Group Media & Photos

Gin'ushisha (Silver Rain Poetry Society). Hilo, Hawaii Island, 1925. Row 1 (l-r): David (Shugaku) Marutani (1st), Tadasuke (Koryu) Nakabayashi (2nd). Row 2, middle: Minoru (Koran) Murakami. Row 3: Otokichi (Muin) Ozaki (1st), Eikichi (Seiyu) Ochiai (2nd), Haruto (Fuyo) Saito (3rd, patterned tie). Row 4: Zenichi (Kenpu) Kawazoe (center, bow tie). JCCH/Otokichi Ozaki Archival 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 - 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.

Haruto Saito was a member of one of the many dynamic Japanese poetry societies that gave Hawaii Island the name "Poetry Island" in the years before the war. With the internment of so many Big Island poets, like Rentaro Shito Degawa, Shoichi Gessho Koide, Minoru Koran Murakami, David Shugaku Marutani, Tadasuke Koryu Nakabayashi, Eikichi Seiyu Ochiai, Otokichi Muin Ozaki, Shigezo Kasetsu Shigekane, and Haruto Fuyo Saito, the Hilo societies fell silent, although many of the interned members continued to write throughout their captivity.

A son, Harold Takashi Saito, served during the war as a member of the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Service.