Okinawa--Fed Up

  Friday, 26 October 1945, 9:45 PM

Dearest Eleanor,
     Hello Sweetheart how are you tonight? Me? I'm fine and getting fat and sassy. As a matter of fact I'm getting just a wee bit fed up. The gold braid in Washington would have you believe that every effort is being made to demobilize and bring the men back from overseas. Yet here we sit. Sixteen officers and about two hundred men are waiting for some survey board to say the Ocelot is of no further use and may be decommissioned.
     There is supposed to be a shortage of doctors. Yet we have three doctors sitting around with no equipment or facilities. Who needs three doctors for two hundred healthy young men? The whole trouble is that there are a few captains, commodores and admirals who would be out of jobs if some of these activities were decommissioned. Then they might not be able to retain their present ranks.
     I've never complained before. As long as I had a job, equipment to work with and patients to care for, I could see a reason for being out here. Now however, I have no equipment. I've been on the beach since the 9th and haven't done a stitch of work. None of us are doing anything but eating, sleeping and bitching. Plenty of that.
     Here is what you can do. Write our congressman and tell him that you husband's ship has been through two typhoons. After each storm the crew was told that they were to return to the states. In the last typhoon the ship was lost and the crew, officers and men are living ashore just waiting for something to happen. None of us are performing any function--just eating and sleeping and waiting. From the look of things, it'll be another month before the ship will be decommissioned. Don't quote me but say you gathered this information from my letters. I'm looking for orders soon, but the way this is dragging out it, it might become necessary for me to have the necessary points to get out before I can leave here. That would run into December. Some of the other officers are writing home, too. Who knows? Maybe we can get some quick action.
     There is a big picture of the Ocelot in the 16 October New York News. I'm enclosing a couple of negatives. The picture with me in it was taken the day before we abandoned ship. The other was taken the day after the storm.
     Tonight's movie was "Why Girls Leave Home." I went even though I saw it on the ship more or less recently. Outside of that there isn't any more news.
     Goodnight Darling, I love you and hope our days apart are few and soon we'll be together forever.

Yours very impatiently,

Gil