Dart has a powerful need to write, but little to write about, so he turns to the weather. It’s getting much, much warmer and the water’s not the beautiful shade of blue that he’s seen in other parts of the Pacific.

Yesterday he saw a large group of porpoises leaping and playing in the path of the ship. They seem quite energetic for the heat and created a big disturbance in the water. I’ll pause here with a couple of observations. First, Dart refers to these critters as “fish.” That strikes me as odd for a man who prides himself on accurate language. Any second-grader these days could tell you that a porpoise is a mammal, but Dart wasn’t aware of that. Also, he described how they leaped out of the water, arched their bodies and fell, effortlessly back into the waves, as though Dot had never seen such a thing. I thought about that for a moment and decided that the strangeness of these creatures to Dart must be a sign of the times. Most of us know all about dolphins, porpoises, whales and sharks from the time we are children. I credit television for that. Students in the 1940s didn’t have TV, nor did they watch educational films in the classroom. Also, I think that, in general, the human world wasn’t as tuned in to the animal kingdom as we are now. Something as common and recognizable as a porpoise now would have seemed an exotic creature, indeed, in 1945, especially to a boy from Ohio.

Then Dart writes another interesting observation. “Something I noticed during our brief stay in port a few days ago is that men who’ve seen action and who’ve seen near-miracles performed talk about them as every-day occurrences, not like the sensational reactions they have when they first see or experience them. That is, if they talk about them at all. Maybe the reason is that they see so much of these things that their minds become somewhat dulled to the significance of each one, and sometimes even to the whole war. We don’t recognize news when it happens right around us. Everything is of news value, but very, very little of it has been published yet. Some of the details of our first carrier raid on Tokyo, way back in February, are just being release. Some of the things we’ve seen, or been near, or been through since that time are being published now, too.”

“We saw them, heard them, heard of them, even passed remarks about them. But until Life or Time, or The Saturday Evening Post print those stories, or until the newspapers tell them, we don’t realize their worth. People will be astounded by this war for years, as security regulations are lifted and dark secrets are illuminated.”

He’s heard of guys and girls getting matching suits to show the world they’re a couple, but he’s never heard of Cynthia’s idea to cut her hair like her boyfriend’s. Dart vows he’ll never ask Dot to show her love in that manner. (Good thing, becaue Dot would never do it!)

He doesn’t know how she does it, but twice in recent weeks, Dot has dreamed things that were true. The first was when she dreamed of him wearing his favorite sport coat and slacks from his civilian days, even though she’d never seen him in that outfit. Then she dreamed on July 12 that he was on his way home. He’d love to know how she pulls that off.

He tells her to keep her chin up because their reunion isn’t far away now.

Dot writes no more letters in the month of July, and Dart sat out the 25th. But he’ll return with another on July 26th. See you then.

Dart is very hot and is plagued by a bad sunburm, having spent too much time sitting  shirtless on the fantail while he washed some of his white hats.

During his watch in the middle of the night, he was permitted to steer the ship for about 5 minutes. “Steering a ship isn’t at all like driving a car. The ship doesn’t go straight when you hold the wheel still. In fact, it’s likely to wander all over the ocean. I kept watching the gyro compass repeater and we kept bouncing from one side of the course to the other. Lucky for me it wasn’t daylight, or I’d have taken a razzing for the zigzag wake I left.”

The full moon has been keeping him company through his night time watches. He calculates that the September full moon should be on about September 18. If his luck holds, he’ll finally get to share it with his beloved Dot.

As things stand now, he’s on the list for his leave to start on either August 27 or within a few days of September 7. At least half the crew must be on board ship at all times, and there are still details to nail down, but it’s getting very close. He can almost not believe that what they’ve waited for so long is almost upon them!

That boat of the Miller’s sounds like a nice one, quite an accomplishment to build as a hobby. It sounds like Dot had lots of fun hanging on to the tow rope of the boat during the sail. “Looks like you have the daredevil spirit in our family.” (And sadly, Dad didn’t live to see Mom hang-gliding above the Swiss Alps when she was 80, and again at 85, but he would have been proud to stnd below and watch her soar!)

He needs to get a nap in before another wee-hours watch. Maybe he’ll dream of his upcoming reunion with Dot. “I hope Dad has the car radio repaired by September. Might help set the stage for us on some of those evenings. I like soft music – and you.”

My only comment on this entry from Dart is that at some point after receiving it, Dot changed the date to say “June 29,” however, the actual date was July 29.

It’s such a great descriptive letter that my only job is to transcribe it verbatim for readers to enjoy.

When I went up on the deck this morning I saw a welcome sight. There was land, clear. black and definite against the morning sky. The sun was shining too, and the sea was more calm than it had been for a couple of days.

Often, when we’d be leaving an island in the Western Pacific, we used to try to imagine what it would look like to approach some huge continent. The biggest island we saw was so small that it could all be seen in one sweep. Both ends were visible when we were abeam of it.

Surely, it was a large island compared to the coral atolls we’d been fooling around on, but even so, there was no point on that island from which a man couldn’t see opean sea. There was always some direction to look to see flat water surrounded by horizon.

We dreamed of the day when we could approacj some land, and not be able to see both ends of it while we were looking directly at the middle. We looked forward to the time when we could stand on solid ground, knowing that we could face any degree of the compass and see land, unbounded by anything save more land; when we could go further in any direction than the length of our largest island, and still not be in danger of a ducking.

We left one island at sunset. As we looked back, we could see the black shape of that mountain peak which boldly stands above the surface of the sea. The beautiful colors of the sunset changed and deepend as the island sank below the horizon behind us. On that black speck of America, so far from America itself, were some of our friends. Fred was there. Half the crew had brothers or buddies there. Sweethearts were there, too, in the persons of Army and Navy nurses, and Red Cross workers.

For more than two weeks after that, we waited for the thrill of arriving in the United States at dawn; for the relief of seeing the sun come up over our own land. We did arrive home about dawn.

The point of land near the harbor entrance loomed up large and gray through the fog. The sun came out about noon, after we’d tied up. There was no beautiful sunrise. But no one was disappointed. The thrill was just as great. A three-hundren foot ‘homecoming’ pennant, supported at intervals by red balloons, floated listllessly from our foremast. Even the snipes, the engineer force were on deck to see the proceedings. Crews of ships we passed came to attention as we steamed proudly by. Our men, in dungarees, returned the courtesy offered by the men in blues on the other ships. It was a great and happy occasion.

We steamed up a channel and around a curve. We were pushed around by a couple of yellow-cabined tugs. Our lines were made fast to a dock. We looked around. All around. 360 degrees of a compass. And nowhere, not any place at all, did we see open sea. We saw hills, girls, civilians, cars, trucks, oily harbor water, airplanes, big buildings, foggy sky, but no open sea. No flat horizon. We were really home. The noise made by the crew; the delightful, delighted sounds of tough young men suddenly becoming what they were, young boys; was a good thing to hear.

In fact, it could be heard so well that the Captain on the bridge had word passed over the phones that he “requested” that we not be quite so noisy. The noise decreased after the second request, and after every girl in the vicinity had been dated for the next three evenings.

I must stop here, Darling. There’s no more to say about that, but there are millions of ways to say “I love you.” So far, I’ve used only a few hundred thousand. Pick out your favorite, insert here (                  ) and remember it always.

That’s all the letters written by either Dart or Dot in July 1945. Check back on August 1.