October 3, 1943

Sun 10/3/43

Dear home folks,
Got your letter Fri. afternoon. I had begun to suspect that you were waiting for one from me. I was interested to hear all the farm news and the baby news. Warren usually hears that stuff right away but he hadn’t mentioned any of those babies yet.
We havn’t had a fire for a week. I was sort of glad to say in camp that long. I have been working on another of those prefabricated buildings. They had the roof and floor already built and a couple of the other guys and I made some sides for a small building for the foreman at one of the sidecamps to live in. I have been working on that most of the week. I suspect that I will have to engineer putting it up this week. I think after that I’ll be in the woodshop here. There is plenty of work to do around the camp and the shop hasn’t had anyone in it for some time and all the tools are dull and it is a mess in general. I hope they can manage to let me stay in that sot of work all winter.
Quite a while ago I put in an application for a job on the Coast and Geodetic Survey. We hear that they will be asking for those men soon. So if I don’t have a good job here where I think I can do some good for the camp I’m going to be surveying. I don’t know what will happen yet, but I usually find out when the time comes. The Coast & geodetic work will be detached but I like gaget making and fixing too. And I think I might do more good for CPS if I can stay in it.
There is a remarkable little man visiting camp the last few days. He is the father of one of the fellows. He lives in Portland and is a wholesale florist. He just appeared one morning for breakfast and since then a lot of the fellows have gotten aquainted with him and some of them already new him as we are all welcome in their home if we are in Portland.
Well he and several of us got to talking after the Silent worship meeting this morning. We really had a great little session. He told us a lot about the Japenese relocation situation. The Gov’t is pushing all of them out in about a month expect the ones that they think they can’t trust and they will have hearings. He says that the American Legion in Minn. And Wisconson have been very helpful and a lot of them are going there. While the American Legion on the coast has been one of the big agitatirs against them. He knows about them because in his flower business he met a lot of Japenese growers. He says he has signed a lot of affidavits for Japenese he has known so they can get relocated.
Then we got to talking about the average person being afraid of anything labeled religion. He told of some business mens convention they had in Portland that was on for acouple of afternoons and in the closing up speech a real bigshot finished his talkby saying “Remember the story of the ‘good Samaritan’. The thief came along and said, “What’s yours is mine and I’m going to take it.” The priest came along and said, “What’s mine is mine and I’m going to keep it.” The Samariatian came along and said “What’s mine is mine and I’m going to share it.” Well, for my money that’s pretty solid religion. We may be in a war now but I can’t help but think the work may be getting a little better.
We have had another quite interesting visitor in camp this past week. She is a member of a new religion. I’d say that her religion claims to be the successor to Christianity and every other religion in the world. Buddahism, Mohamahism and all the others. I didn’t go for it but I think it has a lot of good points. The story of it is this: Some where around 1850 ( don’t remember the exact date) There was a remarkable guy born in Pursia. I don’t remember all the particulars but some way this guy was very wise at an early age and never had to go to school. I guess they sent him but the teachers sent back and said they didn’t know enough to teach him anything. Well he wrote a volume of books interperiting all the different religion’s Bibles. He claimed to be the one prophet sent from God and to be the second coming of Christ and any other religion’s prophet that promised to come back. This guy’s name was Bah’al’U’lah. And the religion is called the Bahia Faith. This guy was in prison till he was 75 years old then he died. He wrote his book in prison and his three kids were in prison too for a long time. The oldest boy got out fianaly and came to the US in 1912 and spread the doctrine here. The unique part is that this son translated the book into a lot of different languages and it is not published to the public at all but kept by what they call their Guardian who is supposed to know a lot of stuff that is going to happen and he sends a cable-gram every 19 days to people over here telling a little of what is in the book. They get a little prophesy too out of it. They are for world peace and all the draft age boys are I-ACs. They base their belief on don’t do any one any harm. That’s pretty sound. It has a lot of thing about it that people will like better than they like Christianity. I wouldn’t be supprised if they will get quite a following in the future. The thing that I can’t swallow is that this guy that wrote the book is supposed to have the only pipeline to God. I think I can get along without that sort of guy, I want my one pipeline and I think God is willing to let all of us have one. There may be some that understand things a lot better than I do but I don’t say I have the only truth and I don’t think they should either. Well, that’s enough about that. It was very interesting, but I don’t know of anybody that really took it seriously except the fellow that got this woman to come down her from Seattle. I don’t know how much he thinks of it, I think he’s just interested. Most of the fellows around here are too deep thinkers to go for that sort of thing.
This is about as long a letter as I have written to you for a long time I guess.
Here’s a good quotation that I heard. “ Its not what the other fellow thinks of you but what you think of the other fellow that makes you happy or unhappy.”

Yours,
Bernard