Internment Locations
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among forty-two Issei men who were sent in the eighth transfer group 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.
Sharp Park Detention Station, California
March 1943 - August 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
August 1943 - September 1943
Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho
September 1943 - May 1945
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
May 1945 - December 1945
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
In 1930, at the age of 23, Harry Uechi admitted to being Honolulu's "taxi bandit," responsible for holding up cab drivers at gunpoint, and was sentenced from five years to life in Oahu Prison. Some two months after his conviction, Uechi escaped from a prison work gang and was caught three days later. His escapades earned him front-page billing along with his photo in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
In 1932, Uechi was serving his sentence at the Waiakea Prison Camp near Hilo Airport on Hawaii Island, when he and three other prisoners attempted a violent jailbreak. By 1939, Uechi was back in Honolulu, an Oahu Prison parolee, when he was charged with assaulting two taxi drivers and sent back to prison.
Government records suggest that Uechi was sent from prison into internment on the Mainland in 1943. His interment sequence can be seen above.