Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Kilauea Military Camp, Hawaii Island
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among 39 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the fourth transfer ship for internment in U.S. Army and Justice Department camps on the Mainland. These men 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.
Also sent on the same ship were six Issei women internees: Kiku Horibe, Miyuki Kawasaki, Yoshie Miyao, Yuki Miyao, Haru Tanaka, and Tsuta Yamane. The women were kept apart from the men and had a different internment sequence from them.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
June 1942 - July 1942
Lordsburg Internment Camp, New Mexico
July 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.
Hisato Isemoto was a well known member of the Hilo construction industry before the war. He was an executive officer with 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 Isemoto, they included Yoichi Hata, Kashin Isa, Katsujiro Kagawa, Mitsuji Kasamoto, Masato Kiyosaki, Gunichi Kuwahara, Genichi Nagami, Eikichi Ochiai, Takaichi Saiki, Takuji Shindo, and Shizuma Tagawa.
In the postwar years, the business that Isemoto founded in 1926 would erect many Big Island structures including hospitals, schools, a police station, a lighthouse, and an airport.