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Lloyd and I set up my computer in the little office that faced south into the woods, and brought in extra tables to make a modest studio for him in the dining room. Lloyd, a sculptor, would use this time to paint.
    I pinned on the wall a large 1945 map of the Philippines I’d found among my father’s letters. The principal battles I marked in red: Balete Pass, Luzon, Leyte Gulf, Corregidor. The names of battles were actual physical places. My father had written about some young soldier from Texas named Melvin Smith who was killed in some place called Umingan. Where was Umingan? I located a speck on the map.
    I pulled the crumbling rubber band off a clump of letters, openingthe now-fragile, yellowing envelopes and V-mails. The creases in the thin paper were well worn.
    My mother, until now the only reader of this correspondence, had bundled the letters by month; she’d numbered each letter in sequence—from one to four hundred and seventy-four. I arranged the months within the proper year, and separated the years into different boxes. I established a daily practice of logging the letters, then reading and transcribing them. By typing his words—passing them through my sight into my hands and onto my computer—I began to absorb them.
    I noticed how his handwriting varied depending on the time of day (at mealtimes, in between skirmishes), his location (on a bunk, in a hammock, in a foxhole), the quality of illumination (flashlight, candlelight, electric bulb), his writing instrument (fountain pen or pencil), his level of exhaustion and discomfort. What would take longer to grasp was how his own experience fit within the chronology of the Pacific War campaign.
    The letters could be divided into four main periods: stateside training (1943, at Camp Fannin in Tyler, Texas); more training overseas (1944, in New Zealand and New Caledonia); combat and its aftermath (most of 1945, in northern Luzon in the Philippines); and the United States Army occupation of Japan (October to December, 1945, on a navy ship and in garrison near Nagoya).
    I’d set a goal for a given day, say, transcribe all the letters from December 1944, or half of the letters from January 1945. But once I’d begun, it was difficult to stop. My order would break down and I’d pull letters to read at random out of the boxes. What was February 12, 1944, like? What was happening the second half of June 1945? I’d start in the morning and then look up amazed to see the dusky northwest sky streaked with purple and red.
    Knowing that his wife would read what he wrote both consoled my father and gave him the ability to observe what was happeningaround him more objectively. He also knew to temper his descriptions with reassurance. Her letters to him were a lifeline; in those gaps of time when he was unable to receive them, he suffered. They were constant reminders of a life worth living, a family to come home to, the ongoing daily saga of her life in Brooklyn—these were precious talismans. The constancy of their correspondence was unusual.
    22 August 1944, South Pacific
    I’m so glad you find my letters to you so satisfying. I have always written how much I enjoy your writing ability. I never realized that I have developed a style of writing of my own. I just write as though I were conversing with you. And these days when I am so on edge, thinking of what you are going through, it is an outlet for me—to keep writing to you. The lengthier the letter the better I feel. It helps take a little of the tension off me. In between pages I usually pace the floor, then come back and read your old letters and write some more. That process goes on all evening, until I am rescued by Wilbur who gets hungry and decides I have written enough and we ought to eat something.
    Even in the stressful period of preparing and waiting to go into combat, he continued to write home.
    24 November 1944, South Pacific
    I can now see the point of view of