Group Media & Photos
Japanese language class organized by Haru Tanaka (back row, far left), Crystal City Internment Camp. JCCH/Muriel Onishi Collection.
Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among 39 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the fourth 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.
Also sent on the same ship were six Issei women internees: Kiku Horibe, Miyuki Kawasaki, Yoshie Miyao, Yuki Miyao, Haru Tanaka, and Tsuta Yamane. The women were kept apart from the men and had a different internment sequence from them.
Sharp Park Detention Station, California
June 1942 - July 1942
Seagoville Internment Camp, Texas
July 1942 - April 1943
Crystal City Family Internment Camp, Texas
April 1943 - December 1945
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
Haru Tanaka was one of only eight Hawaii women who were arrested and sent to the Mainland for internment. They were unlike the women who entered Mainland internment as a way to reunify their families, for these women had been arrested and incarcerated. In addition to the women were sent in the Fourth Transfer Group, two more women, Kanzen Ito and Ishiko Mori, were sent with the Seventh Transfer Group.
Moreover, among this group of eight women, four had husbands who also were arrested and interned; they were Ryosaku Kawasaki (Miyuki), Shigemaru Miyao (Yuki), Motokazu Mori (Ishiko), and Seigi Yamane (Tsuta).