When Westwood resident Jeanne Read bought an antique desk from an Arbor Heights garage sale she figured it was treasure enough and a bargain at $20. Once she got it home and started taking a closer look she was surprised to see three small pieces of aged, yellowed paper fall to the ground as she opened a drawer.

Hidden from time inside the desk was a piece of history dating to the late 1930s and early 1940s: a letter from a young soldier in World War II to his grandmother dated Jan. 15, 1942, and a 1937 bill from The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company for a Magnolia neighborhood address. The cost for a month of “exchange service” at that time? Three dollars.

The letter struck a chord for Read, who was born in 1938 and was just a young girl when the nation went to war. The memories started flooding back.

“I was amazed, absolutely amazed (when she read the letter) because I remember the war when I was a little kid,” she said. “I remember the blackouts and the air raid sirens and I remember when the Japanese bombed Hawaii. I remember that I got my hand slapped at school because I used two paper towels instead of one. We were allotted only one paper towel when we washed our hands.”

She remembers rationing sugar, being quarantined to the house (she grew up in North Seattle) when she and her brother came down with the measles. She remembers airplanes flying overhead (“It seemed like hundreds,” she said, “but I was only just a little bitty kid.”) She still has a picture of her mother wearing a gas mask from when Read was four or five, right around the time this young man wrote the letter.

Read contacted the people she bought the desk from, but it was a mystery to them as well. They had purchased the home a year ago and found many items (including the desk) stashed away in the basement – their original owners unknown to the new tenants.

So Read brought the letter to the West Seattle Herald office hoping we could share it with the community and it might stir up a memory for the original owner.

Below is a transcription of the letter from Jan. 15, 1942. Just over a month before, on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. One day later, the United States declared war on Japan, officially entering World War II. Nazi Germany and their Axis allies in turn declared war on the U.S. days later. There is no context to explain where the soldier was stationed when he wrote.

Thursday, Jan. 15, 1942

Dear Grandmother Andrews,

I received your letter today and it was sure nice to hear from you.

The weather has changed now. It’s nice and warm.

I hope to get home within a year.

I have a surprise for you. The Army has made me a tank driver. I have my driver’s license now. The captain said I was doing fine and that I would be getting a rating pretty soon. The rating will be what they call a first and third. Which is about 45 dollars a month. He was quite surprised that I had made the grade.

I now have a lot of studying to do. Like driving under fire, how to attack the enemy and quite a lot of using your head on figuring strange ground.

Tomorrow I have guard duty for twenty four hours. It’s quite a job.

I thought the taxes would be high. I know we pay plenty right here for just little things.

I want to thank you again for the hankies. I liked them very much.

I’ll want to write to you when you go over to Dolores’s for the week.

Your writing is fine. I enjoy reading your letters. My writing is terrible, but I never wrote much when I was home. I always took the car and went and (saw) them.

I haven’t much more to say because I’m too excited tonite (sic). The surprise caught me off guard.

But thanks for the stamps, they came in handy. Some day I’ll repay you.

How is Rita and Van? You never said anything about them, whether they are fine or sick.

Well that’s about all until I hear from you later on.

Thanks for the stamps.

Love,
Bus

(Ed. note – it was hard to decipher the soldier’s name. “Bus” is our closest guess.)

Read said the letter reminded her of communication she had with a soldier in Iraq not so long ago. For a while she and the young man she did not know personally wrote letters back and forth … it was a way for her to show support.

“I hope he came back,” she said. “I didn’t hear from him … I sure hope he got back OK.”

Reflecting on the similar exchange from many decades prior, she hopes the same for the young man we’ll call “Bus.”

“That letter I thought was very sweet and I hope whoever wrote that got back safely,” Read said. “And I hope that it does trigger a memory somewhere for someone.”

If the letter does happen to ring a bell, please email tys@robinsonnews.com and maybe, just maybe, we can complete this story.