Just Released
“No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat”
“Dear Doc,” the letters begin, thousands of them written from San Diego State students and recent alumni scattered from Europe to Japan, North Africa and the South Pacific. They offer personal accounts of combat and valor, homesickness and the horrors of war.
Letter from the WWII Servicemen's Correspondence Collection
Most of the writers had suspended their educations – all had placed their personal lives on hold – to serve the nation during World War II. The recipient of their letters was Dr. Lauren Post, a fondly regarded geography professor at (then) San Diego State College who was a veteran of World War I.
As he received correspondence from all over the world, Dr. Post used the information to publish a wartime Aztec News Letter, which at its height was sent to 3,000 Aztecs at home and abroad. Bearing updates often uplifting and sometimes devastating, his publication was both eagerly and anxiously awaited by grateful young service members starved for news of friends and former San Diego State classmates.
The compelling contents of those letters and Dr. Post’s dedication to his students are the subject of a new book, “No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat,” by Lisa K. Shapiro. The author spent four years researching and writing the book, which has been released, fittingly, just in time for Memorial Day.
“THIS ISN’T JUST HISTORY”
Mesa College's Lisa Shapiro transcribing informtiton from the SDSU Library's WWII Servicemen's Correspondence Collection before the collection was digitized (2014 photo).
Those 4,848 letters comprise the World War II Servicemen's Correspondence Collection, 1941-1946, a one-of-a-kind accumulation securely housed for almost 75 years in the SDSU Library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives. That’s where, for two-and-a-half years, Shapiro, a Mesa College assistant business professor, spent almost every free moment reading the letters while researching a second master’s degree.
She completed the degree long before finishing the letters, but was compelled to keep reading. “I just felt connected to those young men and women,” the author said.
She was moved by the eloquence of their writing and the raw feelings they so honestly expressed. The letters, Shapiro said, reflect humor and gratitude, sadness and grief.
“What really made it personal for me was when I realized, okay, this isn’t just history; these were real lives and these are real emotions and these people sacrificed and struggled and they cared,” she explained. “I think it’s because their emotions come through so vividly in the letters.”
“SAN DIEGO STATE’S FINEST HOUR”
Shapiro is believed to be the only person since Dr. Post to have touched and completely read each individual letter, becoming intimately familiar with many of the youthful writers and their life stories. Although she could never have begun to cover all of the individuals and their letters in the book’s 25 chapters and 380 pages, the author has managed to include germane and poignant passages that successfully convey the war’s impact on its committed young combatants from beginning to end.
Rob Ray, head of the SDSU Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, came to know Shapiro during her research for “No Forgotten Fronts.” He describes the book as “a triumph” for its author.
Robert Ray, head of the SDSU Library's Special Collections and University Archives examines a letter from the WWII Servicemen's Correspondence Collection.
“It’s so very well written and presented,” Ray said. “It’s absolutely a terrific story full of heroism, but also of great sadness.
“Her book, I think, really documents this as San Diego State’s finest hour when everyone was at their finest. It’s a moment in our history that should be remembered and celebrated.”
HARD TO LET GO
Shapiro admits that one of the hardest things about completing her book was separating from its subjects. After she had finished her research, she would sometimes return to campus and visit the War Memorial where the names are etched of former students, including many of the letter writers, who went to war and never returned.
“I would go to the Memorial because I wanted to literally touch those names,” Shapiro said. “It was hard to let go. They were that real for me.
“I would go over to campus and I would think, ‘Okay, I’m done with the research and I have to move on,’ but I just missed it. I guess that was my way of acknowledging them and saying goodbye, but even so, I still feel they are a part of me.”
Her reaction speaks to the unique nature of the collection. It is believed to be the only one of its kind with thousands of letters sent to a single person from hundreds of writers sharing their personal observations of the war.
“YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN”
Of course, none of it would have been possible without the dedication and foresight of Dr. Post. Both Ray and Shapiro are effusive in their praise for the professor.
The Aztec News Letter from Sept. 1, 1943.
“I think she pays tribute and homage to Lauren Post in a way that we sometimes forget, that he is responsible for this,” Ray said. He made it happen and it was his constant coaching and encouragement and dedication to it and he wouldn’t let it go.”
“I always say it would have been enough if he had just had people write to him and if he had just written back,” Shapiro observed. “But the fact that he did this newsletter for the duration of the war and let students know what all of their friends were doing and that he did it every single month - that’s the thing that sort of staggers the imagination.
“When he told people, ‘We are not going to forget you,’ when he said, ‘You are not forgotten,’ they knew it was true and I think that was the biggest thing for them: ‘I know where my friends are. My campus knows where I am. Somebody knows what’s happening to me and nobody is going to forget me.’ One man did all that.”
As a college instructor teaching veterans in her classroom, Shapiro looks to Dr. Post for inspiration. “I don’t have any background with the military, but I think I have that connection with Dr. Post,” she said. “What are we going to do for those students and how are we going to help them transition?”
A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE
Author and Mesa College Professor Lisa Shapiro.
She hopes her book inspires others to follow Post’s example. More importantly, she hopes it can provide some insight into young people committed to military service.
“The thing about that book that changed my perspective of service and war – and I think the people in the military get this and sometimes other civilians don’t - is how willing young men and women are to sacrifice and what that means and how seriously we should take that,” Shapiro explained. “It’s just my opinion, but I think we keep things more in separate boxes now and during World War II I think everybody felt like they were in the same box or the same boat.
“My hope is that when people read this book, they recognize we’re all in this together. It’s not like some people go off and do the fighting and then come home and then they put it away.
“When you send that many young people away and they come home again, it changes the fabric of society. I want people to feel that more intimately and feel more personally how we are all changed by war. It’s incumbent upon all of us to appreciate the impact.”
“No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat” is available at the SDSU Bookstore and through Shopaztecs.com.
Check out the World War II Servicemen's Correspondence Collection, 1941-1946, in the SDSU Library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives.