Group Media & Photos
Buddhist ministers from Hawaii, Santa Fe Internment Camp, ca. 1943. Bottom Row (L-R): Daishin Ikejiri, Kogan Yoshizumi, Zenkai Kokuzo, Ninryo Nago, Ryoyu Kitajima, Nozaki (not from Hawaii), Shunjo Shiratori, Teizen Imamura. Middle Row: Tetsuo Tanaka, Ikeda, Shoyu Kitajima, Shuzui Hino, Taigaku Ueshima, Gijo Ozawa, Ryuko Tachibana, Gyokuei Matsuura. Top Row: Kenko Yamashita (not from Hawaii), [Mitsuomi] Yamane, Kozan Nishizawa, Tetsuei Katoda, Ryudo Kubota, [Tessui] Hanada, Koetsu Morita. JCCH/Joan Oya Collection.
Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Kilauea Military Camp, Hawaii Island
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
A group of 167 Hawaii men (mostly Issei) was sent on the second transfer ship for incarceration 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 directly from Camp Livingston to the Santa Fe Camp.
From there, some internees were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps, where they were reunited with family members under confinement. Others were transferred for repatriation to Japan.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
March 1942 - April 1942
Fort Sill Internment Camp, Oklahoma
April 1942 - May 1942
Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana
June 1942 - June 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - March 1944
Jerome Concentration Camp, Arkansas
March 1944 - May 1944
Tule Lake Segregation Center, California
May 1944 - November 1945
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
Zenkai Kokuzo arrived in the Hawaiian Islands from his native Hokkaido in the mid-1930s, serving as an assistant priest at the Soto Mission's Taishoji Temple in Hilo on Hawaii Island and as a teacher at the Olaa Japanese Language School.
Early in 1941, he was appointed head priest of the temple. When he was arrested and incarcerated following the Pearl Harbor bombing, Kokuzo joined a list of many other Soto Zen ministers from throughout the islands who would be similarly imprisoned. They included the sect's bishop, Zenkyo Komagata, and priests Shunan Fujisawa, Gyokuei Matsuura, Koetsu Morita, Hozui Nakayama, Kosan Nishizawa, Gijo Ozawa, Tetsuo Tanaka, Taiyu Toda, Sokan Ueoka and Kogan Yoshizumi. Also incarcerated was the nun Kanzen Ito of the Mantokuji Soto Mission in Paia, Maui.
With Kokuzo's incarceration on the continent, his parishioners maintained the Hilo temple throughout the war. Kokuzo returned to the Big Island after his confinement and served the Soto Mission there until his retirement.
His two sons, Roy Yoshinao Kokuzo and Yoshinobu Kokuzo, also became Buddhist ministers.