In Georgia, where he was befriended by the parents of the novelist Erskine Caldwell, Ariyoshi became determined to ease the plight of the sharecroppers he met and to improve labor conditions for the working class.
After graduation, Ariyoshi traveled to San Francisco, where he befriended Karl Yoneda, a founder of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Soon afterward, following the signing of Executive Order 9066, Ariyoshi was placed in the Manzanar War Relocation Center, a Japanese American internment camp.
He decided to help the war effort by working as a language specialist with the United States Army Military Intelligence.
[3] While stationed at the Dixie Mission in Yan'an, Ariyoshi met and worked with both Chinese and Japanese Communists, including Mao Zedong and Sanzo Nosaka.
As editor, Ariyoshi lambasted labor conditions for the working class and addressed what he considered to be other social inequalities in the islands.
However, at the height of the Second Red Scare and McCarthyism, he and six other progressives (including Jack Hall, the head of the Hawaii Longshoremen's Union) were arrested under charges of attempting to overthrow the American government under the Smith Act.
He wrote a series of articles for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and a television documentary on Chinese arts and crafts, which helped to repopularize cloisonne in the country.