Father’s Day. September, 1945
A Birth To End The War
“This is probably the first letter you have ever received,” Dad wrote to his newborn daughter two weeks after she arrived half a world away.
Serving in the Pacific Fleet, Dad witnessed the bloodiest sea battles of the Pacific Theater in World War 2.
He embraced his new role, writing on notepaper to his new baby, Eleanor.
“I know your Mummy will have to read it to you, but I just want you to know how tickled I am to have you as my daughter and the first in the family,” he wrote from Buckner Bay, Okinawa.
“I want to apologize for not being around when you were born, but Uncle Sam decided he needed me away out here.”
Dad liked to write amusing notes to us. After I was born a few years later, I learned to live with his gentle jokes.
“If your mummy decides to cut your hair, you just tell her your daddy says let it grow long, because he likes little girls to have long hair,” he wrote to my two week old sister.
“I know it isn’t nice for little girls to speak back to their mothers, and you do have a very nice mummy, but I think in this case she won’t mind.”
As the world recovered from World War 2, El was lucky to have been born in the first wave of the Baby…
