“I just wonder where the school flag that created in Lake in 1944 went,” said Haruko Nagatsuka, a 90-year old Yokosuka resident, as she recalled the days when she was interned at Manzanar and Lake during WWII.

Born in Boyle Heights as a Nisei, Nagatsuka spent her childhood in Hi­roshima, but returned to Los Angeles in 1938. She began studying dressmak­ing at the Modest Costume Tailor School in Gardena. And when the war broke out, she was work­ing for a Japanese language school in San Fernando Valley.

“FBI officers came looking for me in order to investigate. However, they couldn’t read my name correctly and left without capturing me. They read my name as ‘Nagako’ instead of ‘Haruko,’” she said with a laugh.

Inevitably, like other Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the United States in 1942, Nagatsuka was forcibly relocated to an internment camp under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

While interned, Nagatsuka utilized her nihon shishu (Japanese silk embroidery) skills and created a school flag at Tule Lake where her husband, Takeshi Nagatsuka, served as a principal.

Haruko Nagatsuka worked as an assistant instructor for Lake’s sewing class alongside Ms. Uchiyama, Tamiko Higuchi and Sizue Mayeda, women who she still expresses gratitude to for helping her teach sewing classes in the camp.