Sally Tsuneishi, born and raised in Hawai‘i, shared her family’s devastating wartime story with the CWRIC, offering both personal memories and the lasting scars of injustice.

• Respected Father Taken: Her father, a community leader in Kahala, Hawai‘i—school president, newspaper reporter, matchmaker—was arrested by the FBI and local sheriff on the night of December 7, 1941. He vanished into the dark without protest. The family would not see him for two and a half years.

• Family Stigmatized: Left behind, Sally’s mother raised seven children alone. Neighbors stopped patronizing their store, fearful of association. The family survived only through the generosity of a few friends and food from their garden.

• Ordered to Evacuate: In late 1942, Sally’s family, along with 400 others connected to interned community leaders, was told to prepare for evacuation to the mainland—without explanation of where they were headed. They abandoned their farm, home, family heirlooms, and her father’s writings and stamp collection, never to be recovered.

• Shame & Betrayal: As the Army truck came to take them, Sally felt her family’s “good name was smeared” and that they were branded disloyal. Passing her high school and seeing the American flag, she wept, remembering her prize-winning essay: “Why I Am Proud to Be an American.”

• Jerome, Arkansas: On January 5, 1943, the family arrived at Jerome camp. For Hawai‘i-born children, the freezing winter was unbearable. Living on the edge of camp, Sally faced the constant shadow of barbed wire, guard towers, and armed soldiers. At just 16, she became head of household because her mother could not read or write English.

• Father’s Return: Allowed to visit him in a POW camp in Louisiana, she was devastated to see her once-vibrant father aged beyond recognition, leaning on a cane, broken in health and spirit. When he finally rejoined the family, he was tubercular and never recovered.

• Return Without a Home: After the war, the family went back to Hawai‘i—but their store and home had been confiscated. They lived under another house, sharing a landlord’s washtub as bath, sink, and laundry. Sally worked as a nurse’s aide, while her father became a janitor in a pineapple cannery.

• A Brother’s Sacrifice: Her younger brother, her father’s pride, graduated from the University of Hawai‘i, joined the U.S. Air Force, and died in a mid-air explosion while serving his country.

• Invisible Wounds: Sally testified that their family’s greatest loss was potential—the futures and opportunities stolen from each of them. She called on the U.S. to acknowledge these injustices and offer reparations, declaring that “there cannot be a healing of the invisible wounds we bear so painfully” without recognition.