While I’m happy for all the graduates who walked the stage this year, there are two in particular who put a smile on my face. After all, these 90-year-olds have been waiting seven decades to receive their high school diplomas from Tustin Union High School.
Miko and George Kaihara both attended Tustin Union High, but are not listed in the 1943 graduating class. That’s because as teenagers, Miko and George were part of the nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forced out of their homes and into an internment camp. Instead of receiving their diplomas from Tustin Union High, they instead received diplomas from the Poston internment camp in the Arizona desert, where school was taught by other Japanese Americans confined in the internment camp.
70 years later, this all changed when the couple, who got married in 1950 and had four sons and seven grandchildren, was reacquainted with their former classmate, Denny Hayden.
After discovering that they never received their diplomas, Hayden called up the school and insisted that it wasn’t too late.
And so, a week before their 65th wedding anniversary, Miko and George Kaihara — both proudly wearing a cap and gown –walked out to a standing ovation as they received their high school diploma in front of their family, friends and the other graduates. Although the high school is now called Tustin High School, their diplomas read “Tustin Union High School — 1943.”
All photos courtesy of Angry Asian Man
