Group Media & Photos

Internment Locations

Arrested: December 1941


Waimea Jail, Kauai Island


Wailua County Jail, Lihue, Kauai Island


Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island


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.


An immigrant from Hiroshima Prefecture, Ishimatsu Shintani was a ranch hand and beekeeper at the Robinson Ranch on Niihau Island. A resident there for more than thirty years, he was married to a Native Hawaiian woman and was the father of eight children. He was the only Japanese resident on the island until the arrival of Yoshio and Irene Umeno Harada in the late 1930s. 

When a Japanese aviator crash-landed on Niihau on December 7, 1941, Shintani became involved in the chaotic events of the ensuing days, which resulted in the deaths of the pilot and Yoshio Harada. Shintani was arrested and judged to have aided the pilot against the interests of the United States and was thus ordered interned. Also arrested and incarcerated was Irene Umeno Harada, one of only six Hawaii Japanese women to be held at the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu.