Biography
Kenmotsu was a Japanese worker arrested for speaking at a San Francisco demonstration on December 14, 1929. The Daily Worker of December 26, page 2, in a dispatch dated December 25, reports that the International Labor Defense secured his release the previous day, December 24, and was fighting threatened deportation to Japan. Police questioned the demonstration’s antiwar and anti-capitalist slogans. The article says he entered the United States in 1923 but gives no first name, conviction or sentence. This is the adult 1929 demonstration speaker; the source does not identify him with a later wartime draft resister sharing the surname. The exact initial jail admission and total confinement are unverified. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n251-NY-dec-26-1929-DW-LOC.pdf
The San Francisco report identifies him as a Japanese worker threatened with deportation after speaking against intervention in Haiti and against Stimson’s policy in December 1929. It does not supply a given name and is not merged with Shigeo Kenmotsu, whose recorded case is the much later Heart Mountain draft prosecution. Daily Worker, January 30, 1930, page 2. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v06-n281-NY-jan-30-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
Yushi Yamazaki (2020), printed pp. 90–91, 95, 103 and note 24, identifies Sadaichi Kenmotsu as the Waseda-educated Japanese Workers Association founder and Kaikyusen editor. The adult San Francisco antiwar organizer matches the existing surname-only 1929 deportation case, distinct from Shigeo Kenmotsu's wartime draft prosecution. It reports an arrest July 27, 1929 outside the Chinese Consulate and actual deportation from San Francisco on December 16, 1931. The earlier December 24, 1929 ILD bail/release report was not final termination of the immigration case. The study's citation also uses Kenmochi Sadaichi; the source variants are retained without guessing a separate identity. Source: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/view/prepareDownload?contentNo=1&itemId=info%3Andljp%2Fpid%2F11638381
This February report identifies Kenmotsu as a Japanese leader in the Imperial Valley strike and says the International Labor Defense had received notice that threatened deportation proceedings against him, and against Julius Agopsca and his wife in Detroit, had been halted. It gives no first name for Kenmotsu. Halting deportation is distinct from a new physical release and is not recorded as a completed deportation or an additional prison term.
