Japanese Letter from WWII

[Aiden Pettengill]

Hi everyone!
I was going through some paper money from my great grandfathers tour in WWII and found this letter. I know it is in Japanese but have yet to find anyone who can translate it. Would anyone be willing to help?
Thank you!
Aiden
(He was a medic in the first wave of the D-Day Invasion for anyone who was curious.)

[Kris Cook]

I will send the images to my brother. His daughter lives in Japan. Hopefully they can get you a translation.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Contact Mike Davis, over at NC Woodworker. His daughter majored in Japanese, and could probably translate for you

[Mike Henderson]

Do you know how he came to have that letter? Since he was part of the Normandy invasion, it's unlikely he served in the Pacific, unless it was post war, during the occupation of Japan.

Mike

[Aiden Pettengill]

Mike,
Unfortunately I don't. He was in Belgium and France from what we have put together. He didn't talk about it as he wasn't proud of the things he did overseas. The letter was found mixed in with paper money from his tour. I have a feeling it came off of someone he treated but that we will never know the answer to.

[Aiden Pettengill]

Thank you Kris!

[Scott Clausen]

You could try Google Translate. I used it when I went to France and Switzerland. You download the app and pick the from and to languages to translate. You then hold your phone camera over it and it will "attempt" to translate to English real time on your phone display. It is somewhat clunky but was able to let me get the gist of a menu I was looking at.

[Brian Holcombe]

Your great grandfather may have had a similar experience to my grandpa. He landed on D-Day + three, and After Germany’s surrender he was shipped to the Philippines in preparation for an American invasion of Japan.

[Aiden Pettengill]

Tried that. Didn't work. I think it's because it's written in the cursive equivalent of Japanese.

[Aiden Pettengill]

To be honest we have no idea.

[Luke Dupont]

Wow, interesting letter.

Someone alerted me to this thread. I speak and read Japanese (I read fairly well), but man, this is hard -- both because it's in a form of cursive handwriting (not many people, even Japanese people, can write this sort of cursive any more) and because the Japanese langauge was written quite differently back then.

I'll see if I can make heads or tails of it though. At a glance I can read bits and pieces, but not enough to parse full sentences.

Pretty sure my wife can't read it either.

My Japanese grandfather in law is in his 90's and remembers the war. I wonder he could read it... Not sure when/if I'll have the chance to ask him though.

[Luke Dupont]

Okay, looked at it carefully for a few minutes. I need to look up the characters on the front, but I think they're clear enough to pretty easily read the address and name of who they're sent to.

The body of the message itself is in cursive and much more difficult to read though. Here's what I've made out so far in the first sentence:
"？？
？？手紙を書？？元気で業務に？んで？？する？ありと？？んで？？す。"
Basically, a salutation, and mentioning something about "writing a letter", and I think "being well at work" or "being well and [something] to work." It's not clear whether the writer is talking about themselves or the recipient yet.

The second sentence is even more challenging...

I'm not even good at reading old civil war letters in handwritten English though, lol.

This sort of thing is quite challenging because you have to be able to "fill in the blanks" where you can't quite make out letters easily, and to do that, you need a good familiarity with the manner of speech, vocabulary used, and way of writing and spelling, which has all changed significantly since WWII.

[Aiden Pettengill]

Ooo super cool! Thank you so much! I would love to see who it was sent to and possibly track the family down to return it.

[Luke Dupont]

Ooo super cool! Thank you so much! I would love to see who it was sent to and possibly track the family down to return it.

Had my wife look at it and we got just a little further:


FRONT:

Japanese Imperial Stamp
Tainan stamp

Addressed to
Somewhere in 高雄市 (Kaohsiung, Taiwan) *I'll have to try to look up some of the characters to get a more complete address if I can.

明 博 殿　Mr. Meihaku(?　*probably Chinese name, not Japanese, so the pronunciation is likely different, not "Meihaku")

Not sure where from. It looks like another address in taiwan maybe, and maybe another taiwanese person, though it could be a Japanese person or address.


BODY:

？？[Salutation, still can't quite make it out]

？？手紙を書？？元気で業務に励んで？？する？ありと？？んでいます。
(Something about writing a letter or a written letter, and being well and working hard... My wife couldn't read the latter half any better than I could)

？？？？？？
(Can't read first part of second sentence)

。。。？？様に返却していますからおしらせします。
("[...] I'm letting you know I've [we/someone has] refunded (or are refunding) Mr. ???[can't read]")

では達者で？？　？
("Well then, take care [...??? a few more illegible characters]")

[Luke Dupont]

Now I wonder what questions I should ask my Japanese grandfather and grandmother in law.

They're both in their 90's, and I think my grandfather in law was 15 or 16 when the war ended. I think he was going to enlist or tried enlisting, but didn't actually join the army or fight in the war.

I asked him a few questions. He seems to remember inflation and poverty during and after the war, and vaguely has some memory of an aircraft strafing a train or railway station or something. He and his wife (my grandmother in law) also remembered evacuating to more remote areas the mountains and looking for people who were missing (I guess got lost when evacuating or something).

They told us a little about their memories of life in Japan during the war -- most memories kind of vague, some quite clear but not remembering all the details surrounding them.

There's tons of things I know I'd love to ask but just can't think of...