Biography
Ryugen Matsuda was a Buddhist priest and Japanese language school principal at Wailuku Hongwanji Mission on Maui. JCCH records his birth year as 1897 and arrest in December 1941. His individual record documents Maui County Jail and Sand Island confinement, mainland transfer March 1942, Angel Island March-April 1942, Fort Sill April-May 1942, Camp Livingston June 1942-June 1943, Santa Fe June 1943-March 1944, Jerome March-May 1944 and Tule Lake May 1944-November 1945. He returned to Honolulu aboard Shawnee in December 1945 and resumed religious work in Wahiawa and Honolulu. JCCH records his death in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1954, after travel there for missionary work. No exact death date is given. Transfer from Santa Fe to War Relocation Authority camps was further confinement rather than final release. His detention occurred in the context of US wartime incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry; the cited archive establishes no individual criminal conviction. Source: https://incarceration.jcchawaii.org/internees/matsuda-ryugen
