Staying Connected With The Folks Back Home

Japanese American troops at Camp Shelby sent 247 telegrams to their mothers in the islands on Mother's Day. The average cost was $2.00 a message of about 25 words. Many of the soldiers had never been away from home before they left for the mainland last month. And for many of the young men it was their first Mother's Day away from “mom.”

Besides those who had dispatched telegrams, nearly 1000 more had sent air-mail letters timed to arrive home before Mother's Day. A number of the soldiers sought to make personal telephone calls to their relatives in Hawaii but restrictions on phone service due to the volume of official calls, were such as to discourage this method of communication.

Perhaps it is because they have come farther, but the boys from Hawaii have been particularly dutiful about writing home since they have reached Camp Shelby. Soon after their arrival most of them purchased an average of $10 apiece in Clipper or air mail stamps at 20 cents a stamp.

Outgoing mail bags averaged ten a day, compared with three incoming for the unit, reflecting the preponderance of mail for home. Letters, clippings, newspapers, picture postcards and small packages are continually flowing outward from the soldiers. They want the home folks to know they have gone pretty far and that the people on the mainland think pretty well of the newcomers.

In addition to the personal mail, numbered among the soldiers from Hawaii are a half dozen or more “correspondents” of daily and weekly newspapers in Hawaii. These letter-writers gather personal items about soldiers from the districts served by the Island newspapers and write them up in a breezy informal style calculated to make good reading for the home folk.

Ties between the mainland soldiers and their relatives are no less close but the Hawaiians with their ever-needy fountain pens have been quick to set the place in back-home, morale-lifting communications.