Another enjoyable wartime love story is by Lenore Rickert in the book "Pacific War Stories", an anthology of survivor's tales of the war. She was a nurse at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked.
She was going out (strictly against regulations, as she was an officer and her boyfriend was an enlisted man) with a Marine. He was shipped out to Wake Island just before the war broke out, and was captured there by the Japanese. She stayed faithful to him all through the war, receiving only a few postcards with his name and signature (he never received any of her letters).
She served in the South Pacific, and was transferred back to the USA just before the end of the war. In her own words, this is what happened next.
"I arrived at Bremerton (WA) the day the Pacific war was over. So no one was around at the base and everybody was out celebrating. There was no room in the hotels, and people were out in the streets. I reported in to the hospital, and they said 'We got a call from Washington, D.C. for you to go to the airport.' So I said 'What's at the airport, and where is it?' And they said 'All we were told was that you were to go to the airport as soon as you checked in.'
"So I went out to the airport and I'm standing around, and there were no planes on this field and no one around, but I can see a man clear across the field coming toward me and he's in a Marine uniform. And I'm looking at him and he's walking toward me. And as he got closer, I suddenly realized who it was, and I couldn't believe it - it was Bud, my boyfriend from Hawaii who had been captured at Wake. At the end of the war he'd been in Tokyo ... When the Japanese were getting ready to sign the surrender documents, Governor Stassen (of WA) was sent over to Tokyo, and he had something to do with organizing the capitulation papers. And while he was there he met this Marine, and so Stassen put him in the plane with him and brought him back with him, and the plane landed in Bremerton. So there he was in Bremerton, coincidentally where my new assignment was. That's the way life has been for me. I don't have to make decisions, they're made for me! So when he came walking up to me I couldn't believe it. He's six feet tall and was standing there weighing 117 pounds and looking terrible, but at the same time he looked great to me! He came right up to me and put his hands on my shoulders and said 'We've got so much catching up to do.' And I thought, 'What he's been through, if he can have this kind of spirit, he'd be all right for a husband!'
"So we decided to get married that very day and went down to get a license. During the war, some women were marrying more than one man so that they could get their stipends from the government. When the authorities found this out, then they started checking up. You couldn't get a wedding license until they had checked that you didn't have three or four of them already. We had to go to the judge there in Bremerton, and he wanted to know why we wanted to get married, you know, that sort of thing, and we told him about our story and Bud being a POW and just getting back, and that judge couldn't sign the papers fast enough!
"Then I said I didn't care what church it was, but I wanted to get married in a church. We found out that the ministers were all somewhere at a conference, and we could only find one minister. I said, 'I don't care what church it is, I just want to be married in one.' So we got married in a Lutheran church, and the executive officer stood up with us. And this all happened on the day Bud got back, so I knew it was meant to be. Luckily Bud came back okay, and he wasn't sour or bitter or anything, even after all he went through. Everything just worked out right. These things were just supposed to be."
If you don't get a lump in your throat reading that story, then you should be ashamed of yourself!
