In the summer and fall of 1941, two brothers stationed at opposite ends of the country wrote letters home to their parents in Manhattan. These World War II family letters from Steve Marcisak, 28, and Paul Marcisak, 19, reveal young men focused on military training and self-improvement, completely unaware that within months, the world would change forever. Steve penned his thoughts in Slovak dialect from Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, while Paul wrote from Marine training at Parris Island, South Carolina.
These letters survived nearly 85 years to preserve voices from a crucial moment in American history.
Brothers from Two Worlds
Steve and Paul grew up straddling two cultures. Their parents, Vasil (Charles) and Anna (Hurkala) Marcisak, had emigrated from Litmanová, Slovakia, around 1901 (See: “Ships, Dreams, and New Worlds: Three Generations of Family Immigration“), settling first in Pennsylvania’s coal mining communities before moving the family to Manhattan by 1941. Steve was born in 1913 during the family’s early immigrant struggles, while Paul arrived in 1922 when the Marcisaks had established themselves in Unity Township, Pennsylvania.
The age gap between the brothers—nine years—meant they experienced different versions of the immigrant experience. Steve grew up speaking more Slovak at home, while Paul’s generation moved more comfortably between Slovak traditions and American culture. Yet both enlisted voluntarily before the draft required them to serve.
Steve’s Letter: July 23, 1941, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii 1
Four and a half months before Pearl Harbor, Steve sat down to write home in the Slovak dialect his parents understood best. His letter from Schofield Barracks paints a picture of military life that feels almost casual—company picnics, swimming, baseball games, plenty of food and beer.
“Our company had a picnic recently and we all had a very nice time,” Steve wrote. “First, we played ball and went swimming. We had soda, beer, and lots of food. But the soldiers liked best the steak we made for them. There were 150 of us. We had more than 300 pieces of meat. They ate every piece!”
The image is striking—150 soldiers at a Hawaiian base in peacetime, enjoying what Stephen described as a perfect day. But even in this cheerful letter, the serious nature of their training surfaces: “We just finished shooting with new rifles. Every year we have to shoot.”
Those rifle drills would become desperately important just months later. When Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Schofield Barracks wasn’t the primary target, but its proximity to Wheeler Army Airfield made it vulnerable. Japanese planes strafed the barracks with machine gun fire. Steve and his fellow soldiers—the same men who had eaten 300 steaks at that summer picnic—mounted defenses from the rooftops with limited success.
Steve ended his July letter with tenderness toward his immigrant parents: “May the Lord God give you the best life. Goodbye. Your loving son, Štefan.”
Paul’s Letter: September 25, 1941, Parris Island, South Carolina3
Two months after Stephen wrote from Hawaii, their youngest brother Paul was undergoing the notoriously rigorous training of Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island. Assigned to Platoon #125 at the Recruit Depot, the 19-year-old was focused on advancement and education even amid the physical and mental challenges of becoming a Marine.
“I’m trying to get to go to school,” Paul wrote to his parents, expressing his hope to advance his military education. This drive for self-improvement through military service reflects a common aspiration among working-class immigrants’ children. The armed forces offered educational opportunities and career advancement not readily available in civilian life.
Paul’s determination to pursue schooling while undergoing Marine training speaks to his character. Parris Island’s boot camp was (and remains) one of the most demanding military training programs in the world. That Paul was thinking about his future education rather than just surviving the physical rigors shows remarkable focus and ambition.
Like his brother, Paul had no idea how soon his training would be tested in combat.
The Power of Letters in Family History
What makes these letters so precious isn’t just their historical context, though that’s certainly significant. It’s that they capture these young men in their own words, expressing their personalities, their concerns, their hopes for the future.
Steve’s Slovak-language letter reveals his continued connection to his parents’ world, his comfort in their native tongue even as he served in the U.S. Army thousands of miles from home. The detailed description of the company picnic – the swimming, the baseball, the exact number of steaks – shows a young man trying to share his daily life with parents who had never experienced anything like a Hawaiian military base.
Paul’s brief mention of seeking educational opportunities tells us more about his character than a dozen official records could. Here was a teenager far from home, enduring one of the military’s toughest training programs, still planning for his future advancement.
These letters also reveal voices that might have been lost. Paul died in 1959 at age 37. Steve died in 1961 at age 48. Without these letters, their personalities from this crucial moment in history would have disappeared entirely from the family record. We’d have birth and death dates, census listings, perhaps a military service record. But we wouldn’t hear their voices from before the war changed everything.
Pre-Pearl Harbor Letters as Historical Witness
The timing of these pre-Pearl Harbor letters makes them particularly poignant. They were written during that brief window between America’s military buildup and its entry into World War II, a moment of preparation without yet knowing what was coming.
Steve’s Hawaii letters from July 1941 capture the calm before the storm. His regiment practiced with new rifles, held picnics, and maintained the routine of a peacetime army that happened to be stationed in paradise. Four and a half months later, that same location would become a war zone, and those rifle drills would transition from training exercises to desperate defense.
Paul’s September letter from Marine boot camp shows a young man focused on education and advancement. Within three months, Pearl Harbor would transform the purpose of that training from theoretical preparation to imminent deployment.
Neither brother’s letter mentions fear of war or concern about international tensions. They were simply doing their jobs—training, following orders, writing home to reassure their parents. These letters home carry no shadow of what was coming. The weight of history hangs over these letters only because we know what came next. To Steve and Paul in the summer and fall of 1941, they were just ordinary letters home.
Preserving the Voices of the Forgotten
In my family’s genealogy, Paul and Steve often appear as footnotes. They are “Eva’s brothers” mentioned in passing, relatives who attended family events. Their military service is documented in official records, but those documents tell us what they did, not who they were in 1941.
These letters change that. Through their own words, we meet Steve as a cheerful soldier who took pride in feeding his company well. We meet Paul as an ambitious teenager determined to better himself through education. We understand them as real people with personalities, not just names on a family tree.
This is why preserving written materials such as letters, diaries, even short notes, matters so profoundly in genealogy. Official records document the skeleton of a life: birth, marriage, death, military service, census enumerations. But letters put flesh on those bones. They reveal humor, ambition, love for family, daily concerns, future hopes.
Preserving Family Letters: A Genealogist’s Responsibility
Who will tell these stories in the future? Who will explain why Paul and Steve’s letters matter, or translate Steve’s Slovak for future generations who won’t know the language? Preserving family letters like these becomes more critical as time passes and the generation who knew these men personally fades away.
This is part of why I write this blog, why I participate in the #52Ancestors challenge, why I insist on proper citations and documentation. These stories—these voices—deserve to be preserved for people who don’t yet exist, for future generations who may want to know about the Marcisak brothers who served in World War II.
Paul and Steve left these letters. In the Slovak phrases Steve used to connect with his immigrant parents, in Paul’s mention of seeking educational opportunities, we hear authentic voices from 1941. Through careful preservation and sharing, those voices can continue speaking to future generations.
The Written Word’s Enduring Power
The theme for Week 49 is “Written,” and these letters home demonstrate why genealogy written records hold such power in family history research. Unlike oral traditions that fade and change with each retelling, unlike photographs that capture only a moment without context, letters home preserve not just information but voice, personality, and perspective.
Steve’s cheerful description of the company picnic tells us he was the kind of person who noticed details and wanted to share life’s pleasures with his family. Paul’s brief mention of educational ambitions reveals his forward-thinking nature even in the midst of grueling training.
These letters also remind us that sometimes the most valuable documents aren’t the official ones. Birth certificates and census records have their place, but a personal letter written in the author’s own hand, expressing their own thoughts, carries a different kind of truth—the truth of lived experience, of personality, of being human.
Their Legacy
Paul Marcisak died in 1959 at age 37. Steve Marcisak died in 1961 at age 48. Both died relatively young, most likely carrying invisible wounds from their wartime service.
But they both left these letters.
And as long as someone continues to preserve, translate, and share their words, Paul and Steve’s voices remain part of our family’s story. The young soldier writing home in Slovak about steaks and swimming. The teenage Marine determined to get an education. Two brothers who volunteered to serve their country before Pearl Harbor, who lived through World War II, and who deserve to be remembered not just as names on a family tree, but as real people who wrote letters home to parents who loved them.
This week’s theme is “Written,” and I’m grateful that Paul and Steve chose to write these letters home, that their parents kept them, and that they survived to give voice to two men and this crucial moment in history.
Your Turn
Do you have letters in your family collection? Who in your family tree was a letter writer? Have you found correspondence that revealed personality or perspective that official records never could? Share your stories in the comments—I’d love to hear about the written treasures you’ve discovered.
If you have information about Paul or Steve Marcisak’s military service during World War II, I’d be grateful to hear from you. Their stories deserve to be as complete as possible.
- “Schofield Barracks,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schofield_Barracks : accessed 7 December 2025). ↩︎
- Stephen Marcisak to Anna and Vasil Marcisak, letter, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, 23 July 1941; Marcisak Family Papers, privately held by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], Cincinnati, Ohio, 2024. Received from Evelyn (Marcisak) Dubinsky Estate. ↩︎
- “Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Recruit_Depot_Parris_Island : accessed 7 December 2025). ↩︎
- Paul Marcisak to Anna and Vasil Marcisak, letter, Parris Island, South Carolina, 26 September 1941; Marcisak Family Papers, privately held by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], Cincinnati, Ohio, 2024. Received from Evelyn (Marcisak) Dubinsky Estate. ↩︎
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