Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
A group of 172 Hawaii men (mostly Issei) were sent aboard the military transport ship USS U.S. Grant for internment in U.S. Army and Department of Justice camps on the Mainland. Together, the men were sent from camp to camp.
In June 1943, this transfer group was split into two, with this group sent directly from Camp Livingston to the Santa Fe Camp.
From there, some internees were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps, where they were reunited with family members. Others were transferred for repatriation to Japan.
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
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - September 1943
Repatriated to Japan: September 1943
Included among the repatriates who left from New York on the M.S. Gripsholm were 72 Hawaii internees and their families.
Koten Suetomi arrived in the islands as a Shingon Buddhist missionary in 1916. He spent seventeen years as the resident minister of the Hilo Hooganji Temple before transferring to the Shingon Mission's Honolulu headquarters in 1937. It was in this capacity as bishop of the Shingon sect in Hawaii that he fell under the scrutinity of government authorities and was arrested following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.