Biography
Yekai Okamoto, also known as Nanshin Okamoto, was an Okinawan Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest who established a Japanese language school in Huelo in the 1920s and the Rinzai Zen Mission of Paia in 1932. JCCH records his birth year as 1891, May 1942 arrest, Honolulu Immigration Station and Sand Island confinement, and June 1942 mainland transfer. His individual record documents Angel Island June-July 1942, Lordsburg July 1942-June 1943 and Santa Fe June 1943-October 1945, followed by return to Honolulu aboard Yarmouth in November 1945. This was administrative US wartime detention in the context of Japanese ancestry; no individual criminal conviction is established. Source: https://incarceration.jcchawaii.org/internees/okamoto-nanshin-yekai
