The Japanese-Americans in USA were relocated during World War Two. What happened to them in Hawaii - anything?

Question

I have never heard what happened to the Japanese in Hawaii, where they probably outnumbered those on the mainland. Probably many Japanese were vacationing in Hawaii when the bombing occurred. Where they allowed to return to Japan? Anybody know the facts?

Answer 1

As you probably know, the vast majority of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii at the time of WWII were not sent to internment camps since JA's made up about 34% of Hawaii's economy, and interning that many people would have seriously disrupted the economy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in a Feb. 26, 1942, memo he wanted all Oahu Japanese sent to a neighbor island. However, nothing came of that memo. On March 13, FDR approved a policy "that such Japanese residents of the Hawaiian Islands (either U.S. citizens or aliens) as are considered by appropriate authority in the Hawaiian Islands to constitute a source of danger be transported to the U.S. mainland and placed under guard in concentration camp." Accordingly, less than 2,000 of Hawaii's Japanese-Americans were sent to local internment camps (Sand Island, at Honolulu Harbor, and Honouliuli, near Ewa on O'ahu) or camps on the mainland. The Sand Island camp was also used to house foreign nationals from Germany, Italy, and Japan that were in Hawaii at the time of WWII, as well as Japanese Americans that had moved to Japan during their youth to obtain an education and later returned to Hawaii.

Answer 2

I thought they were relocated to the mainland. I doubt that any Japanese national who happened to be in Hawaii at the time of the bombing would have been allowed to return home. I don't think many of them vacationed like that, though. Back then, they were very much old-fashioned in Japan. I don't think they went beyond their borders for vacations.Try Wikipedia.

Answer 3

Most of them got to stay in place, but I believe that the Japanese people that were born in Japan had to live on one of the smaller islands (Molokai?).