History isn’t a static ledger; it reshapes the past with every new perspective. While textbooks often paint whole nations with broad strokes of villainy or heroism, the reality is that each conflict was carried out by ordinary individuals, each with their own hopes, doubts, and personal stories. The phrase “10 letters everyday” invites us to peer into the private words of those who stood on the opposing side of famous wars, revealing the human heartbeat behind the headlines.
10 Letters Everyday: A Glimpse Into Hidden Perspectives
10 The Last Letter Of A Japanese Kamikaze Pilot
Before the Japanese kamikaze squadrons launched their fatal sorties, many of the pilots penned farewell letters to the families they would soon leave behind. These missives served as their final opportunity to express love, resolve, and the dread of the looming sacrifice.
While most of those notes tried to flaunt courage—emphasizing fearlessness and devotion to the empire—a particular new father, Furukawa Takao, allowed his usual bravado to slip away, exposing a tender, human side.
“I find my thoughts returning continually to you and our soon‑to‑be‑born child,” Furukawa wrote to his wife. “Every day, as I await my first, and last, attack, I reread the letter you sent the day you made the jelly and gazed at the photos of you and Sister Etchan.”
At the time of writing, Furukawa had already been assigned to a kamikaze mission but had not yet taken off. He described his return from a previous sortie as “without doing anything especially heroic,” yet the pressure to volunteer himself for the ultimate sacrifice was mounting.
He confessed a deep reluctance to die. “Now, more than ever, the fleetingness of human life astonishes me,” he told his spouse. “Wait for me. I will return without fail. Until you have safely given birth to our child, I have no intention of dying easily.”
Tragically, on 21 April 1945, Furukawa Takao launched his final attack and perished. The war would end only a few months later, leaving his wife and newborn son to navigate a world without his presence.
9 A Letter From A Black Slaveowner
William Ellison is a difficult figure to pin down. Born into slavery, he labored his entire life to secure his freedom, only to purchase his own plantation and a workforce of sixty‑three enslaved people once liberty was finally his.
Imagining how a man who once endured bondage could rationalize owning other human beings is a challenge, yet a single letter addressed to his son offers a revealing glimpse.
The correspondence is starkly business‑like. Ellison updates his son on overdue payments, noting that Mr. Ledinham claims “has not the money,” Mr. Turner admits “it was his fault that the account was not paid,” and Mr. Van Buren refuses to settle without a third‑party certification. He also lists tools he wishes his son to acquire—tools that his enslaved laborers would later operate.
While the letter may appear mundane, it speaks volumes about the man’s mindset. Even as a slaveowner, Ellison wrestled with being treated as an equal. Clients went out of their way to deny him compensation, yet he never complained, displaying a relentless drive to amass wealth.
For Ellison, the broader inequality surrounding him seemed secondary; what mattered most was the personal gain he could extract from the system.
8 An Auschwitz Guard’s Letter To His Wife
“From the very beginning I was completely absorbed, in fact obsessed, by my work,” Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss told his wife in a 1940 letter. “All I thought about was my work.”
This obsessive focus was a common thread among SS officers stationed at concentration camps. Their duties became a mechanized routine that dulled any moral alarm.
A guard named Hugo Behncke wrote home, describing his attempts to shave off the monotony of his long shifts. “I’ll be able to cut a few corners,” he wrote, “I can sit down and that makes the work fairly easy.” He also noted the relief of winter, explaining that the cold kept prisoners from “traveling,” a euphemism for escaping.
Behncke’s empathy was virtually nonexistent. He characterized the inmates as “sick, dirty and thin as skeletons,” dismissing them as “stupid, primitive people” whose only value was to be burned in the Neuengamme crematorium.
Beyond contempt, the dominant emotion in his letter was exhaustion. He concluded with a bleak outlook on the war and a yearning to return home to his children.
7 The Diary Of A Viet Cong Doctor
Dr. Dang Thuy Tram met a fiery end when American forces stormed the field hospital where she tended Viet Cong fighters. Refusing to surrender, she seized an old rifle and fought until a bullet ended her life.
After her death, soldiers recovered a diary that laid bare the inner world of a doctor caught in a brutal conflict.
“How hateful it is!” she wrote, condemning the American presence. “We are all humans, but some are so cruel as to want the blood of others to water their gold tree.”
In another entry, she described witnessing a twenty‑one‑year‑old soldier’s desperate plea for help. “A badly wounded soldier called out my name, hoping I could help him,” she recorded. “I could not, and my tears fell as I watched him die in my useless hands.”
Her final notes were drenched in loneliness. “Why do I want so much a mother’s hand to care for me?” she asked. “Please come to me and hold my hand when I am so lonely, love me and give me strength to travel all the hard sections of the road ahead.”
6 A Letter Home From A Confederate Soldier
The Confederate cause was often presented as a fight for honor, but the letters of ordinary soldiers reveal a more nuanced picture. While some officers, like James Griffin, declared they would die rather than become “slaves” to Yankee masters, many rank‑and‑file men expressed weariness.
One particularly moving missive came from O.D. Chester, a Confederate soldier writing to his sister in 1864. By that stage, both sides were exhausted by the endless bloodshed.
“We go down to the edge of the river on our side and the Yankees come down on their side and talk to each other,” Chester wrote. “The men on picket opposite are from Ohio, and seem very tired of the war.”
Despite official prohibitions, soldiers from opposing armies would sometimes slip across the river to barter food and supplies, later sitting together to share stories.
Chester even asked his sister about the political leanings of the Union men. “One of them said ‘Old Abe,’ but most of them said they were for McLellan.” The conversation was casual, yet the ever‑present threat of combat loomed over every exchange.
5 The Diary Of A Gulag Guard
“Minus 45 degrees,” Ivan Chistyakov recorded on December 10, 1935. “The train runs slowly. Only the moon, with a superior air, glides serenely through the sky. I stay indoors all day, wearing outer clothing.”
These words come from the diary of a Soviet gulag guard, a man tasked with compelling political prisoners to endure forced labor under Stalin’s iron grip.
Throughout his entries, Chistyakov never truly expressed empathy for the detainees, yet a thin thread of pity flickered through his reflections on the bitter cold that seemed to sap his own humanity.
He confessed a creeping despondency: “My heart is desolate, it alarms me. I’m beginning to have that mark on my face, the stamp of stupidity, narrowness, a kind of moronic expression.”
His daily routine forced him to suppress any compassion. After breaking up a knife fight and thwarting an escape plan, he noted with a bitter edge, “To hell with the lot of them!” revealing the hardened cruelty that the gulag system cultivated.
4 A Brit During The American Revolutionary War
“I have read somewhere, and I begin to think it possible, that a whole country as well as an individual may be struck with lunacy,” Henry Strachey wrote, reflecting on the burgeoning United States.
To Strachey, the American fight for independence was sheer madness, a rebellion against the rightful authority of King George.
“The people are beyond nature as well as reason,” he asserted. “They might at this moment have peace and happiness, but they insist upon having their brains knocked out first.”
In his view, the colonists’ desire for self‑governance was a fabricated oppression, a trick designed to convince them they were victims of English tyranny.
He lamented, “Alas! … They still continue obstinate,” expressing bewilderment at their stubborn refusal to surrender.
3 Black Police Officers During South African Apartheid
While Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress rallied against oppression, a contingent of black South Africans chose to serve as police officers for the apartheid regime, becoming the armed arm of a government that systematically denied them basic rights.
In a 1990 New York Times interview, officer Franz Nikelo explained his reasoning: “I thought in order to help society, I should become a policeman.” He argued that crime, especially within black communities, required a direct response.
These officers did not view themselves as collaborators. Colonel Zwane emphasized, “It’s stupid to think that black policemen are collaborators. I don’t think we can be a police force if only whites are policemen. We need blacks to investigate. We understand our own people better so it’s important that we be there.”
Nikelo echoed this sentiment, stating that once crime rates fell, the nation could turn its focus to dismantling apartheid.
2 An Abolitionist Who Learned To Embrace Slavery
Sarah Hicks Williams, a staunch Northern abolitionist, fell in love with Benjamin, a Southern slaveowner. Her early letters to family revealed stark conflict.
“There are but two things I know of to dislike in the man,” she wrote. “One is his owning slaves… The other is not being a professing Christian.”
Over the following months, her correspondence softened. She began to portray the enslaved as “treated with more familiarity than many northern servants,” suggesting a gradual acceptance of the institution.
Nevertheless, the enslaved resisted. Several attempts at escape and acts of defiance surfaced, forcing Sarah to describe them as “an ungrateful race” that compelled her to become “tight and ‘stingy’ with them.”
Her letters chronicle a heartbreaking transformation from idealistic abolitionist to a harsh plantation mistress, underscoring how personal relationships can warp moral convictions.
1 A Wounded Knee War Criminal’s Letters To His Lover
Sergeant Michael Conners faced a court‑martial for his role in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, where his cavalry unit slaughtered approximately three hundred Lakota men, women, and children.
In letters to his wife Lillie, Conners wrote with the calm of a devoted husband. Before the attack he reassured, “Don’t be alarmed… there are enough soldiers here to do up all the Indians here.”
After the carnage, he boasted, “The men behaved very good and done splendid… We made a break, and we shot them down. We followed them for miles and killed them all quick.” He even promised further extermination, stating, “We will exterminate all the Indians in the country.”
Conners dismissed contemporary criticism, noting, “Some of the eastern papers give us the Devil for killing the poor Indians. I wish they were out here for a while. I think they would change their opinion.”
His letters serve as a chilling confession, revealing how a participant rationalized mass murder as a matter of duty and honor.