Author Description

"Join the Navy and see the world!" In February 1946, Francis William Bennett took that literally and shipped off to Manus Island in the South Pacific, north of Papua New Guinea. There, he would help clean up after hostilities rather than engaging in them and find all kinds of ways to creatively pass the months. Bennett kept in close communication with his family while in the Navy writing home and sending back photos about daily life and a young man's adventures traveling through San Diego, San Francisco, Guam, Manus, Pearl Harbor, the Panama Canal, and finally back to the US and the South Boston Navy Yard. Transcribed in their entirety from hand-written or typed copies kept by his mother, the letters in this book have been kept in chronological order with comments or added stories to help tell the adventure. The letters date from December 11, 1944 when the Navy informed Bennett that he had qualified for specialized training having passed the Eddy Test. They end three years later on December 27, 1947 when the young sailor reached promotion to Electrician Third Class. Before turning nineteen and joining the U.S. Navy, he had never traveled past Missouri and Nebraska, growing up as part of an eastern Kansas farm family in the midst the hard choices of the Great Depression and the years of struggle surrounding World War II. He had never seen the ocean. Books, movies, and an old tube radio were his only contacts with the "outside world." Beginning in 1946 that all changed.