Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
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 - July 1944
Heart Mountain Concentration Camp, Wyoming
July 1944 - November 1944
Paroled to Chicago, Illinois
Los Angeles, California
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
Yoichi Hata was already a successful wholesale merchant and principal of a sake brewery in Hilo before World War II. He was president of the Hilo Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organization of prominent businessmen who worked to expand commerce with Japan, eliminate trade barriers, and develop direct steamship service between Hilo and Asia. All of JCC&I's prewar senior executive officers were interned. Along with Hata, they included his nephew Katsujiro Kagawa, Kashin Isa, Hisato Isemoto, Mitsuji Kasamoto, Masato Kiyosaki, Gunichi Kuwahara, Genichi Nagami, Eikichi Ochiai, Takaichi Saiki, Takuji Shindo, and Shizuma Tagawa.
Four of Hata's sons -- Susumu, Robert Akira, George Yoshimi, and Frank Jitsuo -- served in the U.S. military during the war. Nineteen-year-old George Yoshimi was in California when the war broke out, and he was incarcerated in the Tule Lake Segregation Center prior to his military service.
After the war, Hata and his descendants expanded his business into the largest food distribution service in the state of Hawaii.