Group Media & Photos
Thomas Ryoju Okano, age 5, and sister, Grace Mayumi, age 4. Before leaving for Crystal City Internment Camp, February 1943. JCCH/Thomas Okano Collection.
Left Hawaii: August 1942
Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina
Assembly Inn, Montreat, North Carolina
Crystal City Family Internment Camp, Texas
Exchange Ship M.S. Gripsholm: September 1943
Included among the repatriates who left from New York on the second exchange ship were 72 Hawaii internees and their families.
Singapore
This internee was among a small group of Hawaii repatriates who disembarked at the Japanese-held territory of Singapore.
Repatriated to Japan
In spring 1945, Thomas Ryoju Okano and his father, Rev. Ryoshin Okano, boarded the Japanese hospital ship Awa Maru bound for Japan. At the last minute, the Okanos were removed to make room for Japanese military personnel.
Shortly before midnight, April 1, the Awa Maru was torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine, and more than two thousand passengers and crew were killed, including Hawaii internees Shoichi Asami, his son, Harold Ryozo Asami, and Rev. Jikyo Masaki and his son, Takashi Masaki. Their lives spared, Ryoshin and Thomas Okano joined the rest of the family and they all soon departed Singapore for Japan.
The Okanos returned to Hawaii in the 1950s. Thomas Ryoju would himself become a Buddhist priest. He is Rev. Thomas Okano, a retired bishop of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii.