Internment Locations
Arrested: January 1942
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
A group of 172 Hawaii men (mostly Issei) was sent aboard the military transport ship USS U.S. Grant for incarceration 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 from Camp Livingston to Fort Missoula before being transferred to the Santa Fe Camp.
From there, some internees were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps, where they were reunited with family members under confinement. 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
Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho
June 1943 - August 1943
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
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.
In 1940, Sokan Ueoka succeed his father as head of the Soto Zen Buddhist temple Mantokuji in Paia on Maui Island. That year also saw the arrival at the temple of three female priests, including Kanzen Ito, who had arrived recently from Japan.
By the end of 1942, both Sokan Ueoka and Kanzen Ito would be arrested and sent to the continent for incarceration. Many other Soto Zen ministers from throughout the islands were confined during the war. They included the sect's bishop, Zenkyo Komagata, and priests Shunan Fujisawa, Zenkai Kokuzo, Gyokuei Matsuura, Koetsu Morita, Hozui Nakayama, Kosan Nishizawa, Gijo Ozawa, Tetsuo Tanaka, Taiyu Toda, and Kogan Yoshizumi.
While en route to Japan aboard the repatriation ship M.S. Gripsholm, Ueoka disembarked at the Japanese-held territory of Singapore and served as a chaplain for the Japanese imperial army.
In 1954, Ueoka returned to Paia and the Mantokuji temple. He died in 1963.