Group Media & Photos

Internment Locations

Arrested: December 1941


Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island


This internee was in the first group of 172 men (mostly Issei) who were sent aboard the U.S. Grant military transport 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. This internee was in a sub-group of First Transfer Group internees who were sent from Livingston to Missoula before being transferred to Santa Fe.


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 - June 1943


Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana

June 1943 - April 1944


Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico

April 1944 - October 1945


Returned to Hawaii: November 1945

Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.


Soichi Obata left his native Yamaguchi Prefecture for Honolulu at the age of eighteen. He joined the staff of the Japanese-language Nippu Jiji newspaper (later the Hawaii Times), where he worked for the next 50 years. His step-son, Robert Kenji Tanaka, served in military intelligence during World War II.