Two USDA entomologists found themselves caught in a life changing situation as they tried to leave Japan and return home. The date was December 7, 1941, and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had begun. One entomologist was on a Japanese passenger ship steaming eastward somewhere near Hawaii on the fateful Sunday morning. The ship made an abrupt U-turn and returned to Japan — the start of seven difficult months of hardship as an internee in a Yokohama camp with other unfortunate foreigners. The other entomologist was walking the streets of Nagasaki when he heard a public announcement of the Imperial Declaration of War. He, too, found himself in a similar internment camp in Nagasaki. During this time in internment a young Japanese entomologist showed lasting acts of kindness in aiding his former supervisor by providing personal items needed to make confinement tolerable. Our story follows them through 7 months of captivity until they were repatriated in an exchange that took place in East Africa. We follow their lives in epilogue fashion to briefly touch on their entomological accomplishments and sadly report the untimely death of one who survived internment only to be killed in an aircraft accident on Okinawa.