Wendy Masako Yoshimura (born January 17, 1943) is an American still life watercolor painter. She is known for her involvement with the leftist terrorist group, Symbionese Liberation Army, during the mid-1970s. She was born in Manzanar, one of numerous World War II-era internment camp for Japanese Americans, who were forced out of their homes and businesses along the West Coast. She was raised both in Japan and California's Central Valley. During her last year of art college, she encountered and became involved in radical politics as a result of meeting activist Willie Brandt. He founded the Revolutionary Army, another violent leftist organization, in Berkeley, California. Early life Yoshimura was born at the Manzanar Internment Camp for Japanese Americans where her American-born parents were incarcerated. All the family were American citizens by birth. After the war, the Yoshimura family moved to Etajima, a small island off the coast of Hiroshima. Her father worked for the Allied Occupation forces. Yoshimura spoke Japanese as her first language. The family returned to the US when Yoshimura was 13 years old. Because she did not speak English, Yoshimura was initially placed in the second grade in the Fresno, California school system. She learned English rapidly and later graduated in 1969 from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts). Revolutionary Army Yoshimura became associated with the Revolutionary Army, a group founded by her boyfriend, Willie Brandt. He used the title in public statements claiming responsibility for violent actions intended to express opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1972, police discovered a weapons and explosives cache in a Berkeley garage which Yoshimura had rented and described it as a "massive bomb factory." They also found letters taking credit for planned future bombings targeting the University of California, Berkeley campus, including the Naval Architecture building. Notes described a specific plan to kidnap or assassinate World Bank President and former defense secretary Robert McNamara at his winter residence in Aspen, Colorado. Brandt and two others were arrested in Berkeley on March 31, 1972, and subsequently convicted. Yoshimura evaded a police dragnet and fled California. She lived under an alias in New Jersey until 1974. In 1977 she was captured and convicted of unlawful possession of explosives, of a machine gun, and of substances and materials with the intent to make destructive devices and explosives. She was sentenced to a one-to-fifteen years in prison.