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#35 Monday 10/30 2:45 pm Hello, Sweetie Dreamt about you again last night - that and your little snapshot folder here before me make your image doubly sweet. As for mail, I'm practically resigned to not getting any for as long as another week: even airmail comes in bunches here. So I try to think of it as a kind of saving up. Have just taken a moment off during a lull in work to get this started. But the rest of the office is busy and I haven't done enough here yet to feel comfortable writing letters, so I'll switch to dictionary practice for a while instead. Till later, darling. 6 pm Having picked up my laundry (officers bring theirs on Monday, get it back the same night - not ironed, but fresh and clean, about 2/3 dry - no matter how much you have the charge is 25¢…haircut and shave is 5¢), played volleyball for half an hour with a group of officers, men and civilians, taken a shower and eaten supper (leaving out the usual afternoon beer ration for a change), and missed a rise in a jeep going to another movie than our own (because of projection trouble there may not be one tonight), I find myself back in the office where my stationery is and you get another brief installment. Let me introduce you to Super (for Superman), Korean office boy extraordinaire, who has just looked in to see who's here at this hour. (Nothing unusual, since someone nearly always is - much of the Civilian Camp and office goes thru here. It's a sort of central registering office for the several thousand gooks here). Super is 16 (17 by Korean Japanese count) and could pass, superficially, for 12 in American. But in speech and manner he is the equal of lots of American boys for all the latter's material advantages - I mean their sensory education. Like a number of the [pg 2] more intelligent - kids around here (5 or 6 of whom work as office boys and are variously renamed - to their immense gratification, I imagine - Brie, Audy, Kim, etc. and one Socrates) he is picking up a good deal of English, tho just now I've been talking to him in Japanese. Unlike many of the Koreans, he reads write and speaks both languages about equally well - or so I judge from casual remarks. Seen the first really attractive woman around here that I've seen so far this afternoon. I learned that she is 33 (most of them are middle-aged by then, or nearly so, being agricultural peasant), was formerly a prostitute in some large Japanese city and [?] owner of a shop. She was attractive not only because she was physically well preserved and carried herself well but also because of a certain presence - an intelligent look, and a gay but unassuming smile. The office boys have something of the same spirit - not doltish and slavish not yet the other extreme. Just at a casual glance - she was only here for a moment - I felt that freedom of spirit and though, what a damning thing for civilization, that its outcasts should be mature and free and its loyal members fawning serfs. There has been a good deal of tragedy hereabouts, not so long ago, but already these people seem to have forgotten the war's horrors to a large extent. Amongst the rather intelligent group of camp leaders there are some who tried to commit suicide even after being taken into safe custody and who were prevailed upon to live for their people here. But there are others - one in particular, a very awful man and extrovert character - for whom personal fealty doesn't seem to have existed very strongly; their spirit was [pg 3] never broken because never pledged. I think you’d find these people and their reactions to our ways (as [?] as their own ways of doing things) enormously interesting to watch. I think of you many times during the day and of how much you’d enjoy this or that little thing. While we were playing volleyball tonight three young women - attractive in the sense that they were healthy and happy looking, with nice teeth and pleasant smiles - were playing with a baby girl just able to walk but mostly addicted to crawling. They were trying baseball caps, sunhats, and sunglasses on her, with ridiculous effect - and then she’d crawl away still wearing them. She was, I found on questioning, 11 mos. old and [?] of course for better coordinated was not any bigger than Wendy is now. Mothers carry their babies piggy back fashion, baby's arms under mother's armpits, legs around hips, supported by sashes. No wonder some of them are bowlegged - surprisingly few, considering. Postscript to my last letter on Henry - he and Jean did want very much to have a baby, and were prevented from it in Boulder by the necessity of an ovarian cyst operation. Worst part of it was that they learned from [Dunlavy?] that they could have done so easily a year or two sooner - at which time, Henry said regretfully, they had been cautious for financial reasons. Now they have a chance when they are together again, but enough less of one so that they'll have to work at it and not lose a day's opportunity. They are fully decided to have at least 2 children by adoption if Jean can't produce. Both of them are very fond of children and at the same time - much as they have that strong [?] of personal identity I spoke of before are very sane in their attitude on adoption. Henry said he wouldn't feel any different at all about such children. [concluded in next letter] [pg 4] Here's the dope on Jean's going to Toronto - She didn't want to at all. She loved her job with IPR, both for its own sake and because it ties in with what Henry's doing (editorial work in the same field. He plans tentatively to get into after the war - feels that he's outgrown his own and doesn't think now that he'll even both with his virtually completed PhD. Jean thinks he's right, backs him in daring to extend himself rather than settle comfortably down). But her father is divorcing (or has divorced) her mother, after a certain growing aloofness in recent years, and Jean feels that her mother - who's quite done in by the whole affair - needs her there. She doesn't like Toronto because of its many [?] associations for her, and was crazy about New York. I can easily understand that - it was just the place for her to go in Henry's absence, as much as it was the place for you not to. Poor Jean - her brother's been missing in action several months now, she may not be able to have a baby, she has to play confidant and moral supporter to her mother under uncomfortable circumstances, and she had to give up her new job. Well, she's a [?] spirit anyhow - of the nicest sort. Goodnight, precious, I'll write again in the morning if I get up at reveille. (It's at 4:30 - most of the officers get up about 5:30, chow is open til six or a little after). I love you and take you with me where I go- Warren There was a jack lantern in the mess hall tonight - one day ahead of schedule
