Nice weather. Fueled from Tomohawk (X88). Getting dull again.
Read in the diary →A firsthand record of the Pacific War
A sailor’s war,
one day at a time.
Elmer Carlson went from high school class president to a Navy Signalman First Class aboard USS The Sullivans. 1,142 days in the Navy, 668 of those in the Pacific. He was eighteen when he enlisted in Seattle, nineteen when he came aboard, and twenty-one when he finally came home to marry Dorothy, the girl he wrote to regularly from sea. This is an archive of his daily diary that covered 389 of those days.
01
The record
Elmer’s entries are often only a sentence or two. Together, they hold the scale of a war: long quiet stretches, abrupt danger, news from home, and the daily work of a young sailor far away.
His words appear verbatim. Chapters, tags, maps, historical links, and the Navy’s own paperwork are editorial layers, always identified and kept secondary to what he wrote.
The diary stayed in his family and was transcribed by his son-in-law. This archive was built by his grandson. How it was made →
- 389
- dated entries
- 39
- named places
- 25
- service records
“Landed on Tarawa in the Gilberts. Damn rugged. Hope I never see anything like this again.”Read from this day →
Today
On this day
October 23, as Elmer recorded it.
02
READExplore the archive
The complete diary
All 389 entries in one dated stream, with 11 chapters to find your way.
Open the diary →TRACEThe journey
Follow every named place back to the entries recorded there.
See the map →DISCOVERPeople & ships
Find shipmates, family, commanders, and the vessels around him.
Browse the index →LISTENHear it read
Every entry has a computer-generated voice narrator to bring some life to his voice.
Start listening →VERIFYService records
Navy muster rolls, the ship’s war diaries, a draft card, a marriage certificate, and two yearbook portraits, read beside his diary.
“Everyone is in very high spirits. Its hard to believe that we are actually going home.”
— The final entry in this diary