Dear Billy,

There are so many things I want to tell you. I was only six months old when you joined the navy in 1941. I was just learning to walk when your ship, the USS HOUSTON went down off Java. As I learned my ABC’s, you were worked and starved to death in a Japanese prison camp on the River Kwai Railroad of Death. You died in 1943. I wasn’t even three years old.

I want you to know you have NEVER been forgotten. Oh how I wished I could have talked to you in my teenage years. I needed a brother so much. I was raised an only child, just as you were. Mom and Dad never really got over losing you in such an awful way.

I worked hard on your behalf and got you the Purple Heart. It took me ten years. I am so proud of you dear brother, whom I never knew. Your pictures hang on my wall with all your medals. All your papers are in the University of Houston.

I am crying as I write this and have missed you so much. How I would have loved to be at your wedding, had nieces and nephews. As it is now that Mom and Dad are gone and I have no family at all.

I met Johnny Hopper and we became friends. He missed you enough to search for you after fifty years. He would call me “sis” and tried to comfort me. He knew how much I missed you.

Billy, I’ve never been to Arlington National Cemetery and I don’t know if you are really in that grave there, or still buried in Burma. Of the 300 or so shipmates who survived the sinking, 75 died in Prison Camp with you: starved, worked, and beaten to death. The ones who came back still get together once a year.

You’re in my thoughts every day. You’d be 89 years old now. I think of you as my little brother now, still 21 and I am 69. I love you, Billy, and always will.

Your sister,

Betty, age 69