Reverend Bunyu Fujimura, a Buddhist priest who served 22 years in Salinas and later in West Los Angeles, devoted more than four decades to ministry before retiring in the 1970s. His long service in the Buddhist Churches of America was interrupted by war, prejudice, and years of forced removal.

• Early Life & Ministry: Came to the U.S. in 1935, leading the Salinas Buddhist Temple for over two decades before transferring to West Los Angeles. Widely respected in the Japanese American community.

• Arrest After Pearl Harbor: On December 9, 1941, local police forced him to take down the church bell, claiming it could signal the Japanese Navy. Soon after, he and two other priests were arrested by the FBI and paraded in the press as suspected saboteurs.

• False Accusations: Newspapers and LIFE magazine falsely linked him to espionage and the Black Dragon Society. Even normal church items like bells, PA systems, and flags for children’s classes were twisted as “evidence” of sabotage.

• Interrogation & Internment: Taken to San Francisco, interrogated without food, and later transferred through Fort Lincoln, Camp McCoy, and Camp Livingston. Singled out for the hardest labor, including ditch-digging and hauling lumber in the Louisiana heat, despite being a priest unaccustomed to such work.

• Family Separation: Eventually moved to Santa Fe and then reunited with his wife at Poston concentration camp.

• Postwar Exclusion: After the war, unlike most internees, he was barred from returning to the West Coast. Sent to Chicago, he was forced to report weekly to a church guarantor and monthly to federal agents until restrictions eased.

• Return to Salinas: Upon his eventual return, discovered only 26 Japanese families remained — down from 300 — due to an organized Anti-Japanese Committee of growers and bankers determined to keep them out.

• Legacy: His testimony captured both the personal humiliation of false charges and the systemic efforts to erase Japanese Americans from places like Salinas, even after the war had ended.