Here's mention of a hand stamp with that same message. The article is darn interesting, too!
By Shawn P. Sullivan
Sanford News Editor
Posted Dec. 2, 2010 at 3:15 AM
SANFORD The Sanford-Springvale Historical Society has gotten two Christmas cards this holiday season both of which the sender mailed a long, long time ago.
Local resident Wayne Hartford has donated to the historical society two cards that his longtime friend, Albert Arcand, sent to him and his mother from Hawaii 69 years ago. To get to Tibetts Avenue here in Sanford, the cards first needed to be pulled from the watery wreckage of the USS Nevada after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Arcand, a Sanford teenager, bought the cards while serving on the Nevada at the Hawaiian base. One card said "Seasons Greetings," and a small picture pasted to the front of it much faded after all these years suggested the sweeping branches of a palm tree. The other card had "Aloha!" scrawled across it in cursive and offered holiday wishes inside.
Both cards were postmarked Dec. 6, 1941. Sanford historian Harland Eastman, now in possession of the cards, recalls that Dec. 6 fell on a Saturday that year, and supposes that no mail left the ship that day.
On the next morning, of course, Japanese planes attacked the base at Pearl Harbor and pulled the United States into World War II.
The USS Nevada a World War I battleship was bombed several times by the air and struck by a torpedo. The ship got "all blown to hell," Eastman said, but it did not sink.
In the days that followed, water-damaged letters were pulled from the ship's mail room and delivered to the Post Office Inspector at Honolulu's Central Post Office, according to Eastman. Arcand's two Christmas cards were forwarded to Sanford in a special envelope postmarked in Honolulu on Feb. 9, 1942, two months after the attack.
The words "Collect 5 cents on delivery" were stamped on the envelope but crossed out in pencil somewhere along the way. The envelopes for both waterlogged cards had a note attached to them from the postal inspector that read, "This letter is forwarded in the condition it was received at this office."
Today, the cards are yellowed and frail but still show Arcand's Christmas wishes to his childhood friend and his mother. On Tuesday afternoon, Eastman had them spread on his dining room table amid old clippings of "Sanford Tribune" articles about Arcand.
"Obviously, these cards were immersed in water," Eastman said. "Thankfully, the handwriting was in indelible ink. Otherwise, it might have washed away."
While the cards themselves are fascinating enough to hold them is to touch history the story of their sender is even more so. A lot happened in the life of the Arcand family between that final innocent day of Dec. 6 and the cards' arrival on Tibetts Avenue more than two months later.
According to old news articles collected by Eastman, Albert Arcand's father, Joseph, received the kind of letter on Dec. 11, 1941, that no parent of a child serving in the military wants to get. The letter, signed by Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, read, "The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your son, Albert Alfred Arcand, Seaman First Class USN, was lost in action in performance of his duty and in the service of his country."
On Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Dec. 13 through 15, one whole week after Arcand reportedly was killed at Pearl Harbor, the American flag at the Sanford Town Hall flew at half-mast in somber tribute to the town's first fatality of World War II. Sanford's selectmen sent a letter of condolence to the Arcands.
"Press coverage noted that he was a member of Sanford High School's Class of 1941, that he had completed his senior year early and had enlisted in the Navy just before Christmas in 1940," Eastman noted in an e-mail to the Sanford News shortly after Hartford had delivered the cards to him.
On Dec. 22, eleven days after receiving Admiral Nimitz's letter, Joseph Arcand got more correspondence in the mail regarding his son from his son, in fact.
The telegram no doubt brought the Arcands boundless joy after the grief they had suffered for nearly two weeks.
"Just arrived in San Diego," the telegram read. "All's well. Don't worry. Expecting leave, I hope."
Three days later on Christmas the Navy Department indeed confirmed for the Arcand family that Albert had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.
"Many of his shipmates were killed or severely wounded, and Albert suffered severe burns but survived," Eastman said. "As he was trying to help others, a man took him by the arm and said, 'Son, you get the hell off this ship. You're in no condition.' He guided Albert to the gangway and someone else helped him to a motor launch."
Wayne Hartford, who's a member of the local historical society and its photographer, said on Tuesday that he last saw Arcand when his friend visited Sanford back in 2004. The two of them grew up next to each other, with Hartford's home on Tibetts Avenue and Arcand's on Jackson Street linked by a narrow passageway. The two friends played in the Sanford High School Band together, he said.
The last Hartford knew, Arcand was living out west in the state of Washington.
Hartford had held on to those two Christmas cards for the past 68-plus years. He kept them secure in an album. He first consulted with his sons before he decided to give the cards over to the historical society. Both of them agreed it'd be the right thing to do.
"They're too valuable to let flop around somewhere," Hartford said.
Eastman said the two cards brought to the mailroom of the U.S.S. Nevada 69 years ago this Monday will be a part of a future exhibit at the Sanford-Springvale Historical Museum on Main Street. |
Posted 11/09/2015 4:43 pm
