Young and in Love During World War II (2024)

I've found some amazing treasures! They relate to Robert W. Mingus, my grandfather-in-law (my husband's father's father) and some major events in his life between the ages of 17 and 26. I’ll refer to him mainly as Bob, as he was commonly known, or Pop, as he is known among family. During this first decade of adulthood, he graduated from high school and university, met his future wife, began his career as a teacher, served 4 years in the U.S. Army during World War II, and was married.

Bob graduates from high school (1937, age 17)

Although I had previously posted a photograph of Pop that I found on FamilySearch.org along with the label “Sanford Preparatory School Class President 1937,” I didn’t have any other evidence of his attendance at the school until more recently. I found out that Bob did attend the school, formerly called Sunny Hills, and that he was part of the school's first graduating class. According to this history page on their website, during the 1930s, “Sunny Hills was a combination of home, school, and farm. Students and faculty attended on a 24-hours-a-day and 52-weeks-a-year basis.” Sanford School continues today and is located in Delaware. It’s about a 1-hour drive from where Bob’s parents lived in Ardmore, PA (with today’s cars and highways). As well as confirming his attendance, a representative of the school very kindly sent me this photograph of him with the rest of his graduating class. She also shared with me that “[h]e stayed in touch until his passing in 2008. His wife sent us a note saying that he was very proud to be class president of the first graduating class from the school.”

I wonder what Pop's feelings were about attending a boarding school. Was he glad to be away from home? Or would he have rather attended Lower Merion High School with kids from his neighbourhood? Maybe neither, maybe both. Regardless of how he felt on this particular matter, it’s clear that he considered education and teaching important, as he went on to further education and became a teacher himself.

University graduation, draft registration, and falling in love (1941, age 21)

One priceless source of information we are lucky to have in the family is the autobiography of my grandmother-in-law, Margaret A. Mingus (nee Eldred). Margaret (commonly known as Peg, and known among family as Grandmama) was a remarkable woman and I am looking forward to writing more about her in the future. For this post, I will draw from her writing as it relates specifically to Bob. Here are some of her words, regarding her first job as a junior camp counsellor at the age of 17:

.... I learned about conscientiously working to earn my salary—and I met Bob Mingus. I had heard that a very likeable counselor for the boys, the same ages as the girls I was assigned to, was coming and I decided to keep my eyes open. Our job before camp opened was to clean up last summer's dirt, and the day he arrived, I was washing lanterns filled with the previous summer's dead bugs. My face and arms up to the elbows were covered with grime. What a way to make an impression on a popular young man.

I was assigned the job as counselor for the older girls, aged seven to twelve, and Bob was the waterfront chief and counselor for the boys of the same age. He had just graduated from Temple University and since he couldn't get a job because he had to sign up for the draft that summer, he decided to return to camp and enjoy another summer working in those beautiful surroundings for his second year....

I found Bob’s registration card on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org!

Before this, I had never seen one of these forms, and I find it interesting that they include details like height (6-0), weight (165), eye colour (brown), hair colour (brown), and complexion (light brown). It's also sobering that they ask for “physical characteristics that will aid in identification” - in Bob's case, an “appendix operation scar” is listed.

Grandmama’s autobiography continues:

He was the most mature boy I had ever been associated with, and when he began to take an interest in me, I was thrilled. By the end of the summer, we had become very interested in each other and my relationship with Paul faded into the past.

In September Bob began teaching in Swedeland Schools in Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. I was off to college, Oberlin, of course….

…. Bob came to North Olmsted for Christmas that year to visit me which was a thrill. My mother had said “You can have Bob here if you want, but don't get engaged!” My reply was “Oh, Mother”. At the same time Bob's mother had said, “You can go to Ohio if you want, but don't get engaged!” His reply was similar to mine. On December 7th that year the whole nation was shocked by the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.... This was the beginning of the end of a normal college experience…. Bob had been away with his Boy scout troop the weekend of the attack, but felt he needed to volunteer and left for the service in February in the army.

Enlistment and engagement (1942, age 22)

The United States World War II Army Enlistment Records that I have been able to access through FamilySearch.org (for which I do not have an image) confirm that on Feb 24, 1942, at the age of 22, Bob was enlisted for military service as a private “for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law.”

Grandmama/Peg wrote that in September 1942, she and her mother travelled together to San Diego, CA “to see Bob where he was stationed in the army.” She writes:

…. Here the magic of our relationship resumed and while we were on the beach at La Jolla, California, after Mother had become conveniently cold and left us alone, Bob asked me to marry him “but not just yet” and I delightedly agreed. Little did we know how long that “but not just yet” would last. Bob went on to serve four years in the army in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Okinawa, and I completed college in two and a half years more.

Because I've read Grandmama's autobiography a couple of times before, I must have noticed before that Pop served in the army in the Philippines but I had forgotten! Is it possible he served in the region where my grandparents lived?

Letter from Hawaii (1943, age 23)

Back when I was looking into the history of the region where Bob was born, I came across the Lower Merion Historical Society and their extraordinary Russell Byerley Memorial World War II Collection. It's a library collection of over 2,000 letters and photos sent by WWII servicemen and women to a teacher at a high school in Lower Merion.

I’ve tried to envision being a high school teacher - getting to know my young students, feeling pride in them and hope for their futures - and seeing them sent off to fight in a war that had already claimed an unfathomable number of lives. Russell Byerley received and published letters from men and women serving in WWII, many of whom he had taught or coached in high school not so long before.

The Lower Merion Historical Society website lists the names of everyone who sent letters that were included in the collection. I was very excited to find Bob’s name! I reached out to LMHS and was grateful to receive an email back only a few days later with Bob's letters and photos attached. There appear to be two handwritten notes - a postcard dated Apr 4, 1943, and a letter dated Apr 25, 1943 - along with two photos.

In the return address, Bob identifies himself as a second lieutenant. But I wasn’t sure about the “C.A.C.” part! It may stand for Coast Artillery Corps, an army corps “responsible for coastal, harbor, and anti-aircraft defense of the United States and its possessions between 1901 and 1950.” This lines up with the info we have about Bob’s service: the C.A.C. deployed artillery units to both Hawaii and the Philippines. In his message, he mentions Fort Eustis. This was a U.S. Army installation in Newport News, VA where more than “20,000 troops were trained in anti-aircraft artillery during” WWII.

Dear Mr. Byerly,

You see I have left Ft. Eustis and I had a very nice trip out here. After I went to Eustis I was called home because of my Father’s death. We left Eustis the last of March.

Did you know I was engaged? I have been engaged since Sept. but we didn’t announce it until March. I can see where your letters will mean more to me now.

Bob Mingus

According to the Mingus Family Bible, Bob’s father, Walter J. Mingus, died at the age of 82 on Feb 20, 1943. I can hardly draw any conclusions about how Bob was coping with the death of his father from the few words he wrote about it, though the mention does seem abrupt. But somehow I do sense a lot of emotion from the lines about his engagement!

I’m not sure where Bob was located geographically at the writing of this letter. Was he in San Fransisco, CA, as the address implies? At any rate, by the time Bob wrote his next letter, three weeks later, he had reached Hawaii.

Dear Mr. Byerlley,

Believe it or not, today I walked into the Officers’ Club and walked right up to the counter next to Felix Falconi. We knew each other instantly and sure was good to see somebody from Lower Merion. We were both in the band while we were at L.M. He is a 2nd Lt. in the Signal Corps. He said that he had just written you. Maybe you know that I am somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. I have seen Pearl Harbor and gone to Honolulu.

I am back in the same kind of an outfit I was before but now I am a weather officer. My dreams have come true! That was what I wanted to be when I left for O.C.S. After I got out of O.C.S. I never expected to get that kind of a job, but here I am. The above address is my new address.

Is Marvin Aiken still here on the islands? I hope you and the rest of the faculty had a very happy Easter.

Sincerely,

Bob Mingus

I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but I did not think the letter would contain so much enthusiasm! “My dreams have come true!” is not a phrase I would have imagined in a letter from a soldier at the start of his service in WWII! Then again, after months of uncertainty, I can see how finding out he would be working as a weather officer in Hawaii would be an enormous relief.

Even so, this strikes me as the letter of an optimistic young man! And after the war, even though I have heard that he seldom spoke about his experiences, he did joke about his time in Hawaii, reporting on the weather. According to his son, my father-in-law Richard, Pop would tell it something like this:

“Today's high will be 87°. The morning will be cooler at 82° with a 5mph breeze from the Northwest. There will be a rain shower from 4:00 to 4:15 PM. The rest of the day will be sunny with a few passing clouds.

“Tomorrow, repeat.”

Then he would laugh.

I have very few details on the rest of Pop’s service, but it seems likely that this time in Hawaii was the high point. Based on the bare knowledge that he was deployed to the Philippines and then to Okinawa, and the years he would have been there, it’s likely that he encountered many horrors before he was able to return home.

The Philippines (sometime between 1943 and ‘45)

I didn’t think I would be writing about the Philippines in a post about my husband’s ancestors! I don’t have any information about Bob’s service there, but there are a couple of deductions I have made and clues I have come across.

Firstly, I know that Bob would not have been in the Battle of Bataan (it was fought before he was deployed), but surely he would have heard about it: “After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they invaded Luzon, Philippines in January 1942. Despite insufficient supplies, American and Filipino troops were able to fight for three months. Eventually, they surrendered to Japanese troops and were forced into the Bataan Death March—where some of the most horrific war crimes were committed by the Japanese.” (According to this webpage of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, LA).

I want to mention here that Northern Luzon, where the Japanese army first invaded the Philippines in 1942, is the region where my maternal grandparents lived, were married and had their first child (in 1944) and where my mother was later born; and the “Filipino troops” mentioned above included the indigenous people from whom myself and my daughter are matrilineally descended. More on this in the future.

After the defeat of 1942, there was a second military campaign in 1944-45 (according to a brief web search): “the American, Mexican, Australian and Filipino campaign to defeat and expel the Imperial Japanese forces occupying the Philippines.” It seems quite possible that Bob was part of this campaign. And while it’s unlikely, it could be a possible that he fought alongside relatives of mine.

Okinawa and the atomic bombs (1945, age 25)

Again, I don’t know about Bob’s specific involvement in Okinawa, but I have been learning a bit about the Battle of Okinawa which was fought between April and June 1945: “Victory at Okinawa cost more than 12,000 [American] deaths.... [and a]bout 90,000 Japanese combatants died in the fighting, but deaths among Okinawan civilians may have reached 150,000.”

As I understand it, the Battle of Okinawa was a precursor to the planned invasion of “mainland” Japan. (Geography note: I just learned that Okinawa is a chain of islands and a prefecture of Japan. But it is separated from the main islands of Japan by over 600km.) At some point during his service in Japan, Bob suffered permanent loss of hearing in one of his ears when a rifle was shot beside him. But, fortunately, he did not sustain any worse physical injury. Bob’s soon-to-be wife wrote in her autobiography many years later:

That August, the atomic bomb was dropped so that Bob, instead of having to go on the invasion of Japan, would be coming home.

It’s quite possible that Bob would have never returned home alive if he had been part of an invasion of the main islands of Japan. As it is, he lived and changed the world around him - as I believe all of us do. His legacy includes his descendants - my daughter being one of them.

Returning home and getting married

Even if I can speculate on what Pop may have experienced during his 4 years of military service, it's hard to fathom the impact it had on him as a young man, still in his formative years. It shows amazing resilience that he continued on in his life as such a gentle and patient person, who loved teaching children and making silly jokes. Is it possible his experiences may have even helped galvanized some of these traits? Did he, for example, learn to cherish his loved ones all the more after the war?

Bob returned home in December 1945 and about six months later, on June 15, 1946, he, Robert W. Mingus (age 26), married Margaret A. Eldred (age 22) in Oberlin, Ohio. And it was a year of weddings: more Americans were married in 1946 than in any previous year or in any of the next 33 years! The start of the post-war boom years.

Thanks for reading!