Before her family was forced to move to the Manzanar Relocation Center, Haru was a student at Riverside Polytechnic High School. She graduated from high school while incarcerated at Crystal City, Texas, and returned to Riverside with her family after the war. Follow the Transcript
"I remember walking in town by myself, and I saw this friend. She was a Caucasian friend. She was walking towards me, and I thought, oh, there's – I think her name was Eva Jean – oh, there's Eva Jean. I was real excited. I walked towards her and I think she saw me, and she ducked into a store. I really felt the discrimination at that time, that she really didn't want to see me. I was really, really hurt. I know that she saw me and I was very, very hurt that she didn't want to even talk to me. But then as I thought if it later, I thought, well, maybe she had a reason. Maybe she knew someone that had gotten hurt in the war or something like that. I don't feel that badly about it anymore. These things did happen."
