Good Night Officially: The Pacific War Letters of a Destroyer Sailor: The Letters of Yeoman James Orvill Raines

The destroyer USS Howorth , commissioned in 1944, took part in 11 shore bombardments, destroyed 12 Japanese warplanes, and won battle stars in the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns. Yeoman Second Class Orvill Raines's remarkably expressive letters to his wife convey in vivid detail what it was like to serve aboard a ``tin can'' in an increasingly dangerous war zone. He writes of the daily routine of ship and crew, his struggle against boredom and homesickness, his dreams of the postwar future, and periods of stark terror as Japanese kamikazes began to stalk the fleet. Raines, a former Dallas Morning News reporter, was 26 years old and passionately in love with his wife of four years, Ray Ellen. His expressions of devotion (``I kiss the lipstick you put on your letters . . . and feel your heavenly body next to mine'') are universal and poignant in the context of a war he would not survive. McBride, professor of history at James Madison University in Virginia, has done an excellent job of editing, footnoting and putting the letters in historical context. Photos. (Mar.)