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The Collection...
SAILOR BOUND FOR USS INDIANAPOLIS WRITES HOME
We always welcome donations of new historical artifacts to our collection at the Heritage Center. Sometimes, the artifact will speak for itself. Other times it will have a bit of mystery surrounding it. Sometimes it has both. Recently, we received this letter from a donor. It describes the cross country train trip taken in late 1940 by a group of U.S. Navy sailors traveling to their new ship assignment in San Diego, California.
Dear Sis,
Well, here we are in old L.A. It’s about 1:30 AM Tuesday. We got here at 7;05 AM Monday. “Lucky” and I have a hotel room (card enclosed) and we’re staying till about noon Tuesday and then take a train to San Pedro. We decided to lay over one day as none of us had ever seen L.A. and probably never will for quite a spell. The rest of the boys are here in the hotel too, but I haven’t seen any of them since 9 AM Monday!
“Lucky” (that is Logan, the big fellow with the specs) and I bummed around town all day, went to about 16,000 nickel movies. (Saw everybody, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Sylvia Sydney, and a million more.) Tonight we went out to a huge roller rink about 8 or 9 miles out of town and had a swell time. We were the only gobs there and were we popular! I never knew I could get along on skates so well, but boy oh boy was I a whamdoodle!
This hotel is the class. We got a room for a buck apiece or 2 dollars for the room. It’s small but has everything, bed, dresser, hat rack 3 chairs, writing desk and stationary and free post cards and telephone. By the way, there are about umpty-nine Makowski’s in the phone book.
Well, the trip was lousy. The Soo Line is the roughest piece of track I ever hope to ride on. Aunt Barbara and Aunt Marge met me and gave me 3 lbs of Kraft’s caramels. Friday night on the Rock island line to K.C., MO we ran into a near cyclone and did it pour. I never saw so much rain! It washed out the tracks in a few spots and laid a couple of big trees across the tracks. We were delayed a couple of hours so instead of 2 hours and a half we had about 20 minutes in K.C.
We took the Southern Pacific down through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. No mountains of any size to talk of down there. Only desert, hamburger on the hoof, and cactus. For once, I really saw some cactus. Also some pretty nifty mirages.
The meals on the train were “swellegant”. I had ham and eggs for every breakfast and boy can you eat on a train! The jerking sloshes your food down for you. All we did was eat, sleep and play cribbage and smear. Four of us always played together. We ( Lucky and I) lost about 7,320 to 6,965 and in cribbage we won about 11,463 to 94 or a reasonable facsimile.
L.A. is a swell “boig.” Lots of “raha” in this town, but they didn’t get any richer on us today. I spent about 2 bucks even and Lucky about the same.
My address will be: C/o USS Indianapolis, San Pedro Base, California.
The Indianapolis is in the East Indies so we are going to take the aircraft carrier Yorktown (so I hear) out there and then go to the Indianapolis.
Well say hello to everybody and I’ll write again in a couple of days.
Love, Bobbie.
P.S. I have acquired a southern accent!
The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was later used to transport the first atomic bomb from the mainland United States to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. After uneventfully completing this top secret mission, the Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 29, 1945. The secrecy surrounding her sailing, allowed four days to pass before her loss was noticed. The men left in the water endured a hellish ordeal at the hand of blistering sun, high seas, and continuous shark attacks. Out of 1,196 crewmen only 316 survived. The Indianapolis was the last United States warship sunk during World War II.
The preceding undated letter was found inside an old copy of the book “Abandon Ship” by Richard F. Newcomb. The book was purchased by the donor at a used book store in Duluth, Minnesota a few years ago. Unfortunately, there was no envelope accompanying the letter so we cannot be absolutely sure of its authenticity. However, “Abandon Ship” (which tells the story of the Indianapolis sinking) makes mention of a certain Chief Water Tender Robert T. Makowski having served aboard the ship for almost exactly five years at the time of her sinking. References in the letter lead us to believe he was the writer.
CWT Makowski did not survive the sinking.
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