She then worked briefly at Seaside Memorial Hospital before being forced to move to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, a processing center for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, where she was one of seven imprisoned physicians of Japanese background who provided care for 17,000 fellow inmates.

[2] When she was ordered to move to Wyoming to be interned and work at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, another internment camp for Japanese Americans, she sent letters to the government saying that she refused to go and that if forced to move there she would not work.

[4] She was subsequently released to live in Chicago, where she finished her residency in obstetrics at Walter Memorial Hospital.

[3] Shigekawa set up a medical practice on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood in 1949.

[6] In 1993, Shigekawa received Loyola University's Stritch Award "for outstanding research or humanitarian contributions in medicine".