With the book of my 1945-46 letters from the US Navy now out as an ebook, I plan now and then to reprint on this blog one of those letters or an excerpt and follow it with some comments from a contemporary perspective.

Aug. 8, 1945

     .  .  .  .  . Today we went swimming, a short but nice pleasure. The pool is the biggest indoor pool in the world – but we always have to get out again very soon.

     My inoculations are now complete and the double typhoid shot worked out well.

     Yesterday I had the 0000-0400 watch – boring but otherwise not much happens. Today I took out a $10,000 insurance policy that will surely be sent to you soon. Almost everybody did the same thing, since for 8 years the same premium is due and can then be converted into a civilian policy. Everything can be changed, even the beneficiaries. It costs $6.40 per month.

     What you have in mind about a more detailed letter I don’t quite understand, since it’s always the same thing in a different form – lectures, films, exercise, work & drill.

     Now there is unfortunately not much more time – nor much to say.

     Therefore good bye – Rudy

   I have that policy still, though its beneficiaries have changed serveral times since the original Effective Date of 08/08/46. It is many years since I’ve had to pay a premium—not even that monthly $6.40--since dividends and interest earned (“not subject to federal income tax”)  easily covered the premiums that would have been due. All that boosted the cash balance to $19,846,10 and the Survivor Benefit—that was $10.000 in 1946—to $29,846.10 as of August 8, 2014.

   I leave it to competent economists to determine whether leaving that policy alone for all these years is a better deal or a worse one, compared to cashing it in on some day during those intervening sixty-eight years. The latter seems highly likely, since those what would have cost $10,000 in 1946 is calculated to cost $120,370 in 2015. But if you tackle this issue, make sure to make your assumptions explicit.

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To get the ebook, A Sailor Writes Home from His Time in the U.S. Navy: Letters of 1945-1946, Aftermath of World War II, go to http://www.amazon.com/Rudolph-H.-Weingartner/e/B001H6NSB4 and click on the first book.