By Pam Walatka

Save your letters! That’s the moral of “War Orphan in San Francisco” by Cupertino author Phyllis Helene Mattson (Stephens Creek Press, 2005).

Mattson taught anthropology at De Anza College until her recent retirement. Her book is a collection of letters that she had the foresight to save as a child.

Mattson as a 10-year-old Jewish girl in Vienna in 1940 was surrounded by danger. For safety, she was sent to live with an aunt in San Francisco. Because Mattson had no siblings and her parents couldn’t get visas, she went alone.

She corresponded with her father and had the prescience to ask him to save her letters and to save his. He was sent to an internment camp. Their letters form the core of the book. Mattson, an excellent letter writer, comments, “I consider letters a gift from one person to another.”

The future anthropologist observed her daily life and recorded interesting details about what she ate, what she wore, what she longed for and how she got through the day.

She notices and appreciates American freedoms: “I realized with relief that to be Jewish was not a crime in America. … Another thing that was liberating for me was that it was possible to walk on the grass in parks, something that is clearly forbidden in Austria … still today.”

I’ve rarely seen such candor, even in personal letters, let alone published letters. They read like a diary.

We see her struggling to be popular (with some success) and to attract the handsome boys who don’t like her back. “I personally was firm in my intent not to have sex before marriage, but my resolve was never challenged during my high school years.” We see her good side and her bad side. When she’s bratty or disagreeable, we hear about it.

Her aunt and subsequent foster homes kicked her out, for reasons not quite known to her, but probably involving insubordination. Mattson is a strong-minded woman, tending to trust her own reasoning.

She writes of moving to an orphanage in January 1942: “I was glad to go. I was learning that I could just walk away from unpleasant situations without actually confronting my unhappiness or unacceptable behavior. Later I found this method useful in my life.”

On one level, this book is a cultural history of the 1940s and 1950s in San Francisco. It is also the story of a smart, strong-willed teenager. Although the book starts slowly, it becomes interesting because of Mattson’s skillful observations and candor.