Odes Lejwik received transit visa no. 1805 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 16 August 1940. The register records editor, aged 53.
Documents
The Hikawa Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Paulina Szweber — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at Seattle, microfilm publication M1383, roll 259, frame 188 of the file unit “Jan. 2, 1941, SS Bonillan-Mar. 26, 1941, SS Norco” (NAID 553886858). Public domain; credit: National Archives at Washington, DC.The Hikawa Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Paulina Szweber — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at Seattle, microfilm publication M1383, roll 259, frame 187 of the file unit “Jan. 2, 1941, SS Bonillan-Mar. 26, 1941, SS Norco” (NAID 553886858). Public domain; credit: National Archives at Washington, DC.
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What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
53
Occupation
Editor
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
daughter Hilda (16)
The journey
Reached Japan.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Hilda — daughter, aged 16
The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.
Where this comes from
The JEWCOM register — the refugee register kept by the Refugee Committee of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) at No. 6 Yamamoto-dori, 1-chome, whose cable address was 'JEWCOM Kobe'. Eighty-four pages on the committee's own printe… Entry 126 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 53, born at Ploszczenice, an editor, who arrived in Japan on 24 January 1941.
US arrival manifest: Letwik Odes, Seattle, 1941 "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Letwik Odes, 1941. Ship: Hikawa Maru. Matched from the Hikawa Maru's Polish-born passenger list (162 people, 35 matched). Register No.1805 'Odes Lejwik' records age 53; the manifest gives born 1889, arriving 1941.
US arrival manifest: Letwik Odes, Seattle, 1941 The manifest sheet itself has him on the Hikawa Maru, which sailed from Yokohama on 13 February 1941 and reached Seattle on the 25th: Letwik Odes, aged 52, married, a journalist, Polish, born at Pleszczenice, with his daughter Zelda, 16, a student, born at Landwarów, last residence Kaunas, on an American non-immigrant visa, No. 22, issued at Kaunas on 22 July 1940. The inspector's later notes extend his stay to April 1943 and record a readmission at Rouses Point, New York, in 1944 on a Polish quota visa. The register's line reads Odes Lejwik; the purser wrote Letwik; the age agrees. (The sheet is in the National Archives' passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seattle, microfilm M1383; the archive read FamilySearch's copy.)