She was born in Manzanar, one of numerous World War II-era internment camps for Japanese Americans who were forced out of their homes and businesses along the West Coast.

"[5] 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.

[8] Also in 1974, married couple Bill and Emily Harris, with kidnapping victim-turned fugitive Patty Hearst, relocated to rural Pennsylvania.

While in Sacramento with associates from the San Francisco Bay Area, some of the fugitives planned and carried out an armed robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California.

Hearst's account in Every Secret Thing states that she and Yoshimura opposed the action and were assigned to "switch cars" far from the scene.

On September 18, 1975, Yoshimura was arrested with Hearst in a second-floor apartment at 625 Morse Street by FBI Special Agent Tom Padden and San Francisco Police Department Inspector Tim Casey.

[6][17][18] Padden and Casey failed to read Hearst and Yoshimura their Miranda rights and did not obtain a search warrant until twenty-six hours later.

[6] During Yoshimura's trial, Japanese Americans who empathized with her family's experience during World War II gave $150,000 to aid her legal defense conducted by the Asian Law Caucus, and led by Garrick Lew.

[21] In 1991 Yoshimura was granted limited immunity to testify during a grand jury investigation into the 1975 armed bank robbery by the SLA in Carmichael, California in which Myrna Opsahl, 42-year-old mother of four, was killed.