Group Media & Photos
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
3月 1942 - 4月 1942
Fort Sill Internment Camp, Oklahoma
4月 1942 - 5月 1942
Camp Livingston Internment Camp, Louisiana
6月 1942 - 6月 1943
Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico
6月 1943 - 3月 1944
Crystal City Family Internment Camp, Texas
3月 1944 - 12月 1945
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
On the eve of the war, Eikichi Ochiai was an executive officer with the Hilo Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organization comprised of prominent members of the business community. They worked to expand commerce with Japan, eliminate trade barriers, and develop direct steamship service between Hilo and Asia. Along with Ochiai, all of JCC&I's prewar senior executive officers were interned. They included Yoichi Hata, Kashin Isa, Hisato Isemoto, Katsujiro Kagawa, Mitsuji Kasamoto, Masato Kiyosaki, Gunichi Kuwahara, Genichi Nagami, Takaichi Saiki, Takuji Shindo, and Shizuma Tagawa.
Under the pen name Seiyu, Ochiai also participated in one of the many dynamic Japanese poetry societies that gave Hawaii Island the name "Poetry Island" in the years before the war. With the internment of so many Big Island poets, like Rentaro Shito Degawa, Shoichi Gessho Koide, Minoru Koran Murakami, David Shugaku Marutani, Tadasuke Koryu Nakabayashi, Eikichi Seiyu Ochiai, Otokichi Muin Ozaki, Haruto Fuyo Saito, and Shigezo Kasetsu Shigekane, the Hilo societies fell silent, although many of the interned members continued to write throughout their captivity.