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“Not that date,” I wailed. “Yes, I have to be in Kansas City on that date to be
inducted into the army,” answered my husband, Corwin.
“That date” was August 17, 1943, which happened to be my twenty-ninth
birthday and our sixth wedding anniversary. That was just the beginning of almost three years of
separation from home and family. Since our son, Rex, was only five months old, we
decided I should stay put in our apartment in Salina, Kansas. However, Corwin was concerned about my living alone.
He told me he was going over to Roosevelt Junior High School, where he
had been teaching, to see if he could get any help. While there, he met a new Physical Education teacher. She told him she had rented a room, but wasn’t happy with that
arrangement. he really wanted to
be part of a family. He explained
our situation and she wanted to know more. He brought her over to see our small apartment and to meet Rex and me.
If she moved in with us, she would certainly be part of a family. All three of us felt instinctively that it would
work. Lenora moved in the day
Corwin was inducted, and didn’t move out until about a week before Corwin
returned home nearly three years later. We
all felt that our plan to live together had been a miracle.
Lenora met Jean soon after she began living with me. He was a
captain in the Army Air Force stationed at Smoky Hill Air Base in
Salina. Before Jean was shipped overseas, he spent a lot of
time at our apartment. I knew they
were staying close just to make my life more pleasant, but he liked to eat
home-cooked food, and I liked to cook and bake. The results weren’t so noticeable on him, but I weighed
more than I have ever weighed before or since. When Corwin returned, he After Corwin had been in training for several months,
I went to see him in. I
discovered that, while I was en route, he had been injured in close-combat
training. For my entire three-day
visit, he was confined to a men’s ward in the hospital. Not only did I have to walk the full length of the ward listening to the
other patients’ smart cracks, we didn’t have a minute’s privacy. That same “important date” figured prominently in
our plans a year after my husband was inducted. In July of 1944, Corwin asked his commanding officer if they
were likely to be stationed for some time in that camp. He said that as far as he knew, there were no plans for a
move. Knowing that Lenora was on
summer vacation from school and had gone home for a visit with her parents,
Corwin asked for a week-end pass. He
came home to drive us to Texas. We wanted to try living close by the camp for a
short time. By Monday night, we had finally located a place in a small town not
too far from camp. We rented an
apartment which was really a bedroom, a family-shared bath, and kitchen
privileges. Corwin
came “home” Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. He had to be back in camp by 5 A.M. each day.
Soon after his return to camp on Friday morning, he called to tell me
that his group was being shipped out to San Antonio that morning. His permission to drive us to had been denied.
He must travel on the troop train with the others. He asked me to drive to the train station so that we
could make plans. In my excitement,
I locked my keys in the car. None
of my new neighbors could snag the keys or get the door open. They did call a service man from the small town garage, and he decided
that all he could do was to break the small window wing. Corwin was pacing the tracks when I drove up. Naturally, he was worried that the train would pull out before we
arrived. Of course, the first thing
he saw was the broken window! Hoping that we surely wouldn’t continue to face disappointing results, we decided that I shouldn’t return immediately to my Salina apartment. We agreed that I would stay where we were until he had time to find a place for us to live in San Antonio. I had never done a lot of independent driving with a baby. But a week later, with his good directions, I drove to San Antonio and found the address. Again, it was the usual wartime apartment – a bedroom, a shared bath, and kitchen privileges. By the time I arrived in San Antonio, Corwin already
knew that his outfit was to be shipped overseas shortly.
And the date they were to ship out? Yes, you guessed it – August 17, 1944. Rex and I stayed until the day they were to be
shipped out. This whole episode of
our trying to be together took less than four weeks. We found another Kansas wife who needed
transportation home. She and I were
strangers, but on that long, hot drive without air conditioning, we knew that
our companionship was necessary for survival. She was a friendly, helpful person so we made the trip successfully in
spite of the fact that my baby had summer flu. Lenora’s fiancé, Jean, had been stationed in
for part of that time, and Corwin was on Okinawa for the entire siege on
that island. Corwin and I wrote to
one another every day of that long period.
Sometimes I used the V Mail, popular at that time, but most of the time I
used regular mail. We didn’t
receive our letters every day because of the irregularity of the mail service,
but when we missed a few days, we would get three or four in the same delivery.
The days of no letters were nerve-wracking to say the least.
I never knew for sure why, and the constant, underlying fear of his being
wounded or killed would surface. My family learned through our letters that not only
was Corwin stationed on Okinawa,
but my brother, also in the army, and my nephew, in the navy, were also on the
island. The men didn’t know the
others were there until we were able to tell them in our correspondence. After they learned of this, they were able to get together once for a
short period. Jean was returned to the states and received his
discharge about a month before Corwin was due home. Lenora and Jean planned their wedding date thinking that
Corwin could be home by that time, but the army decided to send Corwin to Korea
for a short tour of duty before releasing him, so he missed the wedding. He did return shortly after the first of the year and in time to
celebrate his son’s third birthday. Several months after Corwin’s return home, a large
package was delivered to our apartment. We
both knew immediately what it was. Two
or three months before he left Okinawa, he had written to me to expect a package
from him. While on duty one day, he
had walked across a part of the island. He
noticed a number of objects lined up on a wooden fence surrounding a native’s
courtyard. He knew that the natives
in this area had fled their homes at an earlier date. He also knew that the American soldiers had been warned not to bother any
of the deserted homes. He examined
the lined-up objects, and discovered that they were bits and pieces of beautiful
pottery bowls that had obviously been used for target practice. At first it appeared that all were now totally worthless, but he noticed
one that was different. Upon closer
examination, one bowl had escaped the shells. Being covered with dry clay, it was difficult to know what it was like.
He carried it back to headquarters and gave it to his commanding officer. His CO knew some of the history of the area. He had been told that the Okinawans had worship centers in their homes,
and these bowls were their ceremonial bowls. Before they fled their homes, they had dug holes in the corners of their
fenced-in back yards and buried these bowls. Someone had obviously dug up this yard and used them for targets. The CO told him he could have it as a souvenir. One of Corwin’s duties each day was to draw two
maps – one a detailed plan of the real operational plan for that day, and one
as a decoy hoping to fool the Japanese as to their real intentions.
These maps were drawn on large sheets of foam rubber.
The maps were of no tactical use the next day, so the men were in the
habit of thinking up original ways to use them. Corwin decided that the only way he could have any chance of getting the
bowl home intact would be to wrap the bowl in several of these maps.
He had seen ships being loaded. Mail
sacks were dropped from a crane above the ship and fell to the hold in the
bottom of the ship. Needless to say, we rushed to open the package. I anticipated the beautiful color and design. It was in perfect
condition. Now, as I write these memoirs, it is the first week
in August,1999. That beautiful,
blue bowl still occasionally graces my coffee table. And “that date,” August 17, is just two weeks away.
I will be celebrating not my twenty-ninth birthday, but my eighty-fifth, as I
wing my way to California to visit Rex and his family.
Copyright
© 1999 Leone Bare and heirs. Used with permission. "I,
Witness to History" and logo are trademarks of Wesley Retirement
Communities, Inc., d/b/a Larksfield Place. All rights reserved.
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