Group Media & Photos

Izumo Taisha Fall Festival, October 1962. Row 1 (L-R): Rev. Shigemaru Miyao (3rd), Rev. Shigeo Fujino (4th), Masayuki Chikuma (6th). Row 2: Soichi Obata (1st), Senator-Elect Daniel Inouye (5th), Kaoru Oota (6th). Row 3: Matsujiro Otani (L of Inouye). Back Row: Yoshio Koike (2nd). JCCH/ Nancy M. Fujino Collection.

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Shinto priests and supporters, Izumo Taisha Kyobuin. Row 1: Rev. Shigemaru Miyao (3rd from left). Row 2 (L-R): Koichi Iida (5th, white suit); Kumaji Furuya (6th), Taichi Sato (8th). JCCH/ Ken French Collection.

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Internment Locations

Arrested: December 1941

Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island

First Transfer Group: February 1942

This internee was in the first group of 172 men (mostly Issei) who were sent aboard the military transport ship U.S. Grant 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

March 1942

Camp McCoy Internment Camp, Wisconsin

March 1942 - May 1942

Camp Forrest Internment Camp, Tennessee

May 1942 - June 1942

Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana

June 1942 - September 1942

Seagoville Internment Camp, Texas

September 1942 - May 1943

Crystal City Family Internment Camp, Texas

May 1943 - December 1945

Returned to Hawaii: December 1945

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

As head priest at the Izumo Taisha Shinto Shrine in Honolulu, Shigemaru Miyao was arrested along his wife, Yuki, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Yuki Miyao, it is believed, was mistaken for the priest's widowed step-mother, Yoshie Miyao, herself a priest at the Shinto mission.

The imprisonment of the Miyaos left their three young children to be cared for by relatives of grandmother Yoshie, the Inokuchi family of Waipahu. In time, the Inokuchi family head, Kakuji Inokuchi, would also be arrested and sent to the Honouliuli Internment Camp. In August 1942, the Miyao children joined a group of internee wives and children transiting the U.S. Mainland and were reunited with their parents in the Crystal City Camp in Texas.

In Hawaii, with the Miyaos in captivity and the fate of the Shinto mission uncertain, congregation members sold Izumo Taisha's property and shrine in 1944 for $2,400 to the city of Honolulu in a display, it has been said, of wartime patriotism. Upon his return from internment, Shigemaru Miyao embarked on efforts to regain the mission property and shrine. What followed were years of legal wrangling until 1961, when a Honolulu court ruled in favor of Izumo Taisha. The mission moved its headquarters to its present site near the Nuuanu Stream and renovated its original, hand-built shrine, which had been designed by Big Island architect (and later internee) Hego Fuchino.

Bishop Shigemaru Miyao died in 1993, having led the Izumo Taisha Mission for more than 60 years.