Archived Documents Provide Glimpse Into Holiday Celebrations Aboard USS W.Va.

Christmas can be particularly difficult for those deployed away from home while serving in the military. Archival material shows how the Navy made the holiday special during the Great Depression  —  with a West Virginia connection.

Each December, the bell of the battleship, the USS West Virginia, rings out in remembrance of those who died 83 years ago during the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

The bell, along with the ship’s mast, are now fixtures of WVU’s downtown campus and the focal point of the annual ceremony which includes a 21 gun salute, (report) wreath layings from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and comments from local veterans. 

Retired Maj. George Davis gave this year’s keynote speech. He said the ship serves as a symbol of perseverance.

“USS West Virginia, although heavily damaged at Pearl Harbor and missing much of the war, nevertheless gained five battle stars,” Davis said.

Davis said the ceremony should serve as a reminder not just of the sacrifice made by the USS West Virginia’s crew, but by all service members down the years.

Other parts of the ship and her history, including an extensive collection of service and personal papers, are preserved for posterity in the university’s library.

Commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1923, the USS West Virginia saw two decades of service before that fateful day in 1941. 

Catherine Rakowski is the research and exhibition specialist for the West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) at West Virginia University in Morgantown. She said during a visit to campus several years ago, Lt. James Downing – who served as the ship’s postmaster – told her the people of West Virginia had a relationship with their namesake battleship unlike any other.

“Every ship, obviously named battleship, was named after a state, and (Downing) said only the state of West Virginia adopted their ship, the USS West Virginia,” Rakowski said. “He said you didn’t see that with the rest of them. He said the people from the state would send the crew birthday presents, cards. This is family. So I think that’s what you know that’s about, is passing it on to others.”

The collection at WVU includes programs from several years of holidays, Thanksgivings, Easters and Christmases that were celebrated by the crews of the USS West Virginia. Most programs were a half sheet or memo sized at most, primarily consisting of a short schedule and menu.

But the multi-page, color-printed Christmas programs that include poems and personal messages from the ship’s commanding officer stand out from the black and white of military bureaucratic paperwork. The programsmake it clear that Christmas was a special occasion aboard the USS West Virginia.

“What they would do is go into ports and holidays over in the Pacific, the South Pacific, wherever they were, and they would have a huge meal for the people who were living there, siblings living there, some on ship, especially the children, have a big meal for them,” Rakowski said. “And this is the menu, and sort of like the program, and they’d have presents for the children. It was quite a big feast. And so they would do all of this on the ship.”

In a time before digital image editing software and laser printing, the Christmas programs stand out for their intricacy, so much so that the history center reproduced a program page as one of their own Christmas cards a few years ago.

Each page is decorated with small block prints of holiday iconography: a snowy, forested town above the day’s schedule, or a tiny Santa Clause bent under the weight of his sack of toys, delineating the border between the names of the Christmas committee and the Division Representatives. 

It’s clear they were handmade, and copied in vibrant greens and reds for distribution across the ship.

“This was to keep up morale,” Rakowski said. “They knew what was coming, and you had families worrying, but you could send this home and say, you know, “We had this. Don’t worry, I’m good.” You got mom back home saying, wringing her hands, “Well, what are they going to feed them? What are they going to eat? How about the gifts? Did you get the gifts we sent you?”

There are other examples of morale activities in WVUs’ collection: schedules and descriptions of film screenings offered almost nightly on board, as well as betting sheets for sports games broadcast over radio. There’s even an entire book, an official publication of the U.S. Navy, recounting the West Virginia’s observation of the line-crossing ceremony, an initiation rite still observed by sailors  – both civilian and military –  commemorating a person’s first crossing of the Equator. 

But Christmas clearly held a special place above the rest.

“If you ask somebody, ‘What’s your favorite memory?’ a lot of people go right to Christmas,” Rakowski said. “So I think drawing on the good memories that they had. and this was during the Depression, but they still, you know, enjoyed, and I’m sure had very good memories.”

The collection, including the beautiful Christmas programs, will be the focus of a comprehensive exhibit to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war at the West Virginia and Regional History Center starting on West Virginia Day 2025.