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Teruo (Terry) Ishihara was born in Ogden, Utah in 1927. He was the oldest of 5 children born to Tetsuo and Shizuyo. The Ishiharas moved to Tacoma, Washington in 1939, where Tetsuo ran a hand laundry and cleaning business. In 1942, the Ishiharas were sent to the Pinedale Assembly Center in Fresno, California as a result of Executive Order 9066, which ordered the removal and detention of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. From Pinedale, the Ishiharas were sent to Tule Lake Relocation Center, where Terry attended Tri-State High School. In the Fall of 1945, Terry enrolled at Washington State College where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He then went on to earn several more degrees culminating in a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona.

Between 1951-1997, Terry worked as a mechanical engineer for the United States Navy and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), as well as several teaching positions including a year teaching secondary school in Oakland and several positions at colleges and universities across the United States and in Japan. Ishihara’s longest tenure was at Saginaw Valley State University from 1982-1994 where he served as Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. In 1997, Ishihara retired from Northern Arizona State University. In 2004, Ishihara co-edited a book of memoirs with Ben Hara titled Trials and Triumphs: A Collection of 21 Memoirs, which contains the recollections of former students of Tri-State High School in Tule Lake Relocation Center.

In 1952, Terry Ishihara married Simi in Oxnard, California. Together they had five children. As of 2014, Terry currently lives in San Pedro, California.

Executive Order 9066:

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the incarceration from 1942 to 1946 of approximately 120,000 adults and children of Japanese ancestry, many of whom were United States citizens. They were expelled from their homes and placed in incarceration camps without due process and in violation of their civil rights. These camps were euphemistically referred to as “relocation centers” or “internment camps”. After decades of advocacy by the Japanese American community, in 1988 the United States issued a formal apology and began redress to survivors of Japanese incarceration during World War II.