Childhood friends who stuck together during World War II reunite after 70 years

When Mary Frances White Peters' parents told her to stop hanging out with her friend Reiko Nagumo, it didn't make sense to the second-grader.

The directive came after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States declared war in response. "I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the underdog," Peters told The Sacramento Bee. "Why should we stop being friends if we hadn't done anything wrong? It sounded like a 'grown up' problem to me." She refused to end the friendship, which was "very courageous," Nagumo said. Nagumo, her parents, and siblings were sent to the internment camp for Japanese Americans in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and when they returned home to Los Angeles in August 1945, Peters was waiting for her. "Mary Frances was the first kid to come up to me and take my hand," she said. "It made me feel safe."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.