Group Media & Photos

Internment Locations

Arrested: May 1942


Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island


Transferred to Mainland: December 1942

Sent aboard the military troopship the Lurline with more than 430 other Hawaii residents for incarceration in Mainland camps.


Jerome Concentration Camp, Arkansas

January 1943 - June 1944


Gila River Concentration Camp, Arizona

June 1944 - November 1945


Returned to Hawaii: December 1945

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


About a month after his arrest, Kanichi Murata's father, Ryoichi Murata, a principal of a Japanese language school in Honolulu, also was arrested. Father and son were both held at the Sand Island Camp until August, when father Ryoichi Murata was sent into internment on the Mainland. 

In November, Kanichi Murata married widow Kikuye Shinkawa, and a month later, the new family, including Kikuye's two young sons, left Hawaii for the Jerome Concentration Camp in Arkansas. 

Within a few months of the Muratas' Mainland confinement, Kanichi's older brother Kenichi Murata volunteered for the U.S. Army, becoming a member of the Military Intelligence Service. Another brother, Jack Keiichi Murata, was already serving in the U.S. military as a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion. He would be wounded in action. 

After the war and the lifting of the ban against foreign-language radio programs in Hawaii, Kanichi Murata was put in charge of all Japanese programming for the Honolulu radio station KGMB.