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
Jerome Relocation Center, Arkansas
3月 1944 - 6月 1944
Gila River Relocation Center, Arizona
6月 1944 - 7月 1945
Paroled: Chicago, Illinois
Returned to Hawaii: December 1945
Arrived in Honolulu with about 775 other internees aboard the military troopship the Shawnee.
In 1925, Japanese community leaders established a language school in Volcano Village on the Big Island to educate the children of immigrants working at the Volcanoes National Park. Six years later, Motoi Shiotani became the school's principal and he served there until his arrest and incarceration following the Pearl Harbor bombing.
Shiotani's wife, Teruko, and their six children entered into internment and were reunited with Motoi in the Jerome Relocation Center. The family was subsequently transferred to the concentration camp in Gila River, Arizona, and daughter Yoshiko Elsie was born there.
The Shiotanis returned to the Big Island upon their release, and when Japanese language schools were allowed to reopen, Motoi Shiotani resumed his post as principal of the Volcano school. Shiotani died in Volcano in 1989. The school where he taught is known today as the Old Japanese School House. It is one of the last remaining one-room schoolhouses in the state.