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| Photo by Michael J. Kannengieser |
A Legacy of History
My dad was more than a lover of books; he was an amateur historian. His library included titles covering World War I, World War II, steam engines, ships (he always wanted to be a sea captain), birds (he was also a bird-watcher), and the Civil War. In addition, he shared his passion for reading with our mother, who typically sat in the living room after supper with a cup of hot tea and a mystery.
My siblings and I became accustomed to shelves of literature and history books crammed into every corner of our tiny Cape Cod-style home. My father’s grasp of the subject matter was so thorough that one of my sister’s friends, a professor at an esteemed university, once told me, “Your father knows more about American history than most history professors where I teach.”
It should have been no surprise how many books we accounted for in our parents’ home after Dad passed away in May 2009. Yet, after I probed deep into a crawlspace with my flashlight to retrieve a box I had discovered in a dark corner, I found an assortment of documents—relics of his earlier occupation—that were remarkable not only for their subject matter but also because my father had possessed them.
I dragged the flimsy cardboard box from the eaves and into my old bedroom. Dripping with sweat and covered in dust, I eyed the contents, which at first glance seemed unimpressive. Many were reports, plain blue and gray government documents. One of the titles grabbed me. On the pale blue cover, in all capital letters across the top, the title read: The United States Strategic Bomb Survey. Underneath was a subtitle: The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The words Atomic Bombs were printed in a much larger font than the rest of the text.
Other booklets caught my attention, too: The End of the War in the Pacific, Surrender Documents in Facsimile, Germany Surrenders Unconditionally, International Military Trials, Nuremberg, and, most impressive of all, Charter of the United Nations, in five languages. There were about two dozen of these government publications. Their monetary value is uncertain, their historical significance indisputable, but their worth as family heirlooms enormous.
Details about how my father came to own this collection of historic papers are sketchy. He worked for the U.S. Navy at the old Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York, for twenty years. Dad took a job as a forklift driver in his late twenties. He had been ill for years after his discharge from the Army in November 1944, battling pneumonia and various infections—all complications from his wounds and much more manageable with today’s medicines. There, he took advantage of the many educational opportunities offered both by the Navy and through the G.I. Bill. He studied accounting, management, and mechanics. By the end of his twenty-year tenure, he worked in an office as a labor liaison between the unions and the government.
Records of his employment, such as training certificates and work orders, gave few clues as to how he had gained access to this trove of government publications. In another box, I discovered a newspaper. It appeared to be a weekly publication produced by the Navy for its employees. On the front page, in the lower right-hand corner, I noticed a picture of a group of men and women in business attire. Among the names mentioned in the caption was my father’s. He was in the back row, taller than many of them, smiling and, according to the description, named to the N.S.A. Library Committee.
As a member of a library committee, he would certainly have been able to acquire the items I uncovered in his home. However, I have not confirmed whether the N.S.A. organization he worked for was indeed the National Security Agency or a now-defunct branch of the government. Perhaps I don’t want to unravel the mystery surrounding my father’s trove of important booklets. The small mystery accompanying them adds an aura of intrigue to my memory of my father as a man who may have had influence beyond the ordinary circumstances of a lower-middle-class family man.
I’d like to believe my father kept these documents for their historical significance. I’m sure that before he died, he knew I’d find them and appreciate them the way he did. I only wish he’d told me about them sooner so I wouldn’t have had to crawl through the dusty eaves to drag them out of there.
