Letter from my Father to my Mother in 1937

 

My father went around the world the first time when he was 18. On the way home war broke out in China in 1937 and he feared for his life. His fear was so real he wrote his future wife, my mother, who everyone called “Woody”, a love letter in case he died that he hoped would never be opened. Below is that letter.

My father spent his first year at Linfield College where he met my mother in 1935. For his next year he was accepted into the University of Shanghai in China. He left Portland via a tramp steamer in the fall of 1936. For his return trip he booked a journey that would complete his round the world trip via the Trans-Siberian Railroad traveling the length of Russia. But as he was preparing to leave, war broke out with Japan and the bombing and fighting started in Asia. He took pictures but also sent back this letter with his things across the Pacific which he hoped would only be opened if he did not make it back alive. He wanted “Woody” to know the intensity of his love and to have closure.

He made it back alive. He had a great many stories. In Russia, he pointed his Kodak “Brownie” camera at a Russian guard station. The Russians stopped the train, but his camera at that point had no film. They let him go, calling him a “stupid American”. In Berlin, he got off the train and heard Hitler speak (my father knew about 10 languages). What he heard scared him and he feared for the world. In London, he sold his pictures and stories of China on the eve of war. He then took all his money and bought books. All he had left was a ticket on the Queen Mary to New York City. To get home to Montana, he figured he would hop the rails and stay in local jails (that is how he got from Linfield to Montana in the past). Fortunately, his parents and his brother met him at the gangplank.

The next year he was supposed to attend University in Switzerland but tensions with Hitler made it unsafe. My Father hated war and wrote many letters to “Woody” while he served in intelligences around the world, but that is another post.