Those arrested included community leaders, journalists, ministers, mostly of the Buddhist and Shinto denominations, people who worked with the Japanese consulates to help the adjustment of Japanese immigrants, shopkeepers, farmers, photographers and others who were members of kendo and other martial arts clubs or contributed to organizations seen by the U.S. government as "pro-Japan." 

According to Tetsuden Kashima in Judgment without Trial, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other government agencies had been monitoring their activities for many months before Pearl Harbor. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had requested the FBI to prepare, in conjunction with the army and navy intelligence units, a list of "potentially dangerous" persons to be detained in case of national conflict. This became known as the Custodial Detention List and was used to arrest specific people just hours after Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

Examining the files that are in the National Archives, some of the ministers were accused of taking orders from Japan (though they were never found to have taken any actions against the U.S. government), kendo club members were accused of associating with pro-Japan organizations because they might have been in a meeting with government officials, etc.

These immigrants were classified as "enemy aliens" although due to the Naturalization Act of 1790 which limited naturalization to "free white persons" (later modified after the Civil War to include those from Africa and in 1924 to include Native Americans), they were unable to become naturalized citizens even if they had wanted to. They were part of 17,477 people of Japanese descent who were interned or placed under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department for all or part of World War II. 13,798 Germans, Italians and a few other foreign nationals were also imprisoned as "enemy aliens." We have found the names of about 81 Germans and Italians who were interned at Angel Island for at least a short time during the war.

Many were arrested immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked, even before a declaration of war by the U.S on December 8, 1941. As "enemy aliens," they did not have the rights of citizens. Citizenship rights proved insufficient when Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 called for the incarceration of all people of Japanese descent on the West Coast, including both immigrants and citizens.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which acknowledged and apologized for the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of Japanese American citizens and permanent resident aliens, provided for a public education fund to inform the public about the internment, and made restitution to those who were interned.

These "enemy aliens" were housed, sometimes alongside prisoners of war, in the former Immigration Station barracks. It appears that most stayed for only a couple of weeks on Angel Island (also known as Fort McDowell), before being sent to more permanent camps. To the best of our knowledge, only men were detained on Angel Island. We have found internment records for a few women who were sent to Sharp Park near Pacifica and then on to internment camps run by the War Relocation Authority, but to the best of our knowledge, they were not sent to Angel Island.

There are few first-hand accounts of life on Angel Island for these Japanese immigrants, especially for those from the mainland. One is an account in Yasutaro Soga's Life Behind Barbed Wire, "Living quarters for all forty-nine of us were two rooms measuring about thirty-six feet by seventy feet on the second floor of an old building that had once been the Immigration Bureau office. Because there were about ninety internees from California already housed there, space was very tight. The beds were tri-level bunks with barely enough walking space in the aisles. There were about ten windows and one ventilator, but with 140 occupants, air circulation was poor. That night I had difficulty breathing and had a headache."

Jukichi Inouye vividly remembered that, "Angel Island was the first place [we went on the mainland]. We were there for about two weeks. We were stripped down naked for physical examinations. Then our clothes were returned to us. It was at that time my watch was missing. Boots were missing…they didn't even investigate that. We were classified as prisoners of war (Nakamura, chapter 9, page 9)."

Patsy Saiki in Ganbare! An Example of Japanese Spirit also describes Angel Island as a brief stop for women from Hawaiˋi on their way to join husbands who had been sent from Hawaiˋi to camps on the mainland. Saiki interviewed many former detainees from Hawaiˋi about their experiences to develop this optimistic composite report about the first ship to arrive at Angel Island on March 1, 1942, the U.S.S. Grant: "The men did not mind being photographed, fingerprinted and examined in the nude for 'infectious diseases.' This took from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and it was cold, a damp, clinging cold… Angel Island was a continuation of the fairyland that was called San Francisco. Birds welcomed them in the morning, and cherry and acacia trees bloomed in pink and white glory. Such beauty, after ten days in the confining walls of the ship's hold, made them drunk with joy." 

Saiki described that the internees decided to do something about the food, volunteering to help in the mess hall and cooking rice the way Japanese liked it. "The men were allowed to walk the grounds around the dorm for half an hour three times a day. They exercised loudly and joyfully." Within five days of arrival, Group 1 was on its way to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin.

Read the profile of the Hoshida family to learn more about one family where the father, mother and children all journeyed through the island. Tamae Hoshida’s ship, the S.S. Lurline, also included a number of other women traveling with children and we expect they spent a short time on Angel Island as well.