Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
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 - March 1944
Jerome Concentration Camp, Arkansas
March 1944 - May 1944
Tule Lake Segregation Center, California
May 1944 - November 1945
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
Government documents reveal Shodo Umehara's repeated requests for transfer to a family internment camp or a War Relocation Authority camp in order to be reunited with his wife, Toshi. Umehara was finally paroled to Jerome in spring 1944 and the couple were reunited there. They were then transferred to Tule Lake, where Toshi Umehara died in September 1945, shortly after the end of the war.
After his release from confinement, Shodo Umehara returned to the islands and continued his work as a priest of the Hongwanji Mission.