Your son, John Allen

As a forester, Bob Naeger has mapped parts of the Trail of Tears with a state archaeologist and found forgotten cemeteries in the middle of kudzu-covered timber tracts. But last year he and his wife Renee purchased an old Mississippi cabin and found on the property a forgotten trunk. When he unlatched the trunk’s rusty hinges, he set free seven decades of smells clinging to its contents. Beneath a wallpapered panel he found 25 letters.

U.S. Army Air Corpsman John Allen Price, stationed at Wheeler Field on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, wrote them to his mother from 1939 through 1941. The first said: “I kinda hate to start writing. … It seems as if I should just wait until I come home and tell you everything then.” But the 24-year-old airplane mechanic decided to keep writing. For two years he sent home precisely one letter each month, each with a 3-cent, indigo-colored Thomas Jefferson postage stamp on the front of the envelope and a sprawling return address on the back.

Price also sent part of his wages home to his mother, Leona. Widowed at 25, she had raised five children of her own, plus four belonging to her sister. When Price learned of Leona’s surprise remarriage, he penned congratulations: “I have always thought lots of George Little, but even as good as he is, he is no more than my precious mother deserves.” Three letters later, Price called his new stepfather “Pop.”

Price wrote about a tonsillectomy that kept him in the station hospital (and away from KP duty) for nine days, a mumps quarantine that kept his squadron from the barbershop, and a new spark plug’s ability to make a P-40 pursuit plane “run like a sewing machine.” He described maneuvers involving planes fully loaded with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, during which “everyone wears a .45, with two loaded clips in his belt.” He described the challenges of being a crew chief. When one of his men made a suicide leap from a cliff, he took it hard. “I wasn’t as friendly toward him as I could have been.”

Price’s last letter, dated Nov. 23, 1941, was weighty, and not merely because of the double postage affixed to the envelope. War loomed, and the recently promoted staff sergeant sent his mother four pages of thoughts: “I know it is lonesome and trying for you, but you shouldn’t feel so badly about your two sons being away. For there are some poor mothers who are no doubt giving up more sons than you ever had. … I still do not like the army life, but I have a job to do for my country. As long as it is in danger, I will remain in this life to do that job. Of course, I will come home if possible when my time is up.”

On Dec. 1, Price bought a classic snow-and-holly Christmas card for his mother. He signed it with a simple “your son, John,” and dropped it by the post office at 3:30 p.m. Six days later, just minutes before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, dive bombers targeted Wheeler Field and its air defenses, killing Price and 34 others there. Nearly 3,500 Americans were killed or wounded in the overall Pearl Harbor attack.

The Naegers found 107 condolence letters tucked away in the trunk. They also found a Western Union telegram that arrived on Dec. 10, 1941: John Manthrop of Life magazine requested a photo for a story on the first casualties of the war.

Price’s remains didn’t return to Mississippi until 1947. A newspaper then featured his military portrait and funeral details, including the expected three-round volley and folded flag. In 1970, Leona’s headstone was placed just yards away from her son’s grave at Pleasant Hill Cemetery. The Naegers do not know why the trunk ended up in an old smokehouse on the family property, where it stayed for almost a half-century.

Price had longed for home. “I have been here one year, one month, 14 days, and about six hours,” he recorded on Sept. 16, 1940, just after Congress enacted America’s first peacetime draft: “How are all the boys taking the passing of the conscription bill? Tell them that I will probably see them sooner than I expected.”

—Kim Henderson, a graduate of the World Journalism Institute mid-career class, is a mom with her own stash of Marine mail