Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
A group of 172 Hawaii men (mostly Issei) were sent aboard the military transport ship USS U.S. Grant for internment in U.S. Army and Department of Justice camps on the Mainland. Together, the men were sent from camp to camp.
In June 1943, this transfer group was split into two, with this group sent from Camp Livingston to Fort Missoula before being transferred to the Santa Fe Camp.
From there, some internees were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps, where they were reunited with family members. Others were transferred for repatriation to Japan.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
March 1942
Camp McCoy Internment Camp, Wisconsin
March 1942 - May 1942
Camp Forrest Internment Camp, Tennessee
May 1942 - June 1942
Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana
June 1942 - June 1943
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
Repatriated to Japan: September 1943
Included among the repatriates who left from New York on the M.S. Gripsholm were 72 Hawaii internees and their families.
A former director of the Hawaii Japanese Educational Association, Eiichi Kishida was in late 1940 among a group of prominent community leaders behind the development of a modern multi-story department store in downtown Honolulu called The House of Mitsukoshi. Modeled on its well-known Tokyo namesake, it carried the latest in Japanese home goods and boasted the first escalator in the territory. Other executives involved in the venture included president Lawrence T. Kagawa, general manager Kazuaki Tanaka, and director Shigeru Horita, all of whom, like Kishida, would be interned with the outbreak of war.
The Mitsukoshi property would be seized by the federal government in 1942, and the department store converted into the headquarters for the American USO. Kishida repatriated to Japan in 1943. His son Takamichi Kishida served with the U.S. 8th Army during the Occupation of Japan.