Arrested: February 1942
U.S. Immigration Station, Honolulu, Oahu Island
February 1942 - March 1942
Sand Island Internment Camp, Honolulu, Oahu Island
March 1942 - May 1942
One hundred and nine Hawaii men (mostly Issei) were sent on the third transfer ship for incarceration in U.S. Army and Department of Justice camps on the Mainland. The internees were sent together from camp to camp. Some were paroled to War Relocation Authority camps and reunited with family members under confinement, others were 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 - March 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
March 1943 - May 1943
Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho
May 1943 - August 1943
Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
August 1943 - September 1943
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.
Kuromitsu Banba arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in April 1924 as an apprentice cook aboard a Japanese steamship. When the vessel docked in Honolulu Harbor, Banba jumped ship.
Four years after his illegal entry into the territory, the U.S. Immigration Services caught up with him, and Banba was arrested in preparation for deportation. A month later, federal authorities cancelled his deportation and Banba was released. He remained in Honolulu, working as a waiter at various hotels.
In 1943, Banba's internment hearing board found no evidence of "direct subversive activities," but it did determine that his service in the Japanese army some two decades prior, friendship with a Japanese naval officer and illegal entry into the U.S. territory were sufficient to warrant his wartime incarceration.