that one day we'll get a bunch of V mail and another day we'll get only air mail, so it might be wise to use both types.

I received a Valentine from Kay the other day.  She writes that she hasn't heard from me lately.  I hope my letters are reaching her by now, for I have written her a couple of times.

I had a treat a couple of days ago.  We went to see a movie in another town on our time off.  Saw GI newsreels, sports reel, cartoon and a classic "Z" picture which you pro-bably never heard of: "Swing Out the Blues with the Vagabonds".  As this is the first pictures I saw since I [unintelligible] this place, it goes without saying that I enjoyed it

You know, there's nothing like traveling to see how the other side of the world lives.  Take this place, for example, the people are very hard workers, they strive constantly to keep their homes clean.  However, they keep their animals (cows, etc) in a barn which is built into the house.  In front of the house, one finds a neat pile of dirty straw from the barn.  How they can stand it, especially in the summer, I don't know.

So much for now.  I'm in good health and hope all of you are too.

Love, Archie

Reporting for Basics

So I've been doing some thinking these past few days...

...as wonderful as my grandfather's letters are (once we can decipher the scrawling handwriting), and they are an absolute treasure, there's only so much his letters can tell us.  I mean, it's not like he could actually talk about what he was doing in Europe.  From the sounds of some of his letters, he sounds like he was on a nice little international vacation.

I'll admit, even though I'm a history major, my background on military history is somewhat weak.  You're only as strong as those who taught and encouraged your education, and I've never really had anyone in my life who was a huge military history lover.  I've always viewed the military and its history as part of a bigger picture.  It's not that I'm not interested in learning more, I have just never had a reason to.  Now I do.

Looking over his letters, I realized I didn't even understand everything that was in his address line.  I mean, look at this:

That looks like coding for some super secret society.  I realized I didn't even know what half of it meant...

So that's where the investigating came in.  For those of you with a solid background in military history, I apologize, you're going to probably be bored with this post.  For the 98% of you who are not well-versed in your USMH, you better pay attention, because there's a quiz at the end!

The first thing I looked at with my research was the top line, "T-5 Archie Kumasaka".  What did T-5 mean?  Was that even a 5?  Was it an S?

Thankfully, the internet had the answer.  It was a 5, and T-5 stood for my grandfather's ranking.  I hate Wikipedia (HATE IT!) but someone with too much time on their hands created a pretty awesome chart that explains where and what a T-5 ranked as during WWII:

If you'd like to see the entire article (you nerdy person you!) you can click here to have a history moment.

So to sum it up, a T-5 is a technical Fifth Grade, which is the same ranking as Corporal.  They were identified by the "T" marking under their Chevron-style bars.  They were also classified into the 5th grade pay scale, that's 5th from the top, 5th highest.  They obviously earned the same as any Corporal would.

That led us to the next question, then (we're falling down a worm hole here)....what would a Corporal in WWII make?  How much were these young men getting paid to fight for their country overseas?  

Thankfully, Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly published a great report on April 24, 1944 charting how much a single or married serviceman could expect to make while overseas.  Since my grandfather wasn't married at the time, I figured it's best to use the Single Man's Chart.  They do not use pay grades to list the different pays in the military, so I highlighted the one my grandfather would receive:

[1]

Not too shabby, gramps!  You'd be making what amounts to four thousand dollars a year after income tax, why that must be worth...well, how much would it be worth?

I'm so glad the U.S. government has put some of my tax dollars to work and found a way to provide inflation answers for me before I even realized I needed them...

[2]

Big money big money!!!  He was earning overseas what most middle class people earn today.  At least he was able to leave the war with a little money in his pocket, after everything was said and done.

Next I took a look at the second line of his address, "ASN 32609377".  Again, Google is our best friend, because we typed that in and found that ASN stood for Army Serial Number.  Makes sense, the government had to figure out a good way to take track you, not only to figure out who was where, but to determine pay, communications, just about everything.

The really interesting thing I found while I was searching for this is that you can bring up a ton of information dealing with Army Serial Numbers on the internet.  Again, I'm glad the government has been forward thinking in all of this, saving me many hours of frustrated hunting.  The National Archives have a fantastic search option that lets you look up anyone you may know who has a military background.  An ASN is the most surefire way to get an exact hit, but they also allow you to search by name, or even place.  Click here if you're curious and want to play around with the system.  Be warned, there are some errors in the system that time will never help to repair: if an application form was illegible, or left blank on accident, a "#" will be placed in the answer area showing no information was able to be gathered from the form.  The originals have been destroyed, which means anything we might have been able to gleam off of them today is null and void...they've gone to the great big recycling bin in the sky.

The next line is a complete jumble of letters, and it's what initially led me to start looking into this return address: "Hq Btry 863 FA Bn".  Hq Btry is short for Headquarter Battery, or as we call it today, simply headquarters.  You know, where you're reporting back to, and, more importantly, where your mail is going in and out of.  This is important for the people who need to send letters back to him.  863 FA Bn is stating what division and group my grandfather was in.  FA Bn stands for Field Artillery Battalion (more on that in another post), which lists not only what he was doing in the war, but where he was located.

To sum it up, if you were sending mail to my grandfather, you were sending it to the headquarters of the 863 Field Artillery Battalion.  Wherever that happened to be on that particular day.

The last line is fairly easy, "APO 410 c/o PM N.Y. N.Y."  APO is short for Army Post Office, and you were to reply to the Postmaster in New York City.  Seems silly, since NYC is a few thousand miles away from France and Germany where my grandfather was stationed, but it was a way for the military to keep everything organized.  You can't have my grandfather's return address reading "Paris France, north side, gonna push these Nazi's back!"  

Whew!  You still with me?  That's a LOT of history talk right there!  I hope you hung in there, because the more I dive into this, the more I want to know.  I've definitely been digging up some more information, but I'll leave that for another post.

As the hunt for my grandfather's life continues, I hope this inspires you a little bit to find out more about your relatives lives.  I know I'm blessed that my grandfather is still alive, that I can talk to him and ask him questions, but even if you do not have that opportunity anymore, don't let that deter you.  The internet is a great tool, and you'd be amazed at what you can find with a simple search.

That's all for now, gonna take a break from my research for the evening.  Have a wonderful day!  Before you know it the weekend will be here.

E

Notes

[1] Army-Navy Pay Tops Most Civilian's Unmarried Private's Income Equivalent to $3,600 Salary. American Merchant Marine at War. September 4, 2013. http://www.usmm.org/barrons.html
[2] CPI  Inflation Calculator. US Dept of Labor. http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Letter 1/22/45

Hey all,

Another day, another chance to transcribe one of these letters.  I hope you guys are taking a look at my grandfather's atrocious handwriting...considering this is a smaller image of what he originally wrote, sometimes it's darn near impossible to read.  I love my grandpa, but I wish he had paid more attention in penmanship class when he way younger.

Here's the third letter he sent to his family in 1945.  Enjoy!

====================================================
Mr. A. Kumasaka
287 Main St
Keansburg, N. Jersey
U.S.A.

T/5 Archie Kumasaka
ASN 32609377
Hq Btry 863FABn
APO c/o PM N.Y. N.Y.

22 Jan 45

Dear Folks,

Another day has just about ended for me, although it is 6 hours earlier where you are, — a day spent in a country strange to us and our manner of living.
I saw how some of these people lived when I went on pass to a nearby city yesterday afternoon. The streets of the city are narrow, and automobiles burning charcoal can be seen riding about. The kids roaming the streets will approach the GI with an extended hand and the single expression “Gum”. Of course, we don’t carry our pockets full (rationed to 2 pkgs per week) so most refuse most requests.
The city runs a dance Sunday afternoon and evening, and I judge that people for miles around assemble to talk affairs, because the place was packed. A few GI’s were there, and some were dancing; I tried it but found it difficult to lead in my style of dancing.
My French is improving each day. I might be able to understand them better if they would speak ^more^ slowly.
I just have enough space to say so long for now. Hope you is all well.

Love,
Archie

Letter 1/16/45

Hey folks,

Skipped a day, hope you don't mind, the Renaissance Fair was calling me.  Knights, jousting, ladies in waiting, it's all I dream of! :-)

Hope you had a great weekend!! :-)  Here's the second letter I transcribed. Enjoy.

Until next time,

E

Mr. A. Kumasaka
287 MAIN ST
KEANSBURG, N.J.
U.S.A.

T-5 A. Kumasaka
ASN 32609377
Hq Btry 863FABn
APO 410 c/o PM N.Y. N.Y.

Jan. 16, 1945

Dear Folks,

I have completed my sea journey and am now “somewhere in France”. The trip across proved un-eventful, after I did not even once suffer the loss of appetite and subsequent sickness. Some of the others were not quite as fortunate as I, however.
From the little I have seen of France so far, I am not much impressed by the scenery, people. The towns are similar to the French Quarter in New Orleans – narrow streets, style of houses, etc. The landscape is picturesque, but I wouldn’t trade it for any of the scenery back home. And as the people don’t speak my language, and I theirs, I don’t think I’d get along to well around here.
I find the weather to be pretty cold where I am, and as we are living in pup tents it is pretty rough, but we are well dressed.
This is all I have to tell about at present. I shall write more soon.
I hope you’re all well. I am feeling fine.
Love,
Archie