Love Letters Over the Pacific is a love story and describes how Jo Taylor was able to manage her complicated Cooper family relationships while taking care of her two sons while away from home in Tuscon, Monteagle and Sarasota.

From Jo: “Your little parable in the first letter was just like butter on a hot biscuit to me. I’ve had this strange feeling of happiness” …and then a poem:

I wear your pride in me
Like a flower in my hair,
Like a clean-cut dive into a pool of shining water.
Like a bright brave lipstick
Glowing in a suntanned face.

From Gene on Roosevelt’s death: “You know how I felt about Roosevelt – I thought him wrong many times. To a similar extent I feel he was right on so many things… it is almost our written rule that we don’t argue politics as such – or at least we have managed to sidetrack such arguments.”

In addition, the letters capture the language and feeling of a unique period in the social history of Americans during World War II. Some of the terms and expressions used in the letters illustrate distance between then and now: A Rations, BOQ (Bachelor Officers’ Quarters), CinCPac, Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge), Gin at $2.25 per fifth, NATS reservation, Pullman, Ration Board, Red Cap, RFD, Rocket Zephyr, Stripe-wetting, and T card (gas ration).

The letters are a 15 month dialogue about family issues and current world events: Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election, kamikaze attacks, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Roosevelt’s death, V-E Day, the atomic bomb, V-J Day, and demobilization.

Mother was a gifted story teller and describes how she was able to care for her two sons while working part time to help her sister manage a guest ranch in Tucson. She was writing about the activities of daily life, how my brother and I were doing, the stress of family conflicts with her sister while in Arizona, the uncertainty of where we would live , and when my father might be coming home.

August 7, 1945 Monteagle, TN

Dearest Gene,

I have the feeling that the atomic bomb news story is the biggest news of your and my lifetime. Ben and I were sitting in the bedroom, reading when the paper came. I could not explain it to him of course, as I do not understand it myself, but the fact man has learned to use sun power, or the same energy used by the sun, is overpowering with the realization but can be grasped even by Ben and me

Dad’s letters from Pearl Harbor were more constrained since he could not talk about his work, planning the naval air logistics for the invasion of Japan.

August 13, 1945: Monday AM Hawaii

Dearest Jo,

I’m glad that your reaction to the atomic bomb, and Ben’s participation in that reaction, was as it was. I’m afraid mine was partly clouded by the thought of horror if it should get out of control – i.e., at some time 20 or 50 years in the future.