in English from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1930, and in 1935, after his return from an extended trip to Japan, he began working for the Lihue, Kauai YMCA.
In 1937, Kanai moved to California to take a job at San Francisco's Buchanan Street YMCA, where he remained until the war.
His proposals to hold hearings to assess the loyalty of Japanese Americans instead of removing them en masse, and to allow students, the elderly and handicapped individuals to avoid incarceration went unheeded.
When the Western Defense Command issued an order for the Japanese American residents of San Francisco to present themselves for "evacuation" on May 20, 1942, Kanai did not comply, instead remaining in the city and continuing his advocacy efforts.
On June 1 he left the Bay Area to attend a series of conferences and meetings on the removal and confinement of West Coast Japanese, and on July 11 he was arrested by the FBI at a YMCA convention outside Milwaukee, for violating Public Law 503, which enforced the provisions of President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.