Casualties of War : Letters to the mother of Deloris St. John held the painful secret of a close family friend. The correspondence from internees during World War II is now part of a collection of Japanese immigrant history at UCLA.

Deloris St. John thought she knew everything about her longtime friend Lillie Yamada McCabe.

St. John had known McCabe for 45 years. She became friends with St. John’s parents in the mid-1930s. She had been St. John’s nanny and was like a second mother to her.

It wasn’t until St. John was sorting through the Bel-Air estate of her late mother, Lela Cardozo, this past year that she learned there was at least one part of McCabe’s life that she had not shared.

McCabe, an American-born citizen, was one of 120,313 people of Japanese ancestry forced to abandon their homes and farms and carry their personal belongings to the relocation camps of World War II.

St. John discovered that fact in a bundle of letters--about 100 of them--bearing postmarks from eight of the 10 relocation camps established in the western United States. The writers had all been Westside friends and acquaintances of her parents.

A dozen of the letters were penned by McCabe, who was interned at Amache, Colo.

St. John was stunned. McCabe had never once, in the 45 years they had known each another, mentioned this part of her life. “This was the most emotional find we came across,” St. John said of the task of going through her mother’s belongings with her sister, Carol Stronach. “To read about what people that are close to me went through is just heartbreaking.”

St. John said that after the discovery she tried to gently bring up the subject with McCabe over lunch.

“When I told her we found these letters, her eyes widened a little,” St. John said. “She said, ‘It was in the past and we didn’t want to worry you about it.’ ”

Other letter writers whom St. John had known from childhood died years earlier, their secret also intact.

St. John’s mother was 87 when she died a year ago. She was something of a “pack rat” and had saved antiques, greeting cards from the family business, Buzza Greeting Card Co., and love letters from her late husband written before they married.

The habit saved the internees’ letters from the waste bin, allowing them to stand testament to friendships that endured an atmosphere of racism and the physical barriers of distance and barbed wire. The letters also capture snapshot accounts of the relocation experience.

When UCLA history professor Yuji Ichioka learned of the find last month, he immediately set off through heavy rain to St. John’s home in Dana Point to examine the letters. He asked St. John if she would donate them to UCLA’s Japanese American Research Project Collection, the world’s largest collection of Japanese immigrant and Japanese-American history.

St. John said she would turn the letters over to UCLA. There, they will be preserved under climate-controlled conditions and will be accessible to researchers, Ichioka said. The collection has original documents dating back to the late 19th Century.

“There’s a lot in writing already,” Ichioka said, “but these letters give a kind of raw feeling. . . . They are very personal letters, very revealing of the feelings at the time.”

About 10 people wrote from eight different camps from 1942 to 1945. The letters include the usual friendly greetings, followed by unusual descriptions of the writers’ lives.

Ray started to work in a mess hall, the Nishimoto family wrote. He figured he could get us more to eat. Everyone wants to work in a mess hall.

The Ida family wrote thank you for storing our junks,, safe and available.

The letters describe how several families shared a single barracks, hanging sheets across the room for privacy. The floors were dirt, temperatures dropped to 20 degrees below zero and cracks in the uninsulated walls let in the driving, dust-laden wind. Entire blocks of barracks shared common bathroom facilities.

Some are written on lined, unbleached paper. Others are written on camp stationery, with rows of barracks and camp scenes depicted in borders.

Fusa Nakano, the Cardozos’ housekeeper, wrote about two dozen letters from Heart Mountain, Wyo. One implored Cardozo to stop trying to send her ducklings because the first shipment arrived spoiled.

Please don’t send them, Nakano wrote. As much as I appreciate them, it makes me sick to think that they spoiled after you went through all that trouble. . . . I’ll just imagine that I had a delicious duck dinner, and again, thank you so much.

Another frequent writer was Kenzo Uyeno, who worked at Cardozo’s Bel-Air home in exchange for room and board. The Cardozos lived less than a mile from UCLA, where Uyeno is pictured in prewar photographs in graduation robes, flanked by the Cardozos.

He wrote: I hope the time will arrive shortly when I will again be fighting for a foothold in the economic structure as a means toward a normal secure living. Meanwhile, in this desert city of Poston, I am spending my young life.

In the mid-1930s, Lela and Ralph Cardozo were introduced to McCabe and her first husband, Ernest Yamada, through a mutual friend. Yamada owned a thriving import business.

The couples became close friends. Yamada and Ralph Cardozo worked side by side on small jobs that could be handled by amateur carpenters when the Cardozos built their Bel-Air home.

For the Cardozos, it was the beginning of a love affair with people of Japanese ancestry. The couple began taking in Japanese college students and hired Japanese gardeners and housekeepers.

But then came the decree on March 2, 1942, ordering the evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry in California.

“My mother always said what an injustice it was,” St. John said. “It wasn’t a daily subject, but when we asked why certain friends weren’t doing better (financially), she’d say they had lost everything and had to start all over again. . . . My parents were proud Republicans, very pro-American, but they felt this was a slap in the face to Americans.”

McCabe recalls how Lela Cardozo brought food and clothing to friends at Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, where the evacuees were housed in stables until the camps were ready.

Army soldiers initially allowed Cardozo to dine with McCabe just inside the gates, but soon told her she had to stop, McCabe said.

“I thought she’d never come back,” McCabe recalled. But “she comes back the next day with a very nice linen tablecloth. She passed it under the fence and we sat down on it and had a picnic with me on the other side.”

St. John, who was born in 1946, recalls her mother’s stories of loading up the car on weekends with pots of chili and boxes of clothes and setting off for the Manzanar camp in the Owens Valley. Cardozo recruited volunteers from church, women’s clubs and other civic groups to gather donations and take them to the camps, journeying as far as the Heart Mountain camp.

According to the letters, Cardozo sent extra items during the holidays: Easter baskets, cakes and cookies, and an occasional goose or salami. The letters contained many thanks and some included lists of needed supplies: garlic for medicinal use, witch hazel, light blue thread, a rug hook, baking soda.

The Cardozos were also asked to attest to at least one friend’s loyalty. In a letter from the War Relocation Authority, officials asked about the character of Michimasu Asami, a Hawaiian-born Nisei (second-generation Japanese) who lived with the Cardozos while he was a UCLA student.

Mr. Asami states that you will swear to his loyalty and allegiance . ... May we hear from you regarding your opinion of Mr. Asami? This will have some bearing on whether he is released.

Asami had been denied an off-site work permit because on a questionnaire he had answered no to the question that asked if he would join offensive United States combat forces. But he had answered yes to the next question, which asked if he would fight in defense of his country. The “loyalty registration” questionnaire was passed out to internees 17 and older in February, 1943.

Asami explained his reasoning to the Cardozos in one of his letters: We pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America not because we were persuaded or insisted by the teacher, but from our sincere hearts, that we were 100% American citizens.... Before accepting the duty as American, I want Mr. President and Mr. Secretary of War to reconsider our Nisei’s present secluded life and give us democracy that we are fighting for in our home land as well as in the war front and overseas.

Asami’s position is contrasted by another writer, Cpl. Toshio Abe, a Japanese-American who volunteered to join the Army: I hope some day the people of the west will also lift up their heads and open their eyes, and drop their unjustified suspicions of the Nisei--all Americans in heart just as eager if not more so to win this war.

Also among the letters were yellowed copies of the “Heart Mountain Sentinel,” black-and-white photographs and war pamphlets. One pamphlet, titled “Church women ask, How can we help Japanese American Evacuees?” suggests meeting returning evacuees at the train, helping them find jobs and houses and inviting them to dinner.

Lela Cardozo wrote her share of letters too. McCabe said she has not saved the letters, but those from Cardozo and other friends kept her abreast of what was going on in Los Angeles and helped her through the hard times.

During her stay at Amache, McCabe’s two sons contracted pneumonia from the cold and poor nutrition, and she was separated from her husband, who was working for the government as an interpreter and teacher of Japanese.

McCabe was released after a year and a half to live with her family in Colorado, where her husband started a photography business. When the Cardozos adopted St. John, McCabe returned to California. She had promised her friend that if she ever had a baby, she would help care for it. Her husband and the grown sons moved to Los Angeles’ Sawtelle area soon after.

McCabe still discusses camp life reluctantly, only when asked.

“I don’t want to say unpleasant things like that,” she said. “It was very sad for me. . . . It’s not worth holding a grudge. We have to learn from it and teach others as well as we can.”