Internment Locations
Arrested: May 1942
Maui County Jail, Wailuku, Maui Island
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
A group of twenty-three Issei men were sent aboard the U.S. Army transport ship the Ernest Hinds for incarceration in U.S. Army and Department of Justice camps on the Mainland. The internees were sent together from camp to camp. Some were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps and reunited with family members, others were transferred for repatriation to Japan.
Also in this transfer group were two Issei women: a nun, Kanzen Ito, and a physician, Ishiko Mori. The women were kept apart from the male internees and had different internment sequences from them.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
October 1942
Lordsburg Internment Camp, New Mexico
October 1942 - June 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - March 1944
Jerome Concentration Camp, Arkansas
March 1944 - May 1944
Tule Lake Segregation Center, California
May 1944 - January 1945
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
Returned to Hawaii: April 1946
After nearly eighteen months of Mainland internment, Seikaku Takesono was allowed to transfer to the Jerome Camp in Arkansas, where he was reunited with his wife and daughter, who had entered the incarceration system as a way to reunify the family. Shortly thereafter, the Takesonos were transferred to Tule Lake, where a son, Satoru Jerald, was born.
While Takesono was in Tule Lake, the War Department received information about a letter Takesono had written that indicated "strong pro-Japanese leanings and activities." Based on this letter, Takesono's parole was revoked and he was sent back to Santa Fe in early 1945, shortly after the birth of his son. His wife and children remained in Tule Lake.
After the war, the Takesonos returned to the islands, and Seikaku Takesono served for the next several decades as a Buddhist priest in Kapa'a on Kauai Island and then at the main temple of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission in Honolulu.