July 24, 2025 • 17 mins
PFC Nickolas J. Pappas, of Wilkes-Barre PA, Served in the 1878th US Army Aviation Engineers during WW2 in the Pacific. He was part of the efforts on Saipan and Okinawa. His younger brother John served in the US Marine Corp and was wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima.
During WW2 men and women were deployed throughout Europe and the Pacific and their only means to communicate home was through letters, handwritten notes to assure those at home they were alright and waiting for letters from their loved ones to provide semblance of support and normalcy. Over the years I have collected letters with the intention of returning to family - but first I’d like to share who these men were, where were they from and the context of where the soldiers were and what role they played in the War.
Please sit back and get to know these members of the greatest generation. It is my hope that All letters in these podcasts will return to family. If you recognize the soldiers or families, please reach out to me at and help me get the letters home
During WW2 men and women were deployed throughout Europe and the Pacific and their only means to communicate home was through letters, handwritten notes to assure those at home they were alright and waiting for letters from their loved ones to provide semblance of support and normalcy. Over the years I have collected letters with the intention of returning to family - but first I’d like to share who these men were, where were they from and the context of where the soldiers were and what role they played in the War.
Please sit back and get to know these members of the greatest generation. It is my hope that All letters in these podcasts will return to family. If you recognize the soldiers or families, please reach out to me at and help me get the letters home
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to Warren Family Letters Home. I'm your podcast host,
Lauren News. This podcast is about letters, real letters written
home by US servicemen and women during World War II.
My mission is simple to return World War Two history
to families, one letter and one story at a time.
(00:51):
It's easy to forget the lives that came before the
stories we remember. Every letter is a time capsule, a
voice echoing for word from a foxhole, a barracks bunk,
a ship, or a field hospital. And in my hope,
my real hope, is that someone listening today will hear
a familiar name or place and reach out because these
(01:13):
letters Home belong home. A letter in today's episode, I
found it at auction and it was written by PFC.
Nicholas J. Pappas of the United States Army Engineers. Nicholas
(01:49):
James Papas was born June eighteenth, nineteen twenty three, in Roanoke, Virginia,
the first son of Greek immigrants James and Theodora Papas.
James had arrived in nineteen eighteen to the United States
in Theodora two years before that. They were chasing something better,
(02:10):
opportunity maybe, or a place to plant some roots. By
nineteen thirty, the family had settled in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania,
where James ran a shoeshine parlor downtown. Later he opened
a dry cleaning business, and Nick helped his dad and
went to school, and in nineteen forty you find him
(02:31):
in the yearbook at Myers High School, a member of
the baseball team. He was nineteen when he registered for
the draft, walking into the local board at the Myers
High School building on June thirtieth, nineteen forty two. He
stood five foot eleven, one hundred and seventy seven pounds,
with brown hair, brown eyes, and what they called is
(02:53):
a ruddy complexion, and he listed his employer as his dad.
Long after, on March twenty sixth, nineteen forty three, Nicholas
was called up. He joined the US Army Engineers and
was assigned to Company A of the eighteen seventy eighth
Engineering Aviation Battalion, and a few months later he was
(03:15):
headed to the Pacific. In June of nineteen forty four,
the eighteen seventy eighth landed on the island of Saipan,
part of a brutal campaign to push towards Tokyo. The
job of the engineers was to build airfields, roads, barracks,
but the land wasn't ready bombed out. Coral reefs blocked
(03:38):
their equipment from landing, and they had to doze a
path through the reef itself just to get ashore. And
once they did, the real work began, filling craters from
the bombings, laying pipe for camp infrastructure, flattening out enough
ground to land and launch planes. And it was it
(03:58):
was dangerous. At any point they could have to drop
their tools and pick up their rifles. They were under fire,
short on supplies, and working through heat and hunger. The
eighteen seventy eighth worked with their hands in the dirt
and their backs to the line of fire. While Nicholas
was digging in at Saipan, his younger brother, John, just
(04:22):
seventeen when he joined the Marines, was also in the Pacific.
On February twenty second, nineteen forty five, just days into
the infamous Battle of Iojima, John was wounded by Japanese fire.
He was only nineteen, the same age Nick had been
when he first registered a local paper, The Wilkes Bar
(04:45):
Times Leader, ran a piece that in March that read Pfc.
John J. Pappas, a marine since he was seventeen years old,
was wounded on Ujima. His brother Nicholas went into the
arm the Air Force March twenty eighth, nineteen forty three,
at the age of eighteen. Sons of mister and Missus
(05:07):
Jay Poppas. They were born in Roanoke, Virginia. John won
many honors during training that preceded his departure for a
Pacific base last August seventh with the third Marine Division.
He went into Iwajima, where Japanese bullets wounded him on
February twenty second, and he is now in hospital. In
(05:32):
April of nineteen forty five, Nicholas's battalion was on Okinawa.
It was the last major battle of the war and
the bloodiest. The engineers arrived just behind the front lines
mid April, setting up camp under constant threat kamikaze raids,
sniper fire, artillery, but still they built runways to launch planes,
(05:56):
roads for tanks, water lines, latrines, hulk camps. Just out
of chaos. They were laying the path forward one trench
and one pipe, one runway at a time. The Battle
of Okinawa cost over twelve thousand American lives, but The
work of men like Nicholas Pappus made it possible for
(06:17):
those Plains to fly supplies to land and for the
war to move towards its end. As the battle was
winding down, Pfc Nicholas Pappus took a moment to write
to his parents and his little brother Andrew at home
June fourteenth, nineteen forty five. Dear Mom, Pop, and Andy,
(06:39):
I just received your letter and was very glad to
hear from you. I am well and in good health.
Don't worry about brother John. He's just shell shocked. You
don't have to worry. He won't come back back overseas again.
He needs a long rest. I am very sorry Mom
to hear about your folks. That's really too bad. I
(07:02):
hope we can all join them someday. I'll write again
you answer. I'm sending you this clip. Read it with
all my love. NICKI. I want to take just a
minute to talk about PFC Nicholas Papus's letter to his
mom and a quiet line in it that carries a
(07:23):
heavy weight. In the note, he mentions her parents his grandparents.
We know that his mother, Theodora, came to the United
States in nineteen sixteen, when she was just thirteen years old.
But we don't know who she traveled with or if
she ever saw her parents again. What we do know
is that her parents were still in Greece at the
(07:44):
start of World War II, and they did not survive
the war. In April nineteen forty one, Nazi Germany invaded Greece.
What followed was one of the harshest occupations in Europe.
The suffering was brutal mass starvation, mass executions, and the
near eradication of Greece's Jewish population. It's estimated that two
(08:10):
hundred and fifty thousand Greeks died during the occupation and
ninety percent of Greek Jews perished. That's the world Nick's
grandparents were caught in. And then about that newspaper clipping
Nick sent home with his letter. Yes, the clipping was
still with the letter. I'll be posting a photo of
(08:33):
it on my Facebook page. It shows two soldiers sitting
on the ground outside a tent. One is cleaning a pistol,
the other is cleaning his rifle. Their uniforms are worn,
their boots are worn. One of them has his foot
up and you can see the bottom of his boot
is completely smooth, no tread left at all. The caption
(08:56):
reads Private Jack Page left of des Moines, Iowa and Pfc.
Nicholas J. Poppus of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Aviation engineers cleaned
their firearms on an airfield on Okinawa as they prepared
to meet Japanese attack by parachutists. Nick is the one
(09:19):
with the worn out boot cleaning his rifle. Okinawa was
planned to be a major staging ground for the final
assault on Japan, a stronghold for air, land and sea forces.
The airfield was to be a heavy bomber base. Twenty
six aviation engineer battalions like the one Nick served in
(09:41):
worked alongside Army construction units and navcbs. They graded roads,
opened quarries, built asphalt plants, all under enemy fire and
threat of attack. By the time the war ended in
August nineteen forty five, the base on Okinawa was well underway,
(10:01):
and even after Japan surrendered, the work continued because the
island remained strategically vital, and it still is today. Nicholas
Papas returned home on December third, nineteen forty five, and
he was honorably discharged from Indiantown Gap on December thirteenth,
(10:22):
He was just twenty one years old. He went home
to wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and picked up the rest of
his life, like so many others, carrying memories that we
can only try to understand. We find Nicholas in the
nineteen fifty census, living back home in wilkes bar with
his parents and his two younger brothers, John and Andrew.
(10:46):
Nicholas was working as a presser at his father's tailoring shop.
His brother John, like so many from that generation, stayed
close to home. He built a life in wilkes bar
married two sons, and eventually became a grandfather to four
at a great grandfather to eight. He passed away in
(11:08):
twenty thirteen, and his obituary tells us a few things
that paint a picture of the man that he was.
He was affectionately known as Kojak, and he proudly served
the US Marine Corps during World War Two, and he
was an avid jitterbug fan who loved big band music,
especially Glenn Miller. Nicholas, on the other hand, he never married.
(11:32):
He lived a quiet life and passed away suddenly at
home on September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety nine. Before his
retirement in nineteen ninety three, he had worked as a
presser at a local dry cleaning shop. He was a
member of the Greek Orthodox Church, and he's buried at
Oaklawn Cemetery in Hanover Township. The horrors of war touched
(11:59):
every theater in World War Two, but the Pacific was
a world apart. The men fought there weren't just battling
an enemy. They were battling jungles, disease, sweltering heat, and
a brutal style of warfare that was deeply foreign to them.
The Battle of Uajima and Okinawa were among the most
(12:20):
vicious of the world of the war, and both Papa's
brothers played a role. John was wounded on Iwajima. In
one of Nicholas's letters home, he tries to reassure his mom,
telling her not to worry and that John was just
dealing with shell shock. Shell shock was a term first
(12:41):
used in World War I. By World War II, it
was called battle fatigue, and today we understand it as
post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. We now know that it's
a very real injury, a wound of the mind, but
back then it wasn't well understand and it covered a
range of symptoms tremors, anxiety, nightmares, even temporary blindness or deafness.
(13:08):
Treatment in World War II often meant rest, sometimes medication,
but in World War I it could have meant something
as extreme as electric shock therapy. But regardless of the
name or the treatment, there was always a stigma. Military
leadership too often saw it as a sign of weakness,
(13:30):
and that is just heartbreaking because the men who endure
those battles are anything but weak. Whether they were slogging
through the jungles of the Pacific, storming the beaches of Normandy,
fighting through the gardens, or liberating concentration camps, they bore
the weight of history on their shoulders. And yet even
(13:54):
today we don't do enough to support our veterans' mental health.
The statistic is twenty two veterans a day take their
own lives twenty two. If you'd like to help make
a difference in this, I encourage you to check out
the Headstrong Project. They provide confidential, barrier free, stigma free
(14:18):
mental health treatment for veterans and active duty military. Their
mission is to help our service members triumph over trauma.
You can find them at the headstrongproject dot org. Please
take a moment to learn more, because the fight doesn't
always end when the war is over. Thank you for
(14:49):
joining me today as we explore the story of Pfc
Nicholas J. Kappas and to hear a little bit about
his younger brother John. If you know anyone of the
Papa's family of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, please consider sharing this podcast
with them. The stories deserve to be remembered. Warren Family
(15:15):
Letters Home is completely self funded and we will never
ask for a family to pay to receive a letter home.
If you'd like to support my mission of returning history
to families, I'd love to hear from you. You can
find me on Facebook at Warren Family Letters Home or
reach me by email at Warren Family at outlook dot com.
(15:42):
All of the details shared in this podcast come from
research I've done using public military records, genealogy resources, and
newspaper archives. Please continue to support our military, both active
and that's friends. These men and women sacrifice so much
(16:04):
to serve this great country. In Baltimore and has come
until next week. I'm Lauren Muse, and you've been listening
to Warren family, letters, Home,
Welcome to Warren Family Letters Home. I'm your podcast host,
Lauren News. This podcast is about letters, real letters written
home by US servicemen and women during World War II.
My mission is simple to return World War Two history
to families, one letter and one story at a time.
(00:51):
It's easy to forget the lives that came before the
stories we remember. Every letter is a time capsule, a
voice echoing for word from a foxhole, a barracks bunk,
a ship, or a field hospital. And in my hope,
my real hope, is that someone listening today will hear
a familiar name or place and reach out because these
(01:13):
letters Home belong home. A letter in today's episode, I
found it at auction and it was written by PFC.
Nicholas J. Pappas of the United States Army Engineers. Nicholas
(01:49):
James Papas was born June eighteenth, nineteen twenty three, in Roanoke, Virginia,
the first son of Greek immigrants James and Theodora Papas.
James had arrived in nineteen eighteen to the United States
in Theodora two years before that. They were chasing something better,
(02:10):
opportunity maybe, or a place to plant some roots. By
nineteen thirty, the family had settled in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania,
where James ran a shoeshine parlor downtown. Later he opened
a dry cleaning business, and Nick helped his dad and
went to school, and in nineteen forty you find him
(02:31):
in the yearbook at Myers High School, a member of
the baseball team. He was nineteen when he registered for
the draft, walking into the local board at the Myers
High School building on June thirtieth, nineteen forty two. He
stood five foot eleven, one hundred and seventy seven pounds,
with brown hair, brown eyes, and what they called is
(02:53):
a ruddy complexion, and he listed his employer as his dad.
Long after, on March twenty sixth, nineteen forty three, Nicholas
was called up. He joined the US Army Engineers and
was assigned to Company A of the eighteen seventy eighth
Engineering Aviation Battalion, and a few months later he was
(03:15):
headed to the Pacific. In June of nineteen forty four,
the eighteen seventy eighth landed on the island of Saipan,
part of a brutal campaign to push towards Tokyo. The
job of the engineers was to build airfields, roads, barracks,
but the land wasn't ready bombed out. Coral reefs blocked
(03:38):
their equipment from landing, and they had to doze a
path through the reef itself just to get ashore. And
once they did, the real work began, filling craters from
the bombings, laying pipe for camp infrastructure, flattening out enough
ground to land and launch planes. And it was it
(03:58):
was dangerous. At any point they could have to drop
their tools and pick up their rifles. They were under fire,
short on supplies, and working through heat and hunger. The
eighteen seventy eighth worked with their hands in the dirt
and their backs to the line of fire. While Nicholas
was digging in at Saipan, his younger brother, John, just
(04:22):
seventeen when he joined the Marines, was also in the Pacific.
On February twenty second, nineteen forty five, just days into
the infamous Battle of Iojima, John was wounded by Japanese fire.
He was only nineteen, the same age Nick had been
when he first registered a local paper, The Wilkes Bar
(04:45):
Times Leader, ran a piece that in March that read Pfc.
John J. Pappas, a marine since he was seventeen years old,
was wounded on Ujima. His brother Nicholas went into the
arm the Air Force March twenty eighth, nineteen forty three,
at the age of eighteen. Sons of mister and Missus
(05:07):
Jay Poppas. They were born in Roanoke, Virginia. John won
many honors during training that preceded his departure for a
Pacific base last August seventh with the third Marine Division.
He went into Iwajima, where Japanese bullets wounded him on
February twenty second, and he is now in hospital. In
(05:32):
April of nineteen forty five, Nicholas's battalion was on Okinawa.
It was the last major battle of the war and
the bloodiest. The engineers arrived just behind the front lines
mid April, setting up camp under constant threat kamikaze raids,
sniper fire, artillery, but still they built runways to launch planes,
(05:56):
roads for tanks, water lines, latrines, hulk camps. Just out
of chaos. They were laying the path forward one trench
and one pipe, one runway at a time. The Battle
of Okinawa cost over twelve thousand American lives, but The
work of men like Nicholas Pappus made it possible for
(06:17):
those Plains to fly supplies to land and for the
war to move towards its end. As the battle was
winding down, Pfc Nicholas Pappus took a moment to write
to his parents and his little brother Andrew at home
June fourteenth, nineteen forty five. Dear Mom, Pop, and Andy,
(06:39):
I just received your letter and was very glad to
hear from you. I am well and in good health.
Don't worry about brother John. He's just shell shocked. You
don't have to worry. He won't come back back overseas again.
He needs a long rest. I am very sorry Mom
to hear about your folks. That's really too bad. I
(07:02):
hope we can all join them someday. I'll write again
you answer. I'm sending you this clip. Read it with
all my love. NICKI. I want to take just a
minute to talk about PFC Nicholas Papus's letter to his
mom and a quiet line in it that carries a
(07:23):
heavy weight. In the note, he mentions her parents his grandparents.
We know that his mother, Theodora, came to the United
States in nineteen sixteen, when she was just thirteen years old.
But we don't know who she traveled with or if
she ever saw her parents again. What we do know
is that her parents were still in Greece at the
(07:44):
start of World War II, and they did not survive
the war. In April nineteen forty one, Nazi Germany invaded Greece.
What followed was one of the harshest occupations in Europe.
The suffering was brutal mass starvation, mass executions, and the
near eradication of Greece's Jewish population. It's estimated that two
(08:10):
hundred and fifty thousand Greeks died during the occupation and
ninety percent of Greek Jews perished. That's the world Nick's
grandparents were caught in. And then about that newspaper clipping
Nick sent home with his letter. Yes, the clipping was
still with the letter. I'll be posting a photo of
(08:33):
it on my Facebook page. It shows two soldiers sitting
on the ground outside a tent. One is cleaning a pistol,
the other is cleaning his rifle. Their uniforms are worn,
their boots are worn. One of them has his foot
up and you can see the bottom of his boot
is completely smooth, no tread left at all. The caption
(08:56):
reads Private Jack Page left of des Moines, Iowa and Pfc.
Nicholas J. Poppus of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Aviation engineers cleaned
their firearms on an airfield on Okinawa as they prepared
to meet Japanese attack by parachutists. Nick is the one
(09:19):
with the worn out boot cleaning his rifle. Okinawa was
planned to be a major staging ground for the final
assault on Japan, a stronghold for air, land and sea forces.
The airfield was to be a heavy bomber base. Twenty
six aviation engineer battalions like the one Nick served in
(09:41):
worked alongside Army construction units and navcbs. They graded roads,
opened quarries, built asphalt plants, all under enemy fire and
threat of attack. By the time the war ended in
August nineteen forty five, the base on Okinawa was well underway,
(10:01):
and even after Japan surrendered, the work continued because the
island remained strategically vital, and it still is today. Nicholas
Papas returned home on December third, nineteen forty five, and
he was honorably discharged from Indiantown Gap on December thirteenth,
(10:22):
He was just twenty one years old. He went home
to wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and picked up the rest of
his life, like so many others, carrying memories that we
can only try to understand. We find Nicholas in the
nineteen fifty census, living back home in wilkes bar with
his parents and his two younger brothers, John and Andrew.
(10:46):
Nicholas was working as a presser at his father's tailoring shop.
His brother John, like so many from that generation, stayed
close to home. He built a life in wilkes bar
married two sons, and eventually became a grandfather to four
at a great grandfather to eight. He passed away in
(11:08):
twenty thirteen, and his obituary tells us a few things
that paint a picture of the man that he was.
He was affectionately known as Kojak, and he proudly served
the US Marine Corps during World War Two, and he
was an avid jitterbug fan who loved big band music,
especially Glenn Miller. Nicholas, on the other hand, he never married.
(11:32):
He lived a quiet life and passed away suddenly at
home on September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety nine. Before his
retirement in nineteen ninety three, he had worked as a
presser at a local dry cleaning shop. He was a
member of the Greek Orthodox Church, and he's buried at
Oaklawn Cemetery in Hanover Township. The horrors of war touched
(11:59):
every theater in World War Two, but the Pacific was
a world apart. The men fought there weren't just battling
an enemy. They were battling jungles, disease, sweltering heat, and
a brutal style of warfare that was deeply foreign to them.
The Battle of Uajima and Okinawa were among the most
(12:20):
vicious of the world of the war, and both Papa's
brothers played a role. John was wounded on Iwajima. In
one of Nicholas's letters home, he tries to reassure his mom,
telling her not to worry and that John was just
dealing with shell shock. Shell shock was a term first
(12:41):
used in World War I. By World War II, it
was called battle fatigue, and today we understand it as
post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. We now know that it's
a very real injury, a wound of the mind, but
back then it wasn't well understand and it covered a
range of symptoms tremors, anxiety, nightmares, even temporary blindness or deafness.
(13:08):
Treatment in World War II often meant rest, sometimes medication,
but in World War I it could have meant something
as extreme as electric shock therapy. But regardless of the
name or the treatment, there was always a stigma. Military
leadership too often saw it as a sign of weakness,
(13:30):
and that is just heartbreaking because the men who endure
those battles are anything but weak. Whether they were slogging
through the jungles of the Pacific, storming the beaches of Normandy,
fighting through the gardens, or liberating concentration camps, they bore
the weight of history on their shoulders. And yet even
(13:54):
today we don't do enough to support our veterans' mental health.
The statistic is twenty two veterans a day take their
own lives twenty two. If you'd like to help make
a difference in this, I encourage you to check out
the Headstrong Project. They provide confidential, barrier free, stigma free
(14:18):
mental health treatment for veterans and active duty military. Their
mission is to help our service members triumph over trauma.
You can find them at the headstrongproject dot org. Please
take a moment to learn more, because the fight doesn't
always end when the war is over. Thank you for
(14:49):
joining me today as we explore the story of Pfc
Nicholas J. Kappas and to hear a little bit about
his younger brother John. If you know anyone of the
Papa's family of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, please consider sharing this podcast
with them. The stories deserve to be remembered. Warren Family
(15:15):
Letters Home is completely self funded and we will never
ask for a family to pay to receive a letter home.
If you'd like to support my mission of returning history
to families, I'd love to hear from you. You can
find me on Facebook at Warren Family Letters Home or
reach me by email at Warren Family at outlook dot com.
(15:42):
All of the details shared in this podcast come from
research I've done using public military records, genealogy resources, and
newspaper archives. Please continue to support our military, both active
and that's friends. These men and women sacrifice so much
(16:04):
to serve this great country. In Baltimore and has come
until next week. I'm Lauren Muse, and you've been listening
to Warren family, letters, Home,
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