Internment Locations
Arrested: April 1942
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 - November 1945
Repatriated to Japan: November 1945
Hiroshima native Kazuyuki Yamamoto arrived in the islands a young language teacher and by the beginning of the war was a married father of three and the principal of a Japanese school in Honolulu.
With his wife and daughters in Hiroshima during his internment and believing that Japan had been victorious, Yamamoto opted to return to his native country at the war's end. Arriving home in late 1945, he learned that his wife and middle daughter had perished in the atomic bombing.
Twenty years later, Honolulu journalist Tomi Knaefler travelled to Hiroshima to interview Yamamoto, where he recalled, "My heart . . . my heart. So very heavy. I felt bitter toward the United States, but then, I didn't. Even then, I thought how well I had been treated in the United States." This good treatment included his time under internment, Yamamoto explained. "There's no comparison between the way we were treated and the way prisoners in Japan were mistreated."
"I thought it was wrong for America to drop such a bomb in such a way," he said. "But, too, I thought there must be something wrong with Japan for America to have to drop the bomb. My feelings were complex." [From "House Divided: It was a long war," Honolulu Star-Bulletin, December 10, 1966.]