Group Media & Photos
Santa Fe Internment Camp, ca. 1943-1945. Bottom, Row 2 (L-R): Itsuo Hamada (11th), Wataru Takeshita (12th), Sadashichi Miura (13th/4th from R), Iwaki Watanabe (16th/1st). Row 3 (half row): Akimasa Watanabe (6th), Shigeru Yano (8th). Row 4: Tamezo Takemori (1st), Shigeki Mizumoto (2nd), Tamio Nakamura (5th), Hisashi Fukuhara (7th), Mitsutaka Horiuchi (9th), Toramatsu Matsumoto (10th), Yasuyuki Mizutari (15th/7th from R), Torao Iseri (17th/5th), Tomoji Matsumura (18th/4th), Toyoki Kimura (21st/1st). Row 5: Kokichi Nakamura (4th), Yoshio Yoshioka (5th), Kiyoshi Yonemura (6th), Gengo Honda (7th), Junzo Mashita (8th), Ushitaro Yonezaki (10th), Kinori Nishino (11th), Chikashi Nakayama (12th/ 7th from R), Kentaro Hirashima (13th/6th), Ishima Kusano (14th/5th), Zenzo Kisada (15th/4th), Tatsuji Morimoto (16th/3rd), Tatsuo Ito (17th/2nd). Row 6: Hideki Takahashi (2nd), Hisatoshi Tanisaki (10th), Takashi Hamada (11th), Kyujiro Nakashima (13th/5th from R), Sokutaro Ashihara (16th/2nd). Row 7: Nejio Sonoda (13th), Takichi Kinoshita (14th), Yaichi Yamamoto (20th/3rd from R). Row 8: Kunitaro Takeuchi (2nd), Satoru Hirae (9th). JCCH/Tamio Nakamura Collection.
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.
Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana
June 1942 - June 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - October 1945
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
March 1942 - April 1942
Fort Sill Internment Camp, Oklahoma
April 1942 - May 1942
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
By the eve of World War II, Tomoji Matsumura was a well-known figure in the Japanese American community in Hilo. He headed a number of organizations including the Japanese Businessmen's Association and the Hilo Japanese Association.
In 1939, a routine visit to Hilo Bay by a squadron of Japanese naval training ships led to a dispute over protocol that errupted into an issue of national honor, reaching the Mainland press and the halls of Washington, D.C. Matsumura, as chairman of the squadron's reception committee, was entangled in the conflict, along with two other Hilo residents -- and later internees -- newspaperman Toshio Sakaguchi and Japanese school principal Kyuhachi Tanaka.