Lake Tahoe to Sicily, Los Angeles
to Hawaii—1937 to 1946
Love and Death—a Wartime Romance
In the summer of 1937, two complete strangers met by chance at Zephyr Point in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, during the final days of the Presbyterian Youth Conference,. They must have been destined to meet because they both were immediately attracted to each other and, for want of a better phrase, fell head-over-heels in love.
One of them was a pretty nineteen-year-old Chinese-American college co-ed from Hanalei, Hawaii, who would begin her junior year at UC Berkeley after having finished her first two years of college in only three semesters and a summer session at San Francisco Junior College. The other was a handsome eighteen-year-old Chinese-American youth from Los Angeles would begin his first year at Pomona College in Claremont.
One can only speculate the unexplainable mutual attraction that draws two people together to eventually become one. This has happened to me more than once in the course of my own life and I still am unable to explain it. But it is because Janet Pearl Chock from Hawaii and Robert Clarence Chan from Los Angeles met on that particular day and were immediately attracted to each other that I am here today.
My mother told me that it had been a case of “love at first sight” for both of them. It was indeed something that neither had ever experienced before. Their feelings for each other went beyond mere infatuation.
As they came to know each other, they discovered that they shared interests in sports and were similarly athletically inclined. They had both been brought up in very strict environments, and religion had always played a major part in their moral and social lives.
Most of the young second- and third-generation Chinese-Americans of that period were anxious to be perceived more as Americans than Chinese—not that they denied their cultural heritage—but rather as a means of gaining acceptance into a primarily Caucasian world.
Bob, having come from a big city, was the more sophisticated and worldly of the two young star-crossed lovers. Janet had grown up in a rural village on the island of Kauai and had led a relatively sheltered life. Of course, like any young man, Bob tried to impress Janet with what he perceived was his worldliness and athletic prowess.
They were able to share each other’s company for only a week before returning to their respective colleges. Over the next five years, their courtship and love affair would be carried on primarily by correspondence. The letters that my mother wrote to my father during this period still survive.
In the first letter that Janet wrote Bob, she tells him that she misses him horribly. She continues on, writing, “After all, I enjoyed every minute with you. I can’t think of any time that I have been so happy. It was perfect while it lasted. It was so hard to see you leave.”
Janet enrolled in of all the classes required to complete her major so that she could graduate from UC Berkeley within the remaining time she could afford to be on the mainland.
At Pomona College, Bob continued his punishing schedule of academics, sports, and ROTC training. He won awards and medals for his track-and-field endeavors and was also on the college baseball team. All of this left him very little time for a social life other than interacting with his closest friends and family.
Meanwhile, Janet found the campus at UC Berkeley to be large and overwhelming. As one of only 150 Chinese students in attendance, she found herself squarely in the racial minority—the exact opposite of her situation in Hawaii. She had a few friends she had met at the university, including some students from Hawaii, but none came from her home island of Kauai. The friends that she did make became close ones.
She managed to find lodging at the home of Dr. Hunter, the pastor of St. John’s Presbyterian Church, while working two jobs to support herself. From then on, Janet’s life revolved primarily around her academic studies, work, and church activities with the Hunter family.
One thing that Janet did miss with a vengeance was the Chinese and Hawaiian food she had grown up with on Kauai. The regional Cantonese cuisine on the mainland was somewhat similar to the Chinese food that she had known, but it was still not the same. Her letters home bore constant reminders of how much she missed her mother’s cooking.
During the summer vacation months, Bob would drive up to Berkeley to see Janet. This brief respite from their punishing academic life only seemed to reinforce their firm belief that they were indeed truly meant for each other.
They would keep writing to each other as 1938 turned into 1939 and 1939 became 1940. Janet would be graduating in May of that year, and she would have to return home to Hawaii to pursue her career as a teacher at Kapaa Intermediate School, while Bob would be finishing his final year at Pomona.
After graduation, Bob would report to the ROTC at Camp Ord, California.
Bob found that military life definitely agreed, with him and he envisioned a career in the army. He wrote enthusiastic letters to his parents back home and to Janet in Hawaii. After all, taking over his father’s restaurant business didn’t appeal all that much to him.
Janet spent the summer visiting relatives in Honolulu before returning home to Hanalei. She found the village as she had left it, but it was good to be home once again. In the fall, Janet began working at Kapaa Intermediate School where she taught physical education and ninth-grade social studies.
Bob finished the Officers’ Training Course and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant before returning to Pomona College to complete his senior year.
Toward the end of 1940, Bob’s father, Frank You Chan, passed away. After his father’s death, Bob legally changed the spelling of the family name to Chinn.
In July of 1941, Lieutenant Robert C. Chinn reported for duty at Fort Lewis, Washington, where he was assigned to Company H—a Heavy Weapons Company of the Thirtieth Infantry, which was a part of the Third Division of the United States’ Army. Here, he would undergo the rigorous training that would make him the leader of a machine gun platoon.
Almost half of the Pacific Ocean separated him from Janet, but their romance continued through their constant supply of letters to each other. They made plans to get married. After finishing teaching the fall semester in Kapaa, Janet would sail for the mainland and they would wed. Of course, there was no way that they could anticipate what would happen on December 7, 1941. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and war was declared, the US Navy requisitioned all passenger ships to convert them into troop transports and there was no longer any way for Janet to leave Hawaii.
The army mobilized for war rapidly. Bob was assigned to train as a Jiu-Jitsu instructor in the Third Division Instructors’ training facility at McNeil Island, Washington for a period of time before being transferred along with his company to Fort Ord, California, in May of 1942.
In the meantime, Janet was fortunate enough to secure passage on a Clipper flight to San Francisco the following month. Bob and Janet would finally be reunited and they would now realize their long-delayed plan of getting married.
Janet and Bob were married at the Presbyterian Church shortly after she arrived in San Francisco on June 21, 1942. The June bride and her husband moved into a rented two-story cottage in the beautiful coastal town of Carmel, California, not far from where he was stationed. For Janet, being married to her handsome, caring husband marked the fulfillment of her fondest dreams.
She was not surprised to find that Bob had grown much more worldly during the course of the two years that they had been apart. The young college boy that she had once known and fallen in love with had now been transformed into a responsible adult and a man. He now enjoyed smoking a pipe as well as having an occasional drink of Scotch after dinner.
Their social circle revolved primarily around the other officers and their wives. According to my mother, they were supremely happy. But they also knew that soon these happy days would come to an end. The war was raging in Europe and the Pacific and they both knew that it was only a matter of time before Bob would be sent overseas.
In September of 1942, Bob’s company was moved out to Camp Pickett, Virginia, in preparation to be shipped overseas. Janet and two of the other officers’ wives would make the long cross-country drive to join their husbands in Virginia.
Janet arrived at Camp Pickett, Virginia, on September 19, 1942 and was reunited once again with Bob. At that time she was nearly two months into her pregnancy with me. Both Bob and Janet were well aware that their time together would be short, but they cherished each moment they could be in each other’s company. Even though they were now married, they hardly had any time to spend as a normal married couple.
Janet was able to find lodging with a lovely family in the little township of Nottoway, about six miles from where Bob was stationed. She found the Southern hospitality in Virginia charming. In a way, it reminded her of Hawaiian hospitality. Although she found the food in the South delicious, she found herself longing for Chinese and Hawaiian food. She blamed this on her pregnancy, of course.
At the beginning of November 1942, Bob’s company boarded a US Navy troop carrier bound for North Africa and Janet returned home to Los Angeles where she would live with her mother-in-law for the duration of the war. Janet’s love for her husband was so great that she would write letters to him at least once, and sometimes twice a day. Bob was a prolific correspondent as well, and he wrote whenever he had the chance. To make matters even better, he held the position of the official US Army mail examiner for his company, and since he was allowed to censor his own mail as well as everyone else’s, he had the freedom and opportunity to write far more personal letters.
His troop carrier had an amphibious landing in North Africa and the company was immediately assigned to take part in Operation Torch, an Allied attempt to pincer the German and Italian forces in Vichy-held French North Africa. The operation took him from Casablanca to Oran and Algiers. By the end of November, the Axis forces had been solidly defeated in Morocco and Algeria.
The Eighth Army next advanced westward by land along the North African coast to Tunisia, where they joined with the British army to battle the Axis forces. The Tunisian Campaign finally ended on May 7, 1943 with the fall of the capital city, Tunis. My father was in Tunisia when he received word that I had been born. He wrote a letter to my mother, which reads as follows:
May 25, 1943
Dearest Janet,
Today was a big day for me. First, in the morning I received the socks you sent—then in the afternoon I received word from the Red Cross that a son was born to me on May 10th. How’s that for an exciting day! How are you and the kid? Write and tell me all about it. Don’t forget to send some pictures. Guess I gotta get home now. Well, we have a little job to do first and it will take some time. Maybe we’ll be home by this Christmas.
We are still in Tunisia awaiting the next move. You should see all the prisoners and the German equipment we have. Going back a little—from Fedala we went to Guercil, Fr. Morocco where we did some patrol duty. Guercil is between Taza and Oujda. Thanks again for the baby and when I get home we will raise some more.
Loving husband, Bob
Sixteen days later my mother received another letter written on a German data sheet.
The hard-fought Tunisian Campaign resulted in the defeat of General Erwin Rommel’s crack Afrika Korps and the final surrender of the Axis troops in Africa. My father had survived the battle to liberate North Africa and next he would move on with the Thirtieth Infantry and the Western Task Force commanded by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton to take part in the Invasion of Sicily.
The battle for Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, lasting for six weeks and beginning with Allied landings on July 10, 1943, was one of the major and most decisive campaigns of the Second World War. Winning it meant opening the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean as well as clearing the way for the Allied invasion of Italy. My father was in the first wave of the Allied amphibious landings in Sicily.
The first letter that my father wrote to my mother from Sicily is dated July 24, 1943. In it, he writes:
Now that things have quieted down I have an opportunity to write you. We landed on the Southern Coast of Sicily on July 10th, as you might have read about. I am well as are the other officers of Company H. We had quite a time; I am very proud of my platoon—they knocked out an enemy artillery piece and inflicted a number of casualties and took quite a few prisoners. When our rear echelon came in they said I had been reported as killed in action—hope you did not receive that rumor.
Our Battalion was chosen to land first and clear the beach of pill boxes, barbed wire and defenses—we did a damn good job. I can’t tell you anything else about the operation at present but I can return to [telling you about] Africa. We were bivouacked at Bone and a corkwood forest (one of the largest in the world). From there we pushed to Ferryville and Begerte, Tunis and Mateur. We embarked at Ferryville for Sicily.
This amphibious stuff is getting to be a habit—wonder when it is going to stop. The land here is covered with fruit trees (peaches, plums, figs, pears, etc.), tomato patches and melon patches. The only drawbacks here are the millions of sand fleas.
My last letter from you was dated June 20. You had better save food and drinks at the Café—I promised my platoon a big feed and drink when we get home. Many times at night I go back to our first meeting at Tahoe and bring our relationship through the years to date. What did you really think of me that night we took you home from Tahoe in ’37?
Glad the baby is doing well—can hardly wait to see him and exert my influence. You bet I wouldn’t wash his diapers—that’s the mother’s job. You know how hard it is to get me to wash dishes. I’ll close for now as the light is getting dim and we never have campfires. I am holding on ’til the day I return home.
Loving husband, Bob
The following day, July 25, he wrote my mother another letter:
Dearest Janet,
I just wrote yesterday but I had better write while I can. Our area has been cleared of all organized resistance and we are taking a breather to rest and clean up. I’m glad we had all that rough and rugged training in Africa—it certainly came in handy here.
The island is just a mass of rugged mountain ranges. I had an Italian officer’s saber I picked up for a souvenir but it was too difficult to keep while fighting so I left it. As you know for the operation we were part of the 7th Army.
It seems that our work has just begun so don’t be disappointed if I don’t come home soon. We’ll be together one of these days and we’ll make up for lost time. I’ve come to the conclusion that these amphibious landings are “rough”—but definitely. Hate to make another but if we have to—it must be done and we are the boys to do it. Enclosed is a coupon from a German pack of cigarettes. Hope letters come through soon so you can keep me company.
Loving husband, Bob
By the first week of August, the Allies had made great progress in the invasion of Sicily, but the Axis forces countered by setting up a second defensive line. Known as the Etna Line, it ran from San Fratello on the on the north coast of the island on through to Troina and Aderno.
On the coast of Santa Agata and San Fratello, the German Twenty-Ninth Panzergrenadier Division and the Italian Twenty-Sixth Assietta Infantry Division were proving particularly difficult to dislodge. For six days the German and Italian forces had stubbornly held onto their positions, both inflicting and taking extremely heavy casualties.
Finally, on the night of August 7, 1943, General Patton decided to send a small amphibious force led by Lt. Col. Lyle Bernard behind the enemy lines with the mission to outflank and defeat the German and Italian holdouts.
My father, who commanded a machine gun platoon in the Second Battalion of the Thirtieth Infantry Regiment, was part of this small assault force. As had been planned, they landed on the beach a few miles from San Fratello.
After the landing, as day dawned, they managed to completely surprise the German and Italian forces and secure the coastal highway. In the course of the battle to take the final artillery position, my father was killed. He was twenty-three years old. Soon after, Santa Agata fell to the Allied forces. My father is mentioned three times in Rupert Prohme’s book titled History of the 30th Infantry Regiment, World War II, published in 1947. The exploits of his machine gun platoon during the first wave of the initial amphibious landing in Sicily is documented, as is the assault force amphibious landing and the part he played in the battle for Santa Agata which led to his death.
On the battlefront, deliveries of mail from home had been few and far between. The last letter my father had received from my mother was one that she had sent to him on June 29, 1943. He was carrying it in his pocket when he was killed.
My father’s last letter to my mother was dated August 5—three days before he was killed in action. In it, he touches briefly on the difficulty of fighting a war in the rugged terrain of an island like Sicily, before telling her that Italy is now in turmoil and ready to rise up against the oppressive Mussolini regime. He also asks her if she has learned how to cook Chinese food yet.
My mother was truly devastated, as was her mother-in-law Gertrude. The love of her life would now never return to her, and my grandmother had lost her only son.
In the weeks and months that followed, all of the letters that my mother had written to my father from the end of June to the first week of September came slowly trickling back stamped, “It is regretted this letter could not be delivered as the addressee has been reported deceased,” along with a War Department Casualty Status verification stating, “Killed in action.”
This caused even more heartbreak for my mother as she opened them to read the things that had been written to my father in which she expressed her most heartfelt and personal feelings, the joy she felt as she watched her baby growing, how she felt as she adjusted to life with his mother and the rest of her new Los Angeles family, how she had learned to cook Chinese the dishes that he liked. All of this he would now never get to read and know.
Early in July, 1945, my mother received a letter from PFC Lamond L. Mills, one of the men that had served in my father’s platoon. The letter detailed the circumstances of his death. It is copied here is exactly as it was written:
June 26, 1945
Dear Mrs. Chinn,
Again this is Mills reporting from his wife’s mother’s home. A 60 day rest has been afforded me since returning, and I might say badly needed rest.
Mrs. Chinn, I hope I’m not out of place in writing but I know no one knows more about what happened to Lt. Chinn than myself, and I know how those at home desire to know just what brought about the loss of that loved one. Many times I’ve thought of you and felt so sorie [sic] that you would have to be one to have your husband taken from you in that great struggle over there. He was always so brave so fearless and he was blessed with N.C.O.’s that possessed similar courage to carry out the assignments or tasks as they were handed down, and I might say they would go any place with Lt. Chinn. It was a risky task given us that Aug. 8th, 1943. We came in behind the enemy line in large ducks from the LST. The ingineers [sic] has done a perfect job enabling us to go with our equipment to a high ridge just across from the enemy. We had met some opposition prire [sic] to this but had handled it with no loss to this with the Lt. [Chinn]. Lt. Way had two men injured. Both platoons sit up [sic] on this ridge and the Lt.s were making plans for the next move when a burst caught Lt. Chinn on the knee very seriously injouring [sic] the limb. We carried him off the crest and gave what medical attention we knew how. We also employed the skill of a Medic but it was impossible to move him far, and it was impossible to get in touch with a Dr. Our forces were obliged to temporarily withdraw up the ridge leaving myself to the care of my beloved friend. Then Germans closed in on us and I gave up. They stubbornly gave in to my request for the help of three men to carry the Lt. to the ade [sic] station. It was so painful on the narrow board we had him on that I decided to carry another injoured [sic] American first and bring back a stretcher. I found they had none but had lead me to believe they had one. I returned soon to find the Lt. was gone. How brave he was to the very end. I saw him grasp the hand of the enemy and say “You are good sports, you are all right.” I withdrew his pocketbook that contained a letter with your address and picture of the baby. Any money the Germans later took this from me in an official manner, but I fear it is lost for good. May God grant you courage to carrie [sic] on and raise your Son to be as fine a man as his father, Robert C. Chinn.
Sincerely your friend,
P.FC Lamond L. Mills
Private Mills’ letter rekindled my mother’s grief, but it also brought her a kind of closure. She had survived for the last two years with her fond memories of the handsome young man she had been so very much in love with, the man who she had married that was the father of her son.
My father had been temporarily interred at the US Military Cemetery Caronia, located equidistant along the coast between Palermo and Messina in Sicily. My mother could not bear the thought of him being so far away, buried on the foreign shore of the country where he had died.
In 1946, my mother had my father’s remains returned to the United States for a final burial at the San Bruno National Cemetery outside of San Francisco. She had finally accepted his death; perhaps it was now time for her to move on.
Some of my earliest memories are of being on the beach with my mother. I remember how comfortable the warm sun felt and the feeling of the sand and the cold water of the ocean. I also remember that I lived in a large house that had a Gold Star on the door with my mother and my grandmother.
One of my early obsessions was phonograph records, which I discovered at around the age of two. I was totally fascinated that such a wide variety of music could come out of the grooves of those mysterious black shellac discs revolving around a turntable at seventy-eight revolutions per minute. By the time I was three years old I was assembling a diverse collection of records with the fierce determination of a rabid collector. I would pester both my mother and my grandmother to take me to the record shop in downtown Los Angeles.
On one of these visits, I set my sights on one particular album. My mother told me that I wouldn’t like that music, but I was childishly determined that I would. Self-centered and stubborn even at that early age, I finally wore her down and she bought me the record album. When I got home and played the four records inside it, I was fascinated by the music even though I couldn’t really understand it. It was my introduction to “boogie woogie.” There I was at the age of three, bopping to the hip piano of Joe “Fingers” Carr.
I felt like a lucky boy indeed when I learned that I had not one, but two grandmothers. There was my father’s mother, Grandmother Chinn, who I called Gramma, and also my mother’s mother, Grandmother Chock—who lived in the village of Hanalei on the island of Kauai in the Territory of Hawaii. And I was to see her soon. It was 1946 when my mother and I boarded the Matson Lines ship SS Matsonia and made the journey to Hawaii and back to Hanalei, the place where my mother was born and where she had grown up.
After the ship docked in Honolulu, we were met at the pier by a bewildering array of relatives. They greeted us with the Hawaiian word “Aloha!” as they hung flower leis around our necks in welcome. I was even presented with a record for my collection.
They took us to a picnic lunch at Ala Moana Park. They all seemed so very glad to see us that I was truly overwhelmed. It was my first experience of island aloha.
Sorting out the relatives who came to visit us during our short stay in Honolulu was a daunting task for a three-year-old boy. I had more relatives than I could have ever imagined, but this was only the beginning.
There were my mother’s two sisters who lived in Honolulu proper: Ardith, our host, was married to Dr. Joseph Lam and their daughter was my cousin Jo Ann, who was seven years old and the only one somewhat close to my age; and Nee Chang, an elementary schoolteacher, was married to a successful businessman named Harry Wong.
My uncle Wilfred Chock was my mother’s oldest brother and he was in charge of the radio division at the Honolulu Police Department, which, to a young boy like me, seemed to be a very exciting occupation. He was married to my auntie Violet and their children were Evelyn, Wallace, Bertha, James, and Marjorie. They lived in Kahalu’u on the Kaneohe Bay about a half-hour’s drive from Honolulu. My uncle Hugh Chock was currently on leave from the Army.
Then there was my uncle George, who was my grandfather Chock Chin’s son by his second wife, so he was actually my mother’s half-brother. He was with his son Gordon who was wearing his Army Air Corps uniform. Gordon was a good-looking young man and half-Caucasian. A few years later he would be killed when his plane crashed in Germany.
I don’t know if all of this information actually sank in at the time, but one thing that I did realize, after taking into consideration all of the relatives that I knew about in Los Angeles as well all of those I had met here, was that I was a part of what might be considered a very large family.