Letters from Your Loving Son

The year was 1937. The Great Depression was raging. A young man in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, recently graduated from high school, and like multitudes of other young men, vainly searched for a job. After five fruitless months, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. His family depended on his financial support, so he remained in the CCC until November 1940. In January 1941, without prospects for employment, he joined the U.S. Navy, committing his life to his country for the next six years. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drastically changed his life and the lives of millions of Americans. The country was at war. The young man served in the Navy during World War II for three and a half years, mostly in the Pacific Theatre. Only three months before the surrender of Japan, he was killed in a kamikaze attack on the USS Bunker Hill on May 11, 1945. Wilson C. Lineaweaver regularly wrote letters to his family, which his mother faithfully saved. This book is a compilation of those letters, and a taste of the life he experienced with its joys, fears, loves, hopes, trials and horrors.