On Gallant Wings : Letters From Home Part 2

On Gallant Wings is out tomorrow! A story can take years from the glint of an idea to a real, sweet smelling book you can hold in your hands. There can be years of pitches and rejections and editing. Celebrations occur on signing a contract, revealing a cover, the anticipation that can build for months …

And finally, you stand at the edge of take-off, knowing that soon, the story, those characters you birthed, nurtured, grew, spent long hours discussing ideas with, listened to, laughed and cried with, that world you researched, built, painted into being with your words, no longer belongs to you and only you.

It’s a moment to relish, to feel, to remember. Tomorrow, Ava and Essie and their family and friends will belong to you. I hope you’ll pick up a copy and enter the word of WWII Australia, seen from the perspective of a young girl who loves her family and friends with a fierce heart, adores birds, lives her life by rules and rituals, and is about to be forced to run for her life. You can grab one here or at any bookshop.

Thank you to Rowena Beresford, Debbie Golvan and everyone involved in helping me bring On Gallant Wings to life. Thank you to my darling family for loving me.

As I posted recently, one of the many interesting aspects of the book is the use of letters between main character Ava and her older brother Fred, her dad, and her best friend Kazuo. These are scattered throughout the book and written in cursive, to show the different types of handwriting from the 1940s and some of the frustrations in reading each other’s letters!

Added to this frustration for people at the time was the censorship of letters. Strict censorship was imposed in Australia at the start of World War II. The Menzies Government formed the Department of Information (DOI) to control media, publicity and letters between people. It was believed censorship was necessary to prevent valuable information falling into enemy hands and to maintain high morale at home. Where deemed necessary sections of letters were either blacked out, or had pieces cut from them, as determined by the censors.

I am sharing the full letters on my blog over the coming weeks. They are also available as part of the Teaching Notes for use in classrooms, for example, to contrast and compare the experience of reading the full letters, versus the censored ones, as a way to introduce the idea of cursive and creating your own letters in this way, and to examine what it must have been like to have only letters as a way of communicating with loved ones, especially when parts of them were missing, with no control over what came through to you.

Here are the next two letters, from Ava to her best friend Kazuo, who has been sent to an internment camp and one back from him to Ava.

28th December 1941,
Darwin
Dear Kazuo
It’s been strange without you here, especially on Christmas Day and my birthday. Fred came for a while and a couple of people Mum and Dad know, but it wasn’t the same. I missed our annual game of marathon chess. It’s hard to imagine what your Christmas was like camp. Did you get to celebrate? I hope so. Mum said even if you didn’t, at least you have somewhere to sleep and three meals a day. I told her you already had that here.

There’s hardly any kids sometimes see Billy Jackson in the distance, but I just stay out of his way. Essie is doing really well. Fred and I are planning to take her on a longer solo flight soon. I’m training her to fly on her own, without the flock.

I asked Mum if you would be in the camp for much longer. She said she doesn’t know. I’m not sure anybody knows, which makes me sad. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be. Barb, Mum’s friend from the CWA, said that your mother didn’t have to go with your father and you. Is that true?

Please stay safe and write back if you can.
Your friend, always
Ava
PS. How is Rita? Make sure you tell her I have her doll. It fell out of the truck, but I picked it up and I’m keeping it safe for her.


14th January 1942
Adelaide River Holding Camps
Dear Ava
It ’s true, my mother didn’t have to go with us. They told her she could stay in Darwin, but she said wherever me and Rita and Dad go, she goes too. We’re doing okay. There’s always a lot going on. Dad and I work long hours helping the soldiers camp, but we have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep. It feels like our lives are on hold, which is funny since we’re in a holding camp! There are other Japanese people and some Germans and Italians here. The camp is in the middle of nowhere. Mountains surround us and lots of scrub and trees.

Make sure you continue to keep away from Billy the Bully. If you do come across him, just dazzle him with facts. You could always tell him all the different types of wings at him like you taught me—elliptical, high speed, long soaring and high lift, broad soaring—he probably won’t understand any of it. Are you impressed that I remembered them all?

If you could grow wings, what type would you want? Stuck behind the barbed wire fences here, I ’ve been wishing for broad wings like the hawks and the eagles. Then I could just soar away. I sit and watch the birds sometimes and think about you and Essie. Write soon and let me know how Essie is going with her flights.
Your friend, always,
Kazuo