Komagata, Zenkyo

In August 1944, Bishop Zenkyo Komagata conducted a Buddhist ancestral service known as Obon at the Honoluliuli Internment Camp. During this service, he beat a taiko drum that had been left in his care by the Nichiren bishop, Kanryu Mochizuki, before the latter's transfer to a Mainland internment camp. The drum had been donated in the 1920s to the Nichiren mission by Honolulu building contractor Masao Sakamoto, who also would end up interned during the war, for a while at Honouliuli. 

In the decades after the war, the drum's disposition remained unknown until its discovery in the basement of the Nichiren temple in Nuuanu Valley by a researcher in 2017. Inscribed on the drum is the date of the Obon service as well as the names of four Honouliuli internees: Masao Sakamoto, Sumida Daitaicho (Battalion Commander Sumida, who is likely Shinzaburo Sumida), Minoru Urata, and Gyoso Kodama. 

Following his internment, Zenkyo Komagata continued as the bishop of the Soto Mission, serving for nearly 45 years in all, until his death in 1972. He would be the first of four successive generations of Komagatas to serve as Soto ministers in Hawaii.