During the 1940s, Olive Cooper lived on Narragansett Boulevard in the village of Edgewood and worked as a bookkeeper for Worrall Trucking Company in Providence. The daughter of Henry and Sarah (Cook) Cooper, she had never married but kept in touch with her two nephews and one niece, all of whom served in the U.S. military.

Olive’s niece, Lt. Mariam L. Cooper, was serving with the Army Nurse Corps in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and, in her letters, she noted the location only as “somewhere in India.”

On July 30, 1943, she wrote to Olive from Post Hospital:

“Dear Aunt Olive, I’ve been in India six months and so have gotten used to many things. This is a fantastic country and even by my descriptions I don’t think you could realize what it’s like. It’s a most religious country, a very dirty country and full of diseases from the lack of sanitation and the extreme poverty. They have modern cities but they are full of ragged beggars and cripples. In time you get used to it so that it doesn’t bother you but it was an awful shock the day we landed. I spent three months in the jungles on the India-Burma border and at the present time I am on detached service at a Chinese-American training center somewhere in India. We have had to study both Chinese and Hindustani languages so you can see that we’re learning while earning. It’s a great education and experience as well as a bit of disillusion. There will be many things to remember and a few to forget … War news lately has been most encouraging … You people back home are having a hard time of it with so many restrictions, high taxes and doing without. Let’s hope we’ll all be back to normal soon … Sincerely, Mariam.”

Olive’s nephew, Stephen Cooper, was a quartermaster in the U.S. Navy, serving aboard the USS Wyffels. The ship was a destroyer escort, launched on Dec. 7, 1942. From 1943 to 1945, it escorted convoys to and from North Africa.

On Nov. 23, 1944, Stephen wrote a letter to Olive, after returning from a furlough where he got to visit with her: “Dear Aunt Olive, surely enjoyed the show that you and I went to last month. Wish I could have seen you more but you realize as well as I how short a time fifteen days is …”

On Oct. 21, 1945, Stephen wrote another letter to his aunt which read, “Dear Aunt Olive, enjoyed your last letter as always. That cruise you went on down to Newport sounded like fun … I’m up writing in the pilot house and its a good thing I anticipated the weather and didn’t sit outside. The rain just started coming down in buckets … Since the ship is under Chinese command, our gang has very little to do except maintaining the clean lines of it … We expect to be at sea during the day most of November so that will be a welcome break … Have you seen Marian much? I’m wondering whether she is discharged or where she is stationed … Love, Steve.”

Olive moved to Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in 1962. She died there on Sept. 10, 1971. A handful of the letters her niece and nephew wrote to her over the course of the war still survive.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.