Biography
Josen Deme was a Buddhist priest and Japanese language school principal at Waipahu Hongwanji Mission. JCCH records December 1941 arrest and Sand Island confinement, February 1942 mainland transfer, Angel Island March 1942, Camp McCoy March-May 1942, Camp Forrest May-June 1942, Camp Livingston June 1942-June 1943, Fort Missoula June 1943-April 1944 and Santa Fe April 1944-October 1945. He returned to Honolulu aboard Yarmouth November 1945. This case belongs to US wartime civilian incarceration; no individual criminal conviction is established by the archive. Source: https://incarceration.jcchawaii.org/internees/deme-josen
Photo source: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi. Rev. Josen Deme is fourth from left, at right. With Rev. Hakuai Oda (first), Rev. Shinri Sarashina (second), and Bishop Gikyo Kuchiba (third), in winter at Missoula or Santa Fe Internment Camp. JCCH/Rev. Hakuai Oda Collection. Portrait cropped from the source photograph; original photograph retained. Positions above refer to the original group photograph.
The original May 1, 1942 Camp McCoy civilian-internee roster individually records Josen Deme, serial ISN-HJ-117-(Ci), as permanently interned at the camp after transfer from Fort McDowell, California. This supplies a contemporaneous individual custody reference for the existing wartime chronology. May 1 is a roster observation, not an inferred first admission or release. The historical internment serial is not a modern BOP register number.
