2020-01-29 19:43
One of the more mysterious characters we’ve read about over the first two years of Elmer’s correspondence is his old flame, Pat. I had a great deal of difficulty locating her &nd&hell…Read More
Blog Directory > Education Blogs > Matthew Luckett, Ph.D. education Blog >
Matthew Luckett, Ph.d. Blog
lucketthistory.com
Blogarama's Sponsor
Tags:
elmer
letter
trip
march
office hours
louis
office
shellbacks
memorable birthday
golden setters
Official homepage and blog for historian and author Matthew Luckett, Ph.D. Dr. Luckett's first book, Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing and Culture in Western Nebraska, 1850-1890, will be released in late 2020 by the University of Nebraska Press. He also regularly blogs about his grandfather, a Pearl Harbor survivor, and a new book project based on the hundreds of letters Dr. Luckett inherited when his grandpa passed away in 2018.
2020-01-28 08:33
Hi folks,If anyone is coming here from one of my classes (or if anyone else is curious about what I teach), I’ve updated my syllabi on the “Teaching” page, as well as the o… Read More
2020-01-27 16:31
According to Wikipedia, Big Crosby’s “White Christmas” is the best-selling single of all-time, with over 50 million records sold across the world. It resonated with Ameri… Read More
2020-01-24 16:00
On October 31st, 1942, the Chew accompanied a small convey out of Honolulu and escorted it East. Eleven days later, the ship reached its destination: San Francisco. It was the first time Elm… Read More
2020-01-21 18:26
Life is full of transitions, transformations, and comings of age. During the early 1940s, as young men and women felt themselves rushing headlong into the responsibilities demanded by wartim… Read More
2020-01-17 03:25
Hi folks,Sorry for being tardy and not posting for a few days. I usually schedule all my posts well in advance, and I left this week free so that I could blog from the road. But if past expe… Read More
2020-01-13 13:14
Note: although the Battle of Coral Sea occurred in May, the shorter Midway-only newsreel on YouTube has an annoying watermark. One of my clearest memories as a child of my grandfather is f… Read More
2020-01-10 17:46
Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare was one of the early heroes of World War II. On February 20th, 1942, as a formation of nine Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers approached the… Read More
2020-01-08 18:23
“Japan has had a taste of bombing, too – only a taste.”
Grandpa didn’t say anything more about the Doolittle Raid, in which sixteen B-25s pulled off one of the m… Read More
2020-01-06 16:46
“Happiness,” Elmer philosophized in late March, “is just a mental adjustment to the surrounding conditions and circumstances.” While more and more of his friends and… Read More
2020-01-01 20:00
Published in the Los Angeles Times, 1 January 1942 (Posted by GreenTentacle, https://imgur.com/gallery/35PER) One month removed from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Elmer and the tho… Read More
2019-12-31 23:24
Hi folks,Today is the last day of 2019, which means it’s the last day of the year and, for people who don’t know how decades are measured, the end of one of those as well. I kid… Read More
2019-12-31 00:00
Some of you might already know the answer to this question, but when it’s 10 in the evening and you find a reference that needs chasing, you don’t wait around for people to wake… Read More
2019-12-27 11:05
Hi folks,I’ve started looking ahead through the remaining correspondence, all of which I hope to scan, review, analyze, and discuss before the summer.
Although the lead-up to Pearl… Read More
2019-12-25 13:00
A week before December 7th, the day when “all hell broke loose,” Elmer sent his parents their Christmas card nearly a month early. It was probably just as well, since the holiday… Read More
2019-12-24 12:02
Things had quieted down a bit at Pearl Harbor by Christmas. The sadness, dread, and anger lingered over the still-smoking water, but each passing day that did not bring an invasion offered a… Read More
2019-12-23 07:45
This letter gives a sense of the anger that Elmer and tens of thousands of servicemen in Oahu felt towards Japan after the attack. Read it for yourself, but note that it does contain some of… Read More
2019-12-21 11:38
Much of Elmer’s correspondence at this point is dictated by censor requirements. Letters must be short, they could not contain xo marks (which might be code), and they cannot reveal an… Read More
2019-12-19 23:29
Elmer did not have much to report in his December 19th letter – apart from announcing to his folks that he was still alive and well Read More
2019-12-16 18:00
“You are all probably worrying your ‘heads off’ about me. I wrote as soon as possible.” Unfortunately for the parents back home, their intense anxiety over their sons… Read More
2019-12-13 17:59
I apologize for not posting any book reviews for a while. The end of the fall semester is usually tough sledding, especially when one’s family spends their Thanksgiving in the Sierras… Read More
2019-12-10 18:28
This is the first letter Elmer wrote following the attack on Pearl Harbor. As you can see he actually wrote two letters: one on the 10th and another on the 14th. But the letter itself was po… Read More
2019-12-07 18:58
The following is an excerpt from a book I am writing, tentatively entitled Salty Dog: A Pearl Harbor Survivor’s Journey through Letters and Memory, about Elmer Luckett and his experien… Read More
2019-12-04 20:47
Hi folks,Here’s an excerpt from my three-hour oral interview with grandpa, which I recorded on New Year’s Eve in 2014. This twenty-two minute excerpt corresponds to his discussio… Read More
2019-12-02 11:31
This is the last letter I have before the Attack on Pearl Harbor. As Elmer indicates below, he is on patrol until December 6th, so it is likely that this is the last one that gets out.
M… Read More
2019-11-27 21:05
Abraham Lincoln’s decision to enshrine the last Thursday of each November as a day of national Thanksgiving in 1863 was tantamount to a Papal Bull. It immediately rendered null and voi… Read More
2019-11-25 19:10
After spending more time than I care to admit searching for software for my old Ion Video to PC converter hardware, I caved and bought a new Roxio VHS to DVD 3 conversion kit. It was $40 at… Read More
2019-11-22 17:38
As if our political differences were not enough, the last few months of 2019 have reintroduced inter-generational conflict into the culture wars. This time the insults come with a new menu o… Read More
2019-11-20 19:16
By October, as the Chew underwent the final stages of its rehabilitation, the World War I-era destroyer began to look more distinctive, more modern. Elmer related what he could to his parent… Read More
2019-11-18 18:00
We are now nearing the end of our month-by-month letter analysis series. In fact, next Wednesday’s post on November 1941 (just in time for Thanksgiving!) will be the last for a while… Read More
2019-11-15 19:29
It was about 9:40pm when I approached my wife. I had just woken up from a 90 minute nap (which happens when your 2-year-old daughter demands that you lie down near her in the adult-sized day… Read More
2019-11-13 20:06
In September 1941, the sound of wedding bells filled the air. Elmer’s best friend, Osie, decided to marry his fiancee in Hawaii on the 10th. Like with many young couples, a twinge of u… Read More
2019-11-11 20:01
Hi folks,Today is Veteran’s Day, so I would like to give a shout-out to all of this blog’s readers and to everyone else who has served our country.
In particular, I would lik… Read More
2019-11-08 20:00
Between travel and midterms grading I will not be able to post a book review this week. Instead, I have posted the talk that I gave a few weeks ago at the Western History Association Confere… Read More
2019-11-06 20:20
Elmer’s August 18th letter home contained two important pieces of news, neither of which might have seemed all that surprising to his doting parents: he officially received a Fireman 2… Read More
2019-11-05 02:06
So, the only way I can keep up with this site is to write my posts in advance and program them to drop throughout the week. That includes my most recent post today about Saint Louis.
Unf… Read More
2019-11-04 20:01
On Thursday morning we are going to fly to Saint Louis for a few days, partly to make up for me not bringing our daughter there over the summer due to my health issues, and partly because au… Read More
2019-11-01 19:00
At some point I had to start going through relevant military and academic histories of World War II, and although I still have a stack of Pearl Harbor books to review I wanted a change of pa… Read More
2019-10-30 17:11
Summers in Hawaii were hot, but so were the springs, falls, and winters. If anything set the season apart, it was the Chew crew’s determination to enjoy it. Elmer’s letters that… Read More
2019-10-28 18:50
Hi folks,
It’s one month until Thanksgiving. I don’t know about you, but I am already looking forward to large quantities of pumpkin pie and plates piled high with turkey, stu… Read More
2019-10-27 17:28
Last week, an undersea exploration venture founded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen succeeded in locating the Kaga and the Akagi, two of the four carriers sunk by United States aircraft durin… Read More
2019-10-25 19:25
Frankly, I’m glad that Clint Johnson hopped off the Word Processor and immediately emailed his editor the second his narrative reached V-J Day, because otherwise I would not have had t… Read More
2019-10-23 19:04
Elmer spent the majority of the month at sea, so he had fewer opportunities to write his folks. Not that he had a great deal to say, anyway. “There really isn’t much to write abo… Read More
2019-10-21 17:15
I was in Tucson weekend with my family for the Arizona Wildcats football game. My father in law is an alum, and every I watch a game with him in the alumni box. Not necessarily a Wildcats fa… Read More
2019-10-18 04:00
Hi folks,
This morning I flew to Las Vegas to attend the annual Western Historical Association (WHA) conference at the Westgate. The WHA is your typical academic conference: there are doz… Read More
2019-10-16 19:10
Before Americans really even began to realize it, the Great Depression was over. Times weren’t good, necessarily, but then again they were nowhere near as bad as they were a decade ear… Read More
2019-10-15 15:25
For sailors and soldiers stationed on Oahu, the local YMCA offered a comfortable home base away from, well . . . base.
Grandpa’s box of war documents did not just contain letters… Read More
2019-10-12 20:47
Hi folks,
If anyone reading this has some material they would like to share about a relative or ancestor who fought in World War II, I would love to learn more about it! Please send me a… Read More
2019-10-12 19:00
I always loved listening to my grandfather’s stories about the War, but more than anything I admired how contextualized the experience. Pearl Harbor and the War were never really about… Read More
2019-10-09 19:07
On April 1st, Elmer’s mess duty was finally up. Although the extra pay was nice, he was glad to be finally in the engine room, learning the ropes. His crew-mates immediately began trai… Read More
2019-10-07 19:31
Thee 78th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack is two months away. I am still working my way through the spring 1941 letters, and would like to get those finished by Thanksgiving so that I… Read More
2019-10-05 17:43
Hi folks,
If you like what I’m doing here, please do me a favor and follow this blog via email. Simply click the “Follow” button on the right and, if you are not a WordP… Read More
2019-10-04 16:36
One thing I’d like to start doing in this space is to spend some time writing about the books I am using in my research. While admittedly my research interest in my Grandpa’s Let… Read More
2019-10-03 16:23
I recently came across this article about Fireman 3rd Class Harold Kendall, who was killed on the West Virginia during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Like so many others that day, Kendall&rsquo&hell…Read More
2019-10-02 16:15
I’m running behind on my research and writing during the past couple of weeks. Everyone in our house but the dog has been sick for much of that time, and unfortunately the dog is not a… Read More
2019-09-30 19:15
By early March 1941, Elmer was beginning to get acclimated to his new surroundings: the Chew, Pearl Harbor, the Neutrality Zone, Honolulu, and Waikiki Beach. “I feel fine,” he wr… Read More
2019-09-28 17:08
I just wanted to post a quick shout-out to UCLA History and African American Studies Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, who has just won a MacArthur Genius Grant for her work uncovering and ch… Read More
2019-09-26 18:51
One of the things I miss the most about growing up in Missouri is the fall colors, which light up the bluffs along the rivers with slashes of orange, red, yellow, and brown. When I was a kid… Read More
2019-09-24 19:00
One thing I always wondered about . . . how frequently do newly enlisted seamen in the Navy get seasickness? Is it common, or infrequent enough for those who do to get razzed about it?
El… Read More
2019-09-21 17:16
I am already grappling with the realization that this space is going to be a bit muddled at times. Over the next few months I will be emphasizing the Grandpa’s Letters project as I bui… Read More
2019-09-19 18:03
It’s no secret that most of the stuff I post here stems from my work digitizing, reading, and then blogging about the letters my grandpa wrote to his parents and his future wife, Rose… Read More
2019-09-17 19:00
Grandpa Luckett wrote about a lot of different things in his letters home. He liked to describe his friends, his work, his surroundings, his ship, and his various adventures while on liberty… Read More
2019-09-16 00:00
For whatever reason I did not share this back in May (this was right about when I started getting sick), but the Interior Borderlands compilation is out.
Here is the Amazon link, where yo… Read More
2019-09-13 12:30
I apologize for not having posted for awhile. This past summer has been, well . . . eventful.
It began with two weeks of being sick with what I thought was severe food poisoning. Once I… Read More
2019-09-12 04:00
My grandpa had no problems telling his Pearl Harbor survival story. Sometimes he would pause, sometimes he would choke up a little or shed a tear, but he never seemed to doubt or misremember… Read More
Subscribe to Matthew Luckett, Ph.d.
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!