Walter Millsap was from 1916 to 1919 an active member of the utopian Llano colony, a socialist community which moved from its original location in California to Louisiana in 1917. Millsap was trustee of United Co-Operative Industries and head of the Llano Co-Operative Association.
Keikichi Akana Imamura was a salesman for Millsap's United Co-Operative Industries before World War II and an adjunct professor in Oriental languages at Yale University in the fall of 1945. The Inamura family was incarcerated at the Gila River Relocation Center, an American concentration camp during World War II.
The United States declared war on Japan in 1941 following an attack by Japan on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Under authority granted by Executive Order 9066, issued in February 1942, the federal government incarcerated over 120,000 people of Japanese descent in American concentration camps.