Biography
Shinri Sarashina was a Honolulu Buddhist priest and Japanese language school teacher at Honpa Hongwanji Betsuin Temple. JCCH records December 1941 arrest and Sand Island detention, 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-November 1945. The archive records repatriation to Japan November 1945. This was US wartime civilian incarceration; no individual criminal conviction is established. The record does not establish whether repatriation was voluntary or a current exile status. Source: https://incarceration.jcchawaii.org/internees/sarashina-shinri
Photo source: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi. Rev. Shinri Sarashina is second from left. With Rev. Hakuai Oda (first), Bishop Gikyo Kuchiba (third), and Rev. Josen Deme (fourth), 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 Shinri Sarashina, serial ISN-HJ-154-(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.
