Sailor’s Letter Preserves Vivid Picture of Okinawa

METUCHEN, N.J. — Chuck Welsh doesn’t remember writing the letter. World War II was a long time ago, and he wrote so many letters then--letters to the beautiful woman he loved and the children he’d left behind.

Fifty years passed. The children grew up and had their own children. The beautiful woman died and left him alone. The pictures of his young family have faded.

But the letter has returned--an account of life aboard ship during 1945’s battle for Okinawa, a reminder of what it was like to be a part of the massive war machine that routed the Japanese and abbreviated Germany’s thousand-year Reich.

As if he needed any reminder.

He was 32 then. For 15 years, he had worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers around Pennsylvania, then at the Associated Press. Given his age, his marriage to Betty, his young children and the security clearance he’d received for his coverage of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, he was “pretty much draft-proof,” he says.

But he wanted to fight.

“I don’t really have an explanation,” he says now. “It was just something that I felt I should do. And Betty, always Betty, said, ‘If you feel you need to go, go.’ ”

So he shopped around for a draft board that would accept him, finally going to Altoona, Pa., for induction into the Navy in March 1944. He was assigned to the San Francisco, a heavy cruiser, in September.

As a gunner’s mate, he helped fire the ship’s antiaircraft guns. As a trained journalist, he put out the mimeographed daily newsletter.

On July 4, 1945, as the San Francisco steamed away from three months of battle at Okinawa, Welsh sat down at his typewriter and wrote more than 2,000 words--his impressions of the battle he had witnessed.

Okinawa was the beginning of the end game in the Pacific war.

The Allies considered the island, Japan’s southernmost province, the last Pacific steppingstone. The Japanese sent in 100,000 troops to make a stand.

The eventual invasion was enormous: The Allied armada comprised 1,457 ships carrying more than 180,000 assault troops, more than twice the number of U.S. troops who’d landed at Normandy the year before.

The 82-day battle was the war’s bloodiest--12,000 Americans dead and 35,000 wounded, about 100,000 Japanese civilians and soldiers killed. Kamikaze attacks by Japanese suicide bombers sank 30 U.S. ships and damaged 368, including 10 battleships and 13 aircraft carriers.

Early in 1945, the San Francisco fought at Iwo Jima. In late March, the cruiser moved on to Okinawa, beginning a weeklong bombardment in anticipation of the landings that began April 1--Easter Sunday.

Welsh’s letter is not the stuff of “Saving Private Ryan.” It’s a portal into the real lives of long-ago servicemen--the grief for a lost comrade, the spectacle of firepower, the noise and exhaustion and exhilaration.

His letter complete, he sent off two copies--one to Betty, another to his old neighbors, Harley and Mary Smith. And he forgot about it.

The war came to a close. Welsh’s service ended early--his father died, and he was discharged. He worked at the AP for almost 32 years more, covering political conventions and sports, heading bureaus in Pittsburgh and Louisville, Ky., before moving to New York City.

He retired in 1977. Betty died in 1994; at 88, he lives alone in this leafy New York suburb. The kids are spread around--Charles III in southern Virginia, Francis in Boynton Beach, Fla., Elizabeth here in Metuchen. There are nine grandchildren, 10 great-grandkids.

Half a century after Okinawa, Welsh got a package from Mary Smith.

Inside were the pages he’d last touched when he was a much younger man and the world seemed a far simpler place.

There are few overstrikes and nothing crossed out. “That’s straight-away typing. There’s no editing,” he says, admiring his own handiwork. Sections were cut out by the military censor, but the gist is there--the story of Okinawa, as seen by one sailor, edited here primarily for length.