Group Media & Photos
Shingon ministers and supporters, Santa Fe Internment Camp, 1944. 1st Row (L-R): Manjiro Konno (1st), Kanekichi Yanagihara (2nd), Rev. Shodo Kawamura (5th), Teiji Kawamata (7th), Iwata Sugimura (8th). 2nd Row (L-R): Ryozo Izutsu (1st), Masasuke Ishikawa (2nd), Rev. Myoshu Sasai (3rd), Rev. Kakuho Asaoka (4th), Rev. Tetsuei Katoda (6th), Sadaichi (Teiichi) Suzuki (7th), Rev. Kakuo Shiba (8th), Rev. Yuko Nonomura (10th), Takazo Arita (11th), Takejiro Nakagawa (12th). 3rd Row (L-R): Usaburo Katamoto (3rd), Kazuaki Tanaka (5th), Masaichi Kobayashi (6th). 4th row (L-R): Rev. Hosho Kurohira (1st), Rev. Jitsuryu Tanaka (2nd), Aisuke Kuniyuki (3rd), Genzo Suzuki (4th). JCCH/Usaburo Katamoto Archival Collection.
Internment Locations
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
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - November 1944
Amache (Granada) Concentration Camp, Colorado
November 1944 - October 1945
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
Aisuke Kuniyuki was among four members of the extended Kuniyuki family to be interned during the war. Nephew Takeo Kuniyuki remained in Hawaii, confined mostly at the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu Island. Takeo's cousin and Aisuke's niece, Kimiko Kuniyuki Arita, was the wife of internee Takazo Arita, who was sent to the Mainland in October 1942. Kimiko entered internment in 1944 in order to reunite with her husband.
During this same period, four other members of the Kuniyuki family served in the U.S. military: Takeo's brother, Naoji Kuniyuki, and three of Aisuke's sons -- Henry Seiya Kuniyuki, Edward Mutsuya Kuniyuki, and George Nobuya Kuniyuki (also known as Klayton).
Henry Seiya was a medic with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and became a lieutenant colonel in the Hawaii National Guard. He also served for more than two decades as the Hawaii state director of veterans' employment for the U.S. Department of Labor.