Internment Locations
Arrested: December 1941
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
This internee was among 109 men (mostly Issei) who were sent on the third transfer ship 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.
Angel Island Detention Facility, California
June 1942
Fort Sam Houston Internment Camp, Texas
June 1942
Lordsburg Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1942 - June 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
June 1943 - October 1945
Returned to Hawaii: November 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with 450 other internees aboard the military troopship the Yarmouth.
Heiji Yamagata was the son of pioneering Issei coffee grower Naotaro Yamagata, who settled in Kealakekua, Kona at the turn of the twentieth century. Heiji Yamagata himself became a prominent coffee farmer and innovator. He developed the first mechanical coffee dryer in Kona and worked with the University of Hawaii to create a mechanical coffee picker.
Two of Heiji Yamagata's sons, Naoji and Shigeji, served with the U.S. military at the time of their father's captivity. Naoji Yamagata was a member of Hawaii's 100th Infantry Battalion.