Internment Locations
Arrested: February 1942
Kilauea Military Camp, Hawaii Island
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 - June 1943
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.
A decorated veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, Usaku Morihara returned to his native Yamaguchi Prefecture, yearning for a life abroad. He arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1907 a "free immigrant" and initially worked as a cook on a Big Island ranch. He then took up coffee growing and by 1940 was the owner of the Sun-Mello Coffee Roasting Factory, which included a 63-acre farm in Kona.
In October 1943, during Morihara's imprisonment at Santa Fe, his son Pfc. Arthur Akira Morihara, a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion, was killed at the Italian front. A younger son, James Genshi Morihara, also served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II.