A forgotten voice from the Pacific War
August 28th, 2009 | Historical Life at Sea Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
For all the overpowering sensations and experiences of the Pacific War, sailors and Marines were forbidden from taking notes about their experiences // James Turnbull/ Naval History and Heritage Command
With today’s Inter-nets and You-Tubes and silicon chips and such, U.S. service members can correspond with home and record their wartime experiences easier than at any time in history. (Not that it’s perfect, as any sailor who’s been frustrated with bandwidth at sea can attest.)
So it’s easy to forget that back in what historians call “the day,” sailors, soldiers and Marines were outright forbidden from keeping track of what they went through. The greatest Marine writer of World War II, E.B. Sledge, kept notes about his battles at Pelelieu and Okinawa in his G.I.-issue Bible, which he used later for his classic “With The Old Breed.”
Another Pacific War recollection surfaced recently in an unlikely place: Northeast Ohio. A contractor working on a house in Akron, Ohio, found seven notebooks of Bert Raymer, who served as a machinist’s mate second class aboard the oiler Merrimack. As the local paper reported, Raymer also had to make sure his commanders didn’t know he was taking notes:
Dick Raymer said he understands his father wrote the diaries under the cover of darkness, in secret, under a blanket in his bunk on the ship, every night, knowing that sailors were not supposed to keep such logs during wartime.
”They were sworn not to say anything of their travels,” he said.
It’s a good thing for the Raymer family — and for the world, if Raymer’s diaries are eventually published — that not every sailor obeyed every last regulation.
Comments
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mike short Says:
April 20th, 2011 at 12:45 amI hope they do 1 day become published—-Reading these were very thrilling and i was happy to give them to his son….Thank You all!!!