Group Media & Photos

Members of the Maui Nikkei community, ca. 1925. Front Row (L-R): Gunsuke Yasui (1st), Katsuichi Kawamoto (2nd), Dr. Seiichi Ohata (3rd), Dr. Koshiro Tofukuji (4th), Hisahi Ito (5th or 6th). Back Row: Nagao Otsuka (2nd), Miyamoto (3rd), Dr. Yukihide Kohatsu (4th), Jiro Fujiyoshi (5th), Tomoeda (6th), Yasujiro Matsuda, Dr. Kohatsu's driver (7th), Matsuzo Kozaki (8th). JCCH/Takuzo Kawamoto Collection.

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Internment Locations

Arrested: December 1941

Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island

Second Transfer Group (Missoula): March 1942

This internee was among 166 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the second transfer ship for internment in U.S. Army and Justice Department camps on the Mainland. These men 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 Second Transfer Group internees who were sent from Livingston to Missoula before being transferred to Santa Fe.

Angel Island Detention Facility, California

March 1942 - April 1942

Fort Sill Internment Camp, Oklahoma

April 1942 - May 1942

Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana

June 1942 - June 1943

Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana

June 1943 - September 1943

Repatriated to Japan: September 1943

Included among the repatriates who left from New York on the M.S. Gripsholm were 72 Hawaii internees and their families.

In 1940, Seiichi Ohata was among thirteen members of the Maui Nikkei community who were elected officers of the local Japanese Society. After the outbreak of World War II, all were arrested and imprisoned, some were interned, most had sons who served in the U.S. military during the war. These men were president Seiichi Ohata; vice-presidents Unosuke Ogawa and Motoichi Kobayashi; Japanese secretary Tomeichi Fujii; English secretary Kaoru Nagatani; treasurers Yoshio Yamane, Riichi Shibano, and Robert Sosuke Toda; auditors Kanichi Takitani, Masaru Morikawa, Makizo Kawaharada, Hatsugoro Makimoto, and Ikkei Kawachi.

From captivity on the Mainland, Seiichi Ohata chose to repatriate to Japan and did not return to Maui until the 1950s. His son Seiya Ohata, a medical student in Missouri at the start of the war, volunteered for the U.S. Army upon his graduation. He was assigned to the army's medical corps and saw active duty in France and later Germany. After the war, Seiya Ohata returned to Paia and established a medical practice in his father's old office.