A little over three years ago, Jana Nicol had the idea to publish a book of her late father’s World War II letters to his parents. Last week, she drove to Michigan State University’s Main Library to pick up the first copies of the book, “Your Loving Son, Duane: Letters from World War II.”
In a Facebook post after her trip to MSU, Nicol wrote, “I don’t know if any of you believe in signs, but before he had to drop out and get a job to take care of his mom when his dad died unexpectedly, my dad attended MSU. He was a huge Spartan fan and a huge Detroit Tigers fan. Of course, while I was on campus, a student walked by wearing a Detroit Tigers ball cap, and then Beaumont Tower rang the time. I’d like to think it was my dad saying, ‘Good job, kid.’”
Nicol works for the state government and is an accomplished artist. She will release her book at an event hosted by the Historical Society of Greater Lansing at 7 p.m. Tuesday (April 1) in the Grand River Room of Lansing Community College’s Gannon Building.
The nearly 400-page book contains more than 300 letters Nicol’s father sent home to his mom and dad in Charlotte, Michigan, during and shortly after the war. It also contains scores of entries he made in a private journal.
“We know my dad thought the journal was important since he could’ve destroyed it at any time if he hadn’t wanted us to read it,” Nicol said.
Her father, Duane, served on a landing ship tank, a large, flat-bottomed ship with a drop-down door used to deliver troops, vehicles and equipment to invasion and occupation sites. After the war ended, he returned to Charlotte, got married, had four daughters and worked for the United States Postal Service.
His letters and journal differ dramatically since fear of censorship and a desire not to scare his parents made his letters home much more upbeat and fun. He was also aware of how worried his parents were about him since his brother had been killed in a car accident.
“He was more honest in his personal journals. In one entry, he noted that he wrote his last letter home to his parents,” Nicol said. “He didn’t want to worry his mother, so the letters were never about war.”
In one letter, he writes: “A couple of guys here are having a little trouble with their girls. They write and tell them off and then they wonder why their girls write and want to ‘break up.’ A few of us fellows act as Dr. Anthony of the ‘Goodwill Hour’ and advise them as what to do. Personally, I think they should get some brains.”
In transcribing her father’s letters and journal entries, Nicol turned to crowdsourcing to help decipher his handwriting and figure out wartime slang.
“His cursive writing was difficult to decipher, and some of the slang was vague,” she said.
One example was the term “needle notes.”
“The closest we could come was a list of vaccines and medical information,” she said.
Nicol tracked down many of the people her father wrote about in his letters, and they said he never talked about the war.
“He did with me — he did things like teach me to count to 10 in Japanese and told me about a monkey joining them on the ship,” she said.
The monkey provided comic relief for the sailors, such as the time it got into some paint and ran all over the ship, leaving footprints. Duane sent his parents a picture of himself holding the monkey while he was stationed in the Philippines.
In his every-other-day letters to his mom and dad, Duane was often both touching and humorous. Even from battle-torn areas, he followed local sports teams, hometown girls and hunting from afar. His letters show that he was an American boy far from home.
“We never saw this side of him — he was only 18,” Nicol said.
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