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CAMP ROBERTS, Calif. — Crews demolishing old military barracks on this sprawling base near Paso Robles stumbled on a surprising find: wallets.
Tumbling out of heating ducts suspended from the ceilings, the wallets were stuffed with remarkably well-preserved personal belongings dating from World War II and the Korean War.
Love letters. Religious medals. Base passes. High school identification cards. Driver's licenses. Dog tags. Snapshots. Tips for surviving an atomic blast.
The only thing missing was money.
The discovery posed unusual challenges for officials at the former Army base, now used by the California Army National Guard: How did the wallets get there? And could these leather-bound time capsules be returned to their owners?
An intensive search for clues among the wallets' contents, and for addresses and phone numbers of owners now in their golden years — or deceased — has reunited all but three of 25 wallets with their owners or relatives. And the work has yielded at least one theory about how they got there in the first place:
"The fact that there is no money in any of these wallets leads us to believe they were stolen," said California Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tom Murotake. "The thefts usually involved a trusting guy from a small town who set his wallet down, then got distracted.
"Someone else, in one fluid motion, nabbed the wallet, snatched the cash and chucked the rest into the heating duct overhead."
Over the decades, the heat turned the leather into something resembling beef jerky, but left everything inside intact.
Murotake, who is in charge of tracking down the owners, said the wallets become instant "touchstones," jolting memories back to a grueling and uncertain time when thousands of recruits converged at the base for 13 weeks of basic training. From there, they were shipped out to the front lines in Europe, the Pacific and Asia, a few without their cherished photos and pocket keepsakes.
Looking inside these wallets captures a glimpse of what life was like in the 63-man barracks on the 43,000-acre base straddling Highway 101, once the world's largest infantry and field artillery training center.
Willard Groth was an Army private preparing to visit a cousin in Bakersfield when the wallet he kept in a barracks footlocker vanished one day in 1944.
"It had $20 in it, which I needed for the trip," recalled Groth, 81, of Hoyt Lakes, Minn. "No one else had any money to loan, so I stayed on the base that day."
Groth was stunned when Murotake called him in late 2003. "I have your wallet, the one you lost six decades ago. It's ragged, but still holding together," he said.
Inside was a crumbling draft card, an American Legion hospitality card, a Social Security card and a tarnished dime minted in 1935. "I've decided not to polish that old dime," Groth said. "It's good to remember what you can from that long ago."
As for the reddish-brown wallet, embossed with a rising sun and with his name inscribed in gold letters, Groth said, "I put it away. My kids will find it when they dig through my junk someday."
To walk among the base's 300 two-story abandoned barracks today is to step into the past. Roads that once teemed with soldiers and 2-ton trucks after the attack on Pearl Harbor are now choked with weeds.
Inside the buildings are beds, mattresses and pillows unused for decades. Windows are broken, and floors are caked with dust and crisscrossed with the tracks of raccoons and mice.
All of the barracks, which contain lead-based paint and asbestos, are to be torn down.
In some barracks, the heating ducts have been pried off their hinges, indicating that others may have heard about the wallets. "Call it 'Raiders of the Lost Ducts,' " Murotake joshed during a tour of the facilities.
Tumbling out of heating ducts suspended from the ceilings, the wallets were stuffed with remarkably well-preserved personal belongings dating from World War II and the Korean War.
Love letters. Religious medals. Base passes. High school identification cards. Driver's licenses. Dog tags. Snapshots. Tips for surviving an atomic blast.
The only thing missing was money.
The discovery posed unusual challenges for officials at the former Army base, now used by the California Army National Guard: How did the wallets get there? And could these leather-bound time capsules be returned to their owners?
An intensive search for clues among the wallets' contents, and for addresses and phone numbers of owners now in their golden years — or deceased — has reunited all but three of 25 wallets with their owners or relatives. And the work has yielded at least one theory about how they got there in the first place:
"The fact that there is no money in any of these wallets leads us to believe they were stolen," said California Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tom Murotake. "The thefts usually involved a trusting guy from a small town who set his wallet down, then got distracted.
"Someone else, in one fluid motion, nabbed the wallet, snatched the cash and chucked the rest into the heating duct overhead."
Over the decades, the heat turned the leather into something resembling beef jerky, but left everything inside intact.
Murotake, who is in charge of tracking down the owners, said the wallets become instant "touchstones," jolting memories back to a grueling and uncertain time when thousands of recruits converged at the base for 13 weeks of basic training. From there, they were shipped out to the front lines in Europe, the Pacific and Asia, a few without their cherished photos and pocket keepsakes.
Looking inside these wallets captures a glimpse of what life was like in the 63-man barracks on the 43,000-acre base straddling Highway 101, once the world's largest infantry and field artillery training center.
Willard Groth was an Army private preparing to visit a cousin in Bakersfield when the wallet he kept in a barracks footlocker vanished one day in 1944.
"It had $20 in it, which I needed for the trip," recalled Groth, 81, of Hoyt Lakes, Minn. "No one else had any money to loan, so I stayed on the base that day."
Groth was stunned when Murotake called him in late 2003. "I have your wallet, the one you lost six decades ago. It's ragged, but still holding together," he said.
Inside was a crumbling draft card, an American Legion hospitality card, a Social Security card and a tarnished dime minted in 1935. "I've decided not to polish that old dime," Groth said. "It's good to remember what you can from that long ago."
As for the reddish-brown wallet, embossed with a rising sun and with his name inscribed in gold letters, Groth said, "I put it away. My kids will find it when they dig through my junk someday."
To walk among the base's 300 two-story abandoned barracks today is to step into the past. Roads that once teemed with soldiers and 2-ton trucks after the attack on Pearl Harbor are now choked with weeds.
Inside the buildings are beds, mattresses and pillows unused for decades. Windows are broken, and floors are caked with dust and crisscrossed with the tracks of raccoons and mice.
All of the barracks, which contain lead-based paint and asbestos, are to be torn down.
In some barracks, the heating ducts have been pried off their hinges, indicating that others may have heard about the wallets. "Call it 'Raiders of the Lost Ducts,' " Murotake joshed during a tour of the facilities.
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