Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among 166 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the second 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. This internee was in a sub-group of Second Transfer Group internees who were sent from Livingston to Missoula before being transferred to Santa Fe.
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
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
June 1943 - April 1944
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
April 1944 - October 1945
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
Gunichi Kuwahara was a prominent member of the Hilo business community at the outbreak of World War II. He was an executive officer in the Hilo Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organization that 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 Kuwahara, they included Yoichi Hata, Kashin Isa, Hisato Isemoto, Katsujiro Kagawa, Mitsuji Kasamoto, Masato Kiyosaki, Genichi Nagami, Eikichi Ochiai, Takaichi Saiki, Takuji Shindo, and Shizuma Tagawa.
As Kuwahara was being sent into internment on the Mainland, son Michael Mitsuru, then a student at the University of Southern California, was imprisoned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, caught up in the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. After his release in June 1943, Michael Mitsuru entered the U.S. military, as did his brothers Hiroshi Thomas Kuwahara and Oscar Sadamu Kuwahara.
Gunichi Kuwahara returned to running his Hilo store after the war, but in April 1946, a devastating tidal wave struck the town, destroying homes and businesses. Kuwahara Store was one of the few buildings left standing.