Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Maui County Jail, Wailuku, Maui Island
Released: February 1944
Satosuke Yasui arrived in the islands from his native Hiroshima Prefecture in 1907 as a Japanese language teacher for the Honpa Hongwanji Mission, then becoming a principal at the Papaikou Hongwanji Japanese Language School on Maui Island.
In 1920, he purchased the Japanese language newspaper, the Maui Shinbun, and served as its publisher and editor until the outbreak of World War II and the government's shuttering of Japanese news publications.
Yasui's two sons, Yoji Yasui and Rikushi Ricki Yasui, both served in the U.S. Army during the war. Yoji Yasui was a sergeant with the 100th Infantry Battalion. He was killed in action in Italy in December 1943. Ricki Yasui was inducted into the army in early 1941, while a college student in California. He volunteered for a paratrooper unit out of Camp Savage, Minnesota, and was wounded in Holland in 1944.