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Joe’s War: Great Book for Veterans and WW II Buffs

My friend Virginia Anders kindly visited this week’s Scottsdale Business Association meeting and delivered a guest presentation about her recently published book. Besides being a pretty interesting lady on her own, Virginia acquired, almost by serendipity, a treasure trove of historic documents written by her father, who was an officer on the U.S.S. Yorktown during World War II. He had written letters home to his wife, Virginia’s mother, almost every day that he was at sea in the Pacific Theater.

Long widowed, the love of his life carried his letters with her until the time came for her to move to a care facility. Virginia, helping her mom divest herself of her belongings and pack what remained, noticed a stack of envelopes sitting atop the trash dumpster, recognized them as her dad’s correspondence, and asked if she could have them—and of course the answer was yes. Virginia rescued the documents two hours before the recycling truck came along.

The pile of letters morphed into a labor of love (literally: no cliché here) for Virginia. To create a book, she transcribed them and then researched the history of the Yorktown. To build context for the correspondence, she interpolated military reports of the Yorktown’s position and activities for the dates her dad, Joe Clifford, wrote his letters.

Men (and the few women) at war were enjoined from sending details of military operations in letters home. To keep the censors from literally cutting (with a razor blade) passages from his correspondence, Virginia’s dad Joe was careful to keep to the daily life on board ship. But he was a natural storyteller, and the result is a vivid revelation of what it was like to live on board a carrier in the middle of a war zone, where kamikazi planes (which Joe coded as “buzzbombs”) targeted American ships and torpedoes were a moment-t0-moment fear.

Virginia published the book through Amazon, making it available in hard copy as well as on Kindle. If you or someone you know is a World War II veteran or an aficionado of WWII history, Joe’s War: His Yorktown Letters Home would make a very fine gift.