Imagine — it is 1940, and you are 18 years old, just out of high school and stuck for the hot and humid summer in a tiny town (population 904) in eastern Arkansas. “How would you like to visit Uncle Ed and Aunt Susan in Hawaii for a year,” your parents ask?

She was my mother, Cecilia King, and of course, the answer was “yes.” Her Uncle Ed was not just some random person hanging out in paradise; he was the highest-ranking Army medical officer in the Pacific, just months before Pearl Harbor thrust America into WWII.

Cecilia’s daily letters to her parents describe one of the most pivotal times in American history, when the United States emerged from the debilitating Great Depression, politically isolationist, but began the rapid transition from an almost insignificant military power to become in a short five years the undisputed world military and economic leader. The attack on Pearl Harbor happened only months after Cecilia left Honolulu and the social milieu of military families that would be most affected. Cecilia’s documentation of immediately-pre-WWII life in Hawaii is extraordinarily detailed and fascinating.

Aunt Susan virtually ordered Cecilia to party to the max, and she didn’t disappoint.

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