From the Sunday School, in 1926 –
In the latter part of January there came to the office of the General Superintendency, through a letter directed to the First Presidency of the Church, a greeting to the children of the Sunday Schools in Zion from five saints residing in Osaka, Japan: Brother Tsuruichi Katsura, Sister Tsuru Katsura, Brother Yoshijiro Watanabe, Brother Shigetada Suzuki, and Brother Ichitaro Ohashi. There was an enclosure of ten yen (about $5.00) with this comment:
“We are glad to inform you that we enclose herewith a small amount of money for our unknown little brothers and sisters of the Sunday School in your country.”
The General Superintendency on behalf of those “little brothers and sisters,” acknowledges gratefully both the greeting and the offering. Realizing that since the missionaries have been recalled from Japan and the Mission closed the saints there must feel lonely and meet with many discouragements and trials, we appreciate more the faith and integrity expressed throughout their letter, and pray God to lead them and minister adequately to their needs.
I wondered if any of those people might show up on Family Search, so I searched on the first, Tsuruichi Katsura. There are two entries for him–birthdates 10 days apart, birthplaces about 50 km apart. One shows a marriage to Tsuru Tanaka, the other does not. But both show his baptismal date as 25 December 1913.
Most interesting: one shows that he lived until 1982, that he received his endowment in the Hawaiian Temple in 1965–which was the time of the first organized temple excursion to Hawaii by the saints in Japan. (And temple work was done for his parents and his eight siblings at that same time, according to the page at Family Search.) If that is correct, then he was one of the few Japanese saints who retained a connection to the church during the dark years, from 1926 to 1945, when there was no organized mission in Japan and very little contact between the few remaining Japanese saints and church headquarters. (To say nothing of the widespread destruction of Japanese cities by American bombing in 1945.)
Terrific research, Mark B. — thanks for doing it and reporting it.