Editor, The Review:

During the past thirty days I have been in the hospital from an emergency appendix operation and therefore unable to write you about the progress of the relocation of our Bainbridge Island people at Minidoka. However, you have been kept informed through other channels and this is only a note to say that the plan you originally proposed is going forward to a rapid conclusion, and we expect to see "Minidoka Special" leave Manzanar February 24th, with 193 of our Bainbridge friends as passengers.

The loss of the Bainbridge Island group to Manzanar is great. We are losing many of the finest people who have been residents in this Relocation area. Every one of our Administrative Offices will suffer through the loss of competent and loyal workers. As a group they are among the finest people whom I have met and the best wishes of all our staff at Manzanar go with them. We hope that our loss will be their gain and that the relocation of this group, in the place to which they have asked to be transferred so as to be with their friends, may demonstrate to them and to all evacuees the intense interest the Director of the War Relocation Authority and all of us in the projects have, in recognizing as far as possible the aspirations of the evacuees for greater opportunity in preparation for the return to normal life as a part of the American social and economic future.

RALPH P. MERRITT
Project Director,
Manzanar, Calif.