Group Media & Photos

Internment Locations

Arrested: February 1942


Kilauea Military Camp, Hawaii Island


Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island


This internee was among 109 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the third transfer ship for internment in U.S. Army and Justice Department camps on the Mainland. The internees were sent together from camp to camp, with some paroled to War Relocation Authority camps to reunite with family or transferred for repatriation to Japan.


Angel Island Detention Facility, California

June 1942


Fort Sam Houston Internment Camp, Texas

June 1942


Lordsburg Internment Camp, New Mexico

June 1942 - June 1943


Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico

June 1943 - October 1945


Returned to Hawaii: November 1945

Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.


Rentaro Degawa, who wrote under the name Shito, was a member of one of the many dynamic Japanese poetry societies that gave Hawaii Island the name "Poetry Island" in the years before the war. With the internment of so many Big Island poets, like Shoichi Gessho Koide, Minoru Koran Murakami, David Shugaku Marutani, Tadasuke Koryu Nakabayashi, Eikichi Seiyu Ochiai, Otokichi Muin Ozaki, Haruto Fuyo Saito, and Shigezo Kasetsu Shigekane,  the Hilo societies fell silent, although many of the interned members continued to write throughout their captivity.