More History from World War II Letters

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Helmut Eric Nimke - 1944

The limits of time - only 24 hours in each day - do not allow for concentrated effort in completely processing the cache of letters written by my mother and father during WWII. Therefore my reportage concerning what they reveal is a bit strung out here. But I know there are readers who look forward to reading more.

 

Just found this post in draft form stashed in the "files" of this blog. Just can't let it go to waste even if there is little I can add at this time. The letter above seems to have been a joint communication by men in my father's squadron who are dismayed by the injustices they observe in Meridian, Mississippi. Bear in mind that 10 years later Meridian would be at the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Below are two enclosures from the letters. They are followed by a letter in which justice issues are spoken of yet again.

Soldier Reports on Jim Crow

My father died only five months ago and it remains difficult for me to live in acceptance; to believe that his formidable personality, intellect and influence are no longer present in my life. Yet in memory; in the way I think; in what I appreciate; in the faithfulness of my life he is surely present.  Many treasured objects also conjure his presence. These days it is this trove of letters that make him so very alive in my thoughts. Enthusiastic response to previous mention of these letters here and their historical significance  prompt me to revisit them. The letters were exchanged between my parents from mid-1943 to November 1945 and cover the period just before his draft into the US Army Air Corps; his stateside service largely in Meridian, Mississippi, one semester of study at Georgia Tech, Atlanta; their marriage in August 1943; two periods of living together near the base; and his overseas assignment to an air weather reconnaissance squadron on Guam in the Pacific. In the spring of 1944, the period discussed here, my father was a few months short of his 23rd birthday. He graduated from a New York city public high school in the Bronx and completed about three semesters of City College of the City University of New York. When he received his draft notice he was working as a machinist apprentice.

Demonstration for Voting Rights Act of 1965

We have recently celebrated the history-making, soul uplifting event of the 1963 March on Washington, a plea for the civil rights of all citizens of the nation. We have also marked the 50th anniversary of the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church which killed four young girls just weeks after the March. It is with these events in mind that I have been reading my father's letters and appreciating his witness to a time some have forgotten, to atrocities hard to comprehend. His reflections provide such valuable context to our acts of remembering; the context of full appreciation of the situation that existed in our country at that time and long before.

Many comments about the sad plight of the of the Negroes are sprinkled through Dad's letters. By March, 1944 my father had spent over a year in Mississippi and my mother had joined him there for about six weeks. Each had become all too familiar with the Jim Crow south. With his letter of March 22 begins a brisk exchange concerning events of the kind caused him to write on March19, "No Sweetheart, there is nothing in this damn South, not even the joy of Spring - nothing but hatred and discrimination."

Many have said to me, "You should write a book." I resist because I know what research would be required. I've had to do some here to get the full import of this episode. Turns out that a Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, a Democrat, had risen through the ranks to become head of the Senate's District of Columbia Committee. It has been said that he ruled the city like a plantation owner. He called Clare Booth Luce a "nigger lover"; praised Hitler; and declared  that whites were "justified in going to any extreme to keep the nigger from voting." For years he blocked anti-lynching laws."  In his book Washington Goes to War journalist David Brinkley wrote:

Bilbo seemed to hate everyone: communists, Jews, union leaders, union members, anyone who could, by any definition, be called a foreigner, and above all, of course, blacks. And Bilbo never hesitated to make his hatreds known.

When he ran for the Senate in 1934, he denounced an opponent as "a cross between a hyena and a mongrel...begotten in the nigger graveyard at midnight, suckled by a sow, and educated by a fool."

When he received a hostile letter from a woman named Josephine Piccolo in New York City, he wrote back and addressed her: "Dear Dago."

As one of the nation's most outspoken racists, Bilbo hated the fact that nearly half the residents of the city he helped administer were black. "If you go through the government departments," he once said, "there are so many niggers it's like a black cloud around you." He repeatedly introudced a bill to deport all Negroes to Africa and once suggested that Eleanor Roosevelt be sent with them and made their "queen." Throughout his tenure on the district committee, Bilbo judged almost every proposal on the basis of its effect on race relations. Anything that might benefit blacks -- and in a city whose black population was growing rapidly, that was most things -- he opposed. Nothing outraged him more than the effort in 1941, by blacks themselves, to confront racial discrimination in employment.

That sets the stage for my father's reportage on March 22

Mia Dia,

As always, the radio in Tech Supply was babbling to itself this afternoon - being peacefully ignored in talk and in the hard rain outside. It continued to be ignored until it drew attention to itself with the outbursts that made all of us, there in the building, keep quiet and lend our ears to the most criminal and flagrant contribution to [the] Negro problem I ever heard.

Darling, you've never heard anything like this. You've seen it, being here, but to have heard this is to gain insight into problem as the South sees it - or should I say refuses to see it.

I am only sorry that a printed copy of the speech is not available...but the best I can do now is to as you to accept these quotations. We were all so moved that Kuspeil said, "That man is starting the next war right now." I can't write what I said.

The issue was the Mississippi (?) broadcast of a speech by Senator Bilbo made from the state capital - Jackson where he addressed the legislative bodies of this fair state in joint session. The subject, which must keep these warped people awake at night, was the Negro and social equality.

From the start you could see the vicious farce the whole thing was with half an eye. For the benefit of the untrained audience he seemed to adopt a benevolent attitude, but he gave himself away with some of the worst hateful and bared faced statements I ever heard. Remember they came from a Senator for State consumption.

He covered his subject, beating the drum of White Supremacy, the Negroes Place and the Color Line in the well worn language of the Baiter, he finally came to the climax of his comparison between the North and the South. Stating this climax as if the North had the worst disease known to mankind - rather than seeing it for the southern problem that it is.

He hit his nail on the head like this. In bringing up the "dreadful progress" the negro is making toward equality he mentioned the equality extended the Negro at the Washington [DC] C.I.O. canteen. Here, he said, an equal number of whites and negroes were served in the same place by an equal number of white and Negro waitresses - all eating together. With this he illustrated his point, kept quiet a moment to let it sink in, and the brought up the artillery. "Can we conceive of such a thing, such unheard of social equality?"

That Honey, is unheard of for this man of the stone-age - twice the Governor of this beautiful State.

But the real dynamite came later when continuing to analyze what trouble the North is creating by extending equality - get that Sweet - we create the problem, not they. He said, "If the North thinks we want to live like that, we will tell them, our nigger lovin' Yankee Friends, to go straight to Hell." And that is a quotation.

So this is how they solve a problem. No, in reality he's not trying to do that, only to maintain the whites here on the backs of the Negroes. By the way, he couldn't say that word - he said "Nigger".

But he belied his false benevolent attitude by saying, "White Negro lovers should be treated like we treat the niggers." This swept away all he said about negro benefits here, bringing into focus the fact that much treatment is considered the worst punishment. Then how are the Negroes treated with benevolence?

The shabbiness of his argument also appeared when enumerating the rights of equality a negro has here, he drew laughter from the audience by saying they have equal space rights on public conveyances. Yes, its a joke to them. But I'd hate to be in their shoes when the negro turns the worm here. These people can't see the problem for what it is, they refuse to recognize it as their Frankenstein - rather, they feed it. He pointed to our difficulty with the riots, but didn't mention that these were caused whenever color lines were drawn - to the just resentment of the negro. Those lines are dirty rags these southerners drag up with them and see them stimulated by the enemy to create conflict. Actually we have much less resentment and strife than they do here, where they are sitting on a volcano they've built themselves.

Honey, I am pretty sore tonight.

In his next letter my father enclosed a newspaper clipping from the editorial page of the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News of March 20, 1944.  Bilbo was not a lone racist mad man in a position of power. The editorial reads:

 

GO STRAIGHT TO HELL

 

An (sic) United Press dispatch from Washington says:"The United States office of education

 today called on white educational institutions in the South to open their doors to negro scholars."

 

And here's telling the responsible head of the United States department of education, whoever

 he may be, to go straight to hell.

 

The South won't do it - not in this generation and never in the future while Anglo-Saxon blood

continues to flow in our veins.

 

Nobody but an ignorant, fat-headed ass would propose such an unthinkable and impossible action.

 

The speech and the editorial appeared in 1944, 19 years before the March on Washington in 1963 and 21 years before the Voting Rights Bill was enacted as the law of the land.

 

The story will continue in the next post.

 

The Art of Letter Writing

Letter from Sgt. Helmut "Eric" Nimke, June 1943, to Matilda "Pat" Milazzo
Eric is 21 years old and Pat is 18 years old

 

My father lived into his 92nd year and Mom is plugging away as she approaches 90. Last August 3rd would have been their 70th wedding anniversary. So even though my birth places me just in advance of the official "Baby Boomer" cohort their long lives have brought me late to grieving the death of a parent. Many of my fellow 'boomers" have already experienced this as yet another rite of passage, an experience that brings deep reflection and arrival at a new place in life. I have already experienced the realization that I, wonder of wonders, am now an elder.

This experience also brings many tasks with it. One that has occupied my sister and I for months is that of sifting through all their treasures; all that they saved so they wouldn't forget; all they gathered and kept around for the sheer beauty and preciousness of each item.

My current project is that of organizing and preserving a cache of over 1,000 letters exchanged by my parents from the fall of 1942 to the fall of 1945; from my father's induction into the Army Air Corps and his return from overseas service in Guam (Pacific Theater).

As a student of history, a professional librarian and now archivist, I believe this collection will be a valuable addition to any collection of WW II materials. They will eventually go to a research institution. But now I am reading them, putting them in protective sleeves and then binders. I know the rest of the family will want to see them. But there are so many - eventually perhaps 15 binders - that no one will really have the time to read them all. So I flag the interesting or touching ones, the ones that offer valuable commentary on the way of the military, conditions on the home front, conduct of the war, national and international politics and especially some new insight or revelation concerning family events and persons.

This telegram dated July 2, 1943, four days before scheduled wedding in Brooklyn, NY reads:
 "Darling - Furlough cancelled before my eyes 4pm - Crying as I write this - Am proceeding to
 Key Field Meridian 11:15pm as per orders Adjutant General Washington -
 Even Colonel does not know why - Call everything off - Be a soldiers wife -
Will buck like hell for furlough at Field - Nothing definite - Another wire will follow -
Yours forever - Eric"



This letter is really three pages with writing on both sides of each sheet in my father's very small
handwriting. Written in pencil these are particularly difficult to decipher. But plainly seen is the USO
emblem at the top and the admonition "Idle Gossip Sinks Ships" at the bottom of each sheet.



The love that my mother and father found in each other at such a young age is quite incredible. Their story deserves retelling. More to come.

Most Recent Challenge

Many years ago Dad told me there was a box of them in the attic; a box of all the letters he and my mother exchanged while he was in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He told me because I was amazed that he came up with the letters they exchanged at Easter in 1945 just before I was born. He had dutifully climbed the pull down stairs, uncovered the box and searched through his collection and hers for the Easter time letters. The effort was in response to my request that year to each family member attending our Easter dinner at Mom and Dad's to come prepared to share a memory of Easter from the past. Little did I know how far back Dad would go.

So as we disturbed my parents' home, a home so carefully and loving decorated and arranged in the work of two lifetimes, I knew what the attic had in store for us. A box measuring 18x15x15 inches was packed with letters meticulously bundled and organized so that Mom's letters to Dad were on the bottom and his letters to her on the top. There are easily over a thousand letters, the vast majority two or more pages in length. Interspersed in the collection are letters from others - family and friends and men in the service.

I have opened and read letters from the fall of 1942 to the fall of 1943 and filled five large loose leaf binders with archival plastic sheet protectors each containing one letter and its envelope. All the letters (newspaper clippings, magazine articles, concert programs, etc.) are in wonderful condition but envelopes a bit ragged.

This is not the only process involved here. The other is deciding where this valuable collection should eventually go. And valuable they are. Stay tuned.

Remembrance of Things Past - A Night at the Opera

Two tickets for performance of "La Boheme" On February 9, 1944

at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City

Terra cotta frieze from the façade of the old Metropolitan Opera House

mounted in fireplace

 



Since the second week in January I have been living with my father who will be 92 years old on May 25th. My father is many things: husband for almost 70 years, father of two daughters, native of Germany, US Air Corps veteran of WWII, retired professional engineer with credentials both in mechanical and civil engineering, and former member of the governing board of the community where he and my mother have lived in the house he designed since 1968.

But his curriculum vitae would include so much more. I have described him as a Renaissance man: builder of boats and ham radio equipment, lover of history ancient and modern, devotee of the arts especially classical music and opera, patriotic and interested citizen and supporter of the best interests of the country which welcomed him at the age of eight and provided him with the finest of educations at no cost at The City College of New York of CUNY.

My parents' home is filled with collections of material connected with each of my Dad's areas of professional or personal expertise as well as my mother's collections reflecting her interests in needlework, painting and gourmet cooking. Since Mom is living in an assisted living facility receiving care appropriate to her stage of dementia and Dad is receiving my care and the wonderful care of Hospice I am able, at every free moment, to begin the process of going through it all, weeding out, assigning destinations for a great deal and often rewarded by the discovery of a treasure.

 

One of our family stories is attached to the ticket stubs shown here. I found these stubs resting at the bottom of a small drawer in my mother's bedroom desk. On February 9, 1944 my father was on leave from the Army Air Corps before going to places like Meridian, Mississippi with his young wife. He thought to give my mother and her aunt a treat by taking them to the opera. He was to pick them up at their place of work, the fashion house of Nettie Rosenstine on 7th Avenue. Rosenstine was a famous designer for whom my mother worked as one of a number of sketchers in the design department while my aunt worked with a group of accomplished needlewomen who were sample makers, creators of the first sample of a new design. Upon his arrival at the assigned location my father found himself fairly run over by a bevy of scantily clad models. He said it was a surprise but not hard to take.

 

Arriving at the opera house Dad went to the box office to buy three tickets. He was told that tickets for that performance had been set aside by season ticket holders for the exclusive use of GIs. The tickets he received were for the center box in the Diamond Horseshoe (first row of boxes) held by the Astor family. My aunt, an opera lover who had sat in the balcony for many Met performances could not have been more delighted or impressed.

 

Years later, when the Met's old house was being demolished after the company's move to Lincoln Center, my father purchased the frieze which appears above.  The fireplace for their new home would be designed around it. Another treasured item in search of a new home.                                            

Finding Buried Treasure

Today I took advantage of the presence of my youngest son to carry out still more archaeological investigation in  the home my parents have enjoyed for 45 years. In these last weeks I have found my baby blanket, the comb, toy and collar of a dog laid to rest 50 years ago, my sister's communion veil and an exquisitely beaded evening bag first used by my grandmother.

On the top linen closet shelf Andrew found a cardboard box from Bonwit  Teller carefully tied with string. Resting in a nest of tissue paper was the top of my parents' wedding cake - August 3, 1943. Also in the box was memorabilia of my mother's graduation from the High School of Industrial Arts in January of that year. Among these momentos was the wedding invitation for the original planned date of July 6. When permission for my father's leave from the Army Air Corps was withdrawn the wedding was hastily rescheduled. We also found the invitation to Mom's sweet sixteen party and various certificates from schools attended in Brooklyn, NY.

 

The cake topper reflects how much World War II influenced culture and society. Note the red, white and blue ribbon in a "V for Victory" touch and groom in uniform indicating his branch of the armed forces.

 

Also discovered today were the Kodachrome 2 x 2 inch slides of our family's 3-month trip to Europe in 1961. Under the most demanding direction of my father we hand mounted the film between 2 layers of thin glass and taped the edges so that less of the image would be lost than is the case with cardboard mounted slides. These illustrated many travel log presentations. Perhaps we will find a way to have such outstanding photos digitized for future enjoyment.

 

What shall we do with all of these treasures? Wonder how this wartime cake topper would be valued on "Antiques Roadshow". Do know that it is priceless to us.

 

I am still looking for the Belgian lace cathedral length veil first worn by my aunt in 1928; used by my mother in 1943 and then again by me in 1967. Will be sure to photograph that gem.