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
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.
The Terry Ishihara Collection consists of publications, ephemera, speeches, and drafts of histories about Tule Lake Relocation Center (also widely, though misleadingly, known as an "internment camp") near Newell, California. Many of the published materials can be grouped into general reunion programs for Japanese Americans incarcerated at Tule Lake during World War II and materials dealing specifically with students at Tri-State High School, which served the school age prisoners at Tule Lake. Amongst materials created by Ishihara are two speeches, one given at a 1989 Day of Remembrance event and one give at a 2003 Tule Lake reunion.
The Terry Ishihara Collection is arranged alphabetically by folder title.
Some items in this collection have been digitized and are available online as part of the
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item description]. Terry Ishihara Collection, 1989-2012. (SC 014.8)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The Terry Ishihara Collection was donated to Washington State University by Terry Ishihara in 2014 (MS.2014.33).
This collection was processed by Steven Bingo.
In 2021, in response to evolving societal understanding regarding the language used to describe the impact of Executive Order 9066, this finding aid was revised to more accurately provide context to the mass incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
George and Frank C. Hirahara Photograph Collection of Heart Mountain, Wyoming, 1932-2016
Tom T. Hide Collection, 1925-2012
Okubara Family Collection, circa 1943-2008
Takeda Family Collection, 1938-circa 2012
Kenneth Nishiyori Collection, 1942-1944
George and Doris McIntyre Papers, 1944-1945
Mari Tsuruyama Okumura Collection, 1936-2014
Patti Hirahara Collection, 1955-2020
Mike Mackey Collection, 1940-2002
Heart Mountain High School
Fusataro Nakaya Photographs, circa 1944
Nabata Family Collection of Heart Mountain Photographs, circa 1942-1945
Frank Chin Oral History Collection, 1974-1986
Inez Puckett McEwen Collection on Japanese-American Incarceration, 1942-1943
Japanese American Redress Collection, 1976-2000
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.