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311 Saturday 25 Aug 1945 6:25 pm I arrived here 10 mos. ago today Dearly Beloved, This evening I feel muscularly full-toned and pleasantly relaxed after a long, hard set of tennis under a hot 4pm sun with Dan Volkmann - we played it to 8-8 and called it quits. It was a good feeling to be able to hold my own against a 21 year old several inches taller than me and athletically built; I played better tennis than I did the other day and in easier form. I hope you and I will have an opportunity to play after I get back. Two language officers, Bert Gerow and John Congleton as well as two Nisei, left today on a temporary duty assignment which, without knowing its exact nature, I do envy them a little: they will probably see some of the big show around Tokyo. There has been nothing in this whole war that I’d rather see - it would be an exciting refresher to historical perspective. But, as I intimated in this morning's letter, Gerow and Congleton were sent because they could be spared and no one else [pg 2] was given a chance to volunteer. The General was the one who made the arrangements and he wouldn’t let Johnny Reifsnider (the logical first choice) go because he's the one man who can speak to POWs in their own language. We are still busy at the school with the last mundane details of building, hoping to be finished before the new (second) term starts on Sept. 1st - main job is still the auditorium roof. We've run short of the bomb boxes (about 4’ long, 18” square) which we take apart and use for shingling, applying the 3-ply, tin-lined plywood sections over the existing roof of corrugated tin, unless except for additional insulation because it's shot full of holes. Our making full use of the auditorium waits on the finishing of the roof, and not being able to count on having the boxes delivered at an early date by Public Works (busy with the new housing program, the laying of coral roads, etc.) I resorted to an old expedient today by going out with the truck myself to find them. We wandered [pg 3] through a maze of roads in a large bomb dispersal area before we finally found the place where the right kind of boxes was kept. En route we passed pile after pile of every kind of bomb except atomic. Despite these, the area we were in was peaceful and lovely under a bright blue sky of magnificent rolling white clouds - a long curve of cliffs and beach, deep blue water and the profile of nearby Saipan's one mountain peak a mile or two across it. Roads and quarries, B-29 tails, smoke from the asphalt plant and like objects are clearly visible from here, and it seems curious that Saipan is so far removed from us in point of communication. I suppose it will cease to be so in a few months now. I am interested to see how long it will be before Aguijan, just 4 miles south of us, will be occupied. I believe propaganda leaflets, newspapers, etc. telling of the end of the war are being dropped there now. [pg 4] Out for the 7 pm news- I was anxious to hear comments an earlier report that landing's and surrender might be postponed a few days by a typhoon blowing up from the Philippines. It seems now to have died down and to be no threat; landing's will take place tomorrow, MacArthur will go ashore Tuesday (with a battalion composed of men all over 6 feet tall! that phoney) To come back a moment to this island - I suppose Guam is the only one of the Marianas really worth visiting, but I do wish you could see little Tinian sometime. Broadway and 8th Avenue are now paved with a hard, smooth asphalt (the same kind used in surfacing the B-29[taxiways?], many of which I've driven on) for their entire length, and each is a double highway with a broad dirt strip, considerable lengths of it in pine trees, down the middle. 86th and other cross streets are also paved - the job has been done only recently and is not much less impressive to watch than [pg 5] some of the other magical developments on the island. It seems to take only a few days to surface several miles, and the road is open to traffic within a few hours after the job is done - just allowing time for the surface to cool. I shall turn your clipping “Susu Goes Fishing” over to [Tanimoto?] and have him put it on the bulletin board with appropriate captions in Japanese. #351 (July 30 - that's as far back as I dare go; there's not much hope of finding time to catch up on letters before that, though I've looked thru them before putting them in last year's tin Christmas box, already 2/3 full apart from the 2 black notebooks) Glad you like the picture of me in the group - yes, ‘trim and capable’ pretty well describes Capt. Dodds, and ‘a bag consumed with a [sense of] his own importance’ the colonel - but not a big bag - he is short and dumpy. As for Henry Groehn, whatever his deviations from standards of physical [pg 6] perfection, he's a good and sensible guy. While I'm on the subject of personalities, incidentally, I must admit to having revised my estimate of Jim Boyle: [?lly] he is something of a fool - a talented puppeteer who can't draw a line between his own behavior and that of his puppets; incidentally, and when he's serious, he has a fine, discriminatory intelligence. Jim Baird, his roommate, gets a little fed up with him periodically; last night he came in lit to the gills and woke the whole quonset falling over a wastebasket - you could forgive almost any man that, but Boyle, this morning, was egregiously chipper and loud as tho he reveled in getting it out of his system. I felt like washing his mouth out with soap. Jim Baird I like as well as anyone here. He is almost as well read as Jim Boyle but is never obtrusive with his knowledge: is modest, conscientious, courteous to a degree far beyond that of most men in the service, and has a very honest, wide mouth which turns up at the corners. I doubt that you would appreciate Jim Boyle at all (tho I still say he's one of the most amusing individuals I've ever come across, when he's not offensive about it), but I know you would like Jim Baird - Time to take this, and a pkg and pajamas, and another pkg to the post office (it's Sunday morning now) - I love you, darling Warren
