The envelope from Hawaii is postmarked Dec. 6, 1941. Inside is the last letter 19-year-old Marine Pfc. Robert Kimball Holmes sent home to his father in Salt Lake City.
The next day, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Holmes was serving aboard the USS Oklahoma and died with other Marines and sailors aboard it.
Holmes’ nephew, Bruce Holmes, of Sandy, on Thursday thought of his grandfather, who died in 1977, when discussing the funeral Monday for the Marine. (Robert Holmes’ mother died in 1938.) He tried to imagine his grandfather receiving that letter days or weeks after learning his son had perished.