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Tens of thousands of recommendation letters must have been written for Japanese Americans during WWII. Each required  the integrity of someone to sit down and write for the hope of another’s future, supporting a disfavored citizen or immigrant.

To be granted permission by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to leave the concentration camps and for general information associated with their Form WRA-26 “Individual Record,” the WRA instructed Japanese Americans to list persons they had known before the incarceration who could be asked for reference letters. Page 4 of Form WRA-71, “Application for a Permit to Leave a Relocation Center for Private Employment,” instructed each person to “List the names of at least two, and preferably five Caucasian references…” Letters sent from the WRA to each person listed were signed by, or in the name of the Director of the WRA himself, Dillon S. Myer (view second image in left column).

A number of story contributors mentioned these letters written for Japanese Americans in different WWII situations, with thankful expressions of how meaningful they felt to families today. The letters were often discovered in government files, in stored family files, or found by chance in old books and places we would not normally look. They become a window into how our parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and elders and community were thoughtfully admired by those who knew them, in such a publicly hostile time.

Presented here are three of five recommendation letters written for Mrs. Hatsu Shimasaki, from Strathmore, California. Despite being a widow with eight children and having farmed decades in California before being incarcerated thousands of miles away in Jerome, Arkansas, these referrals were still sought by the WRA. They are being shared with us by Lois Shimasaki-Oda, who added,

“I never knew my grandmother, as she died during the war… I found these letters heartwarming because they provided a positive picture of my grandmother and made me wish more that I could have met her.”