Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was in the first group of 172 men (mostly Issei) who were sent aboard the U.S. Grant military transport 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. This internee was in a sub-group of First Transfer Group internees who were sent from Livingston to Missoula before being transferred to Santa Fe.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
March 1942
Camp McCoy Internment Camp, Wisconsin
March 1942 - May 1942
Camp Forrest Internment Camp, Tennessee
May 1942 - June 1942
Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana
June 1942 - June 1943
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
June 1943
Died in Camp: : September 1943
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
Masao Sogawa's was the first death among the first group of Issei internees sent to the Mainland from Hawaii. The priests among the internees conducted a funeral service several weeks later, described by Kumaji Furuya in his memoir, Internment Odyssey, published in 2017 by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i:
"Rev. Gikyo Kuchiba presided at the service, and all the Buddhist priests recited sutras. The atmosphere was solemn. Totaro Matsui offered the eulogy on behalf of all the internees. 'You were regarded as an influential man among us Japanese in Hawaii, and so you were arrested by the FBI along with us. For the next year and a half, we lived together, first in the crowded detainment room in the INS building, then in the tents at Sand Island, in the hold of a military ship, in snowy Wisconsin, amid thunderstorms at the hilltop camp in Tennessee, and in the blazing heat of Louisiana. You were always cheerful and encouraged those of us who tended to be dispirited. Now that you are gone, we feel such deep sorrow.' No one uttered a word, and a silence came over us. Some wept, feeling so deeply for him."