|
 George and Miko Kaihara, both 90, were presented with their
diplomas in Tustin High School near Irvine, outside Los Angeles, to
a standing ovation from a crowd of several thousand people on
Thursday, school district spokesman Mark Eliot said.
They would have graduated from the school on June 23, 1943.
"It really feels like graduating," Miko Kaihara told local
broadcaster ABC7. To another local media outlet, the Orange County
Register, she said about the diploma: "I want to show it off."
The U.S. government forcibly detained more than 110,000 people in 10
such internment camps set up across the U.S. West after the 1941
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
 Both George and Miko Kaihara were juniors at then-named Tustin Union
High School when they were interned at Poston camp in Arizona in May
1942.
The couple, married in 1950 and who now have four sons and seven
grandchildren, completed their secondary schooling during their
three-year stay at the camp.
"To each class we had to take our chair or stool along," Miko
Kaihara told ABC7. "We got our diploma in Poston, we were the first
graduating class."
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The graduation ceremony 72 years later came after a former classmate
reconnected with the couple and called their alma mater, which
arranged the ceremony, Eliot said.
"It was really important to us, because I know it's always been
their dream to receive a diploma from Tustin High," Eliot said.
Twenty-five family members were on hand to watch the couple
officially graduate.
(Reporting by Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric M. Johnson
and Eric Beech)
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