Photographed over three years in Okayama Prefecture, in the south of Honshu, Reiko Shibata's Lost Missives is a narrative of lost loves and of the lived lives of the last remaining generation of women known as the wives of the war dead. It portrays 54 women, each portrait accompanied by an individual interview, in text and image, that tells powerful stories of preserved love and of loss. It is a reminder of the effects of war, which echo far from the battlefield into the everyday lives of those left behind and made to live with loss, a documentation of the past and a source for guiding the future.