Group Media & Photos
Internment Locations
Arrested: March 1942
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among 109 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the third transfer 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.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
June 1942
Fort Sam Houston Internment Camp, Texas
June 1942
Lordsburg Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1942 - June 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - October 1945
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
Shigeo Shigenaga began his immigrant life as a plantation worker on the Big Island, later moving to Honolulu where he worked as a fishmonger and cook. At the time of his incarceration, Shigenaga was the owner and operator of a restaurant and bar on College Walk in Waikiki called the Venice Cafe.
He was targeted for arrest following the Pearl Harbor bombing, but when military authorities arrived at his home to take him into custody, they found brother Kakuro Shigenaga and arrested him instead. Within a few months, authorities had realized the error. They then picked up Shigeo and sent him to the mainland for internment.
During Shigeo Shigenaga's years of incarceration, his wife, Akino, ran the restaurant. Shigenaga returned to the cafe after the war and parlayed that success into the opening in 1954 of the Hotel Kaimana on the beach at the base of Diamond Head. Today a Waikiki icon, it is known as the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel.