Courtesy of Hank Soboleski
During World War II, from 1942 to 1944, U. S. Army personnel, in collaboration with local authorities, arrested and interned another 2,270 people of Japanese descent in Hawaii.
During World War II, from 1942 to 1944, U. S. Army personnel, in collaboration with local authorities, arrested and interned another 2,270 people of Japanese descent in Hawaii.
Although they were tried and convicted of any crime, they were imprisoned on suspicion of disloyalty to the United States and a risk to national security, just because they were of Japanese descent.
For the most part, they were Japanese community leaders, Hawaii-born Japanese people with knowledge of Japan, Japanese language school teachers, Buddhist priests, or had recently visited Japan or had some connection to the Japanese consulate in Hawaii.
Most were sent to the U. S. immigration post on O’ahu before being transferred to internment camps in the Americas for about four years.
On Kaua’i, approximately 106 other people of Japanese descent were incarcerated in five locations: the Wailua County Jail, the Kaua’i County Courthouse, the Isenberg Gymnasium on Lihu’e Plantation, Kalaheo Palisade, and the former Waimea Jail.
At the Wailua County Jail, commonly known as the “Hotel” in honor of its former warden, Kalei (1872-1953), and now the site of the Kaua’i Community Correctional Center, a barracks was built to separate inmates from regular inmates. .
The internees were temporarily detained at the former Kaua’i County Courthouse on Umi Street in Lihu’e during their hearings.
At least one inmate was held in solitary confinement at the Lihu’e Plantation Isenberg gymnasium, now owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, adjacent to Isenberg Park.
The Kalaheo Palisade, built to incarcerate those convicted of crimes and misconduct, also housed Japanese inmates.
It is located in Mauka, in the town of Kalaheo, where the construction of the Medeiros bird farm is still preserved (but without its birds).
The location of the Medeiros estate had been questioned for some time.
But in 2012, Wayne Jacinto and Wayne Rapozo verified it in a description through Virginia Rapozo, who remembers seeing the fence there as a child.