Internment Locations

Left Hawaii: August 1942

Part of a group of almost forty Hawaii families (wives, mothers and children) sent to the Mainland for intended repatriation to Japan along with their husbands and fathers already in incarceration. The families' transfer was overseen by the War Department, and the group was accompanied by Hawaii physician Isao Murai, a representative of the American Red Cross.


Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina


Assembly Inn, Montreat, North Carolina


Crystal City Family Internment Camp, Texas


Returned to Hawaii: December 1945

Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.


With the arrest and imprisonment of their parents, the three young Miyao children, all under the age of ten, were cared for by relatives of grandmother Yoshie Miyao, the Inokuchi family of Waipahu, whose head, Kakuji Inokuchi, would himself later be arrested and sent to the Honouliuli Internment Camp.

In August 1942, Richard, Florence, and Masanori Miyao were sent with a group of internee wives and children bound for New York and a repatriation ship to Japan. As they traversed the U.S. Mainland, the children were cared for by other internment family members, including those of Shinto priest Misao Isobe and teacher Teiichiro Fukuda. The Miyao children were reunited with their parents at the Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas. The family did not repatriate; they returned to Hawaii.