Group Media & Photos

Maui Nikkei Community Members, ca. 1925. Front Row (L-R): Gunsuke Yasui (1st), Katsuichi Kawamoto (2nd), Dr. Seiichi Ohata (3rd), Dr. Koshiro Tofukuji (4th), Hisahi Ito (5th or 6th). Back Row: Nagao Otsuka (2nd), Miyamoto (3rd), Dr. Yukihide Kohatsu (4th), Jiro Fujiyoshi (5th), Tomoeda (6th), Yasujiro Matsuda, Dr. Kohatsu's driver (7th), Matsuzo Kozaki (8th). JCCH/Takuzo Kawamoto Collection.

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Internment Locations

Arrested: December 1941

Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island

Second Transfer Group: March 1942

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.

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

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.

A pioneering immigrant physician, Koshiro Tofukuji opened in Honoka'a in 1907 the first Japanese hospital on Hawaii Island. Trained in Tokyo and later at the University of Michigan, Tofukuji also was a veteran of the Japanese imperial medical corps during the Russo-Japanese war. 

When World War II broke out and Tofukuji was interned, his property in Honoka'a was frozen by the U.S. government and later seized and sold at auction. 

Tokufuji's sons followed him into medical practice, with two sons also serving in the U.S. military. Shinobu Tofukuji, a pharmacist in Wailuku, Maui, was a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion's medical corps and then the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Youngest son Frank Takashi Tofukuji volunteered for the U.S. Army in 1946 and served with the 441st Counterintelligence Corps in Tokyo during the U.S. Occupation.