Event Details

Planning for War, Planning for Internment The Japanese American Experience at the Presidio of San Francisco

A day-long program lecture series, discussions, and booksignings of the Japanese American World War II Experience.

Morning Program
11:00 A.M. - 12:30 P.M.

Presenters: Dr. Stephen Payne, Command Historian, Defense Language Institute and Foreign Language Center, Presidio of Monterey. Overview of government’s plans for war from 1906 to 1941.

Stephen Haller, Park Historian, Golden Gate National Parks Association, National Park Service, presents the little known story of the US Army’s secret language school at Crissy Field, Building 640.

Former WWII Internees (invited)

Responses to WWII Exclusion & Incarceration
Afternoon Program
2:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.

Convener: Jere Takahashi, Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley.

Authors and Presenters:

Mary Woodward, author of In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story.
reveals the story of her parents, publishers of the  Bainbridge Island Review and  their fight to uphold the civil liberties of Japanese Americans.

Stan Yogi and Elaine Elinson, co-authors of Wherever There’s a Fight on civil liberties history in California, from the gold rush right up to the precarious post-9/11 era. New book tells the stories of the brave individuals who have stood up for their rights in the face of social hostility, physical violence, economic hardship, and political stonewalling.” (Heyday Books)

Booksigning follows.

Biographies of Panelists

Elaine Elinson was the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News for more than two decades. She is a coauthor of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, which was banned by the Marcos regime. Her articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Poets and Writers, and numerous other periodicals. She is married to journalist Rene CiriaCruz and they have one son.

Stan Yogi has managed development programs for the ACLU of Northern California since 1997. He is the coeditor of two books, Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley and Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, MELUS, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and several anthologies. He is married to nonprofit administrator David Carroll and lives in Oakland.

Mary Woodward - At the start of WWII, the Seattle suburb of Bainbridge Island was 10% Japanese-American, an ethnic community fully integrated into a small town way of life. Walt and Milly Woodward, publishers of the island’s community newspaper, fought the forced internment of their neighbors, and helped the island community grapple with the injustice of their exile. Mary Woodward, tells her parents’ s story, In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story, and brings a personal verification to their courage during the mass hysteria when the circumstance of the fear of war swept the nation. The story of the Woodwards and their fight helps us to comprehend how precious our civil liberties are, and how easily they can be lost.  Mary Woodward is a graduate of history from Whitman College and a former history teacher. A frequent lecturer and columnist on the history and politics of the internment, she is active in the preservation of Bainbridge Island history. She is a leader in the creation of Bainbridge Island Nikkei WWII Internment and Exclusion Memorial, and has a singular bond with the Japanese-American community on Bainbridge Island and abroad.

Shizue Seigel - A journalist, author, graphic designer, world traveler, and community activist in the Nikkei Japanese American community, Shizue Seigel wears many hats and provides leadership primarily in the San Francisco Bay area. With her partner, Ben Pease, a cartographer and community planner, she continues to have a close touch to the pulse of the diverse ethnic community of which she is a part. Her collaboration with Col. Harry Fukuhara (RET.), MIS, on Kansha, In Good Conscience, Supporting Japanese Americans During the Internment, is a documentary collection on the non-Japanese who supported the Japanese Americans interned during WWII. It is a timely and important contribution that it fills isome of the gaps remaining in a full exploration of the internment story.

Dr. Stephen Payne, Ph.D. ,Author and Command Historian at the Defense Foreign Language Institute, Monterey. is a graduate of Cabrillo College, UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State University, and UC Santa Barbara. He has taught at San Jose State University, the California History Center at De Anza College, and Cabrillo College. Payne’s publications include books and articles on the history of Santa Clara County, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey’s sardine industry, as well as on imperialism and military history.  Payne has had a number of positions at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). Between 1994 and 1999 and again from 2006 to the present, he has been the Command Historian conducting institutional research. He has served on three accreditation evaluation teams and directed two accreditation self-studies for DLIFLC, as well as leading the successful degree granting effort for DLIFLC and writing the academic freedom statement for the institute. Between 2001 and 2005 Payne served as Assistant Provost, Senior Vice Provost, and Interim Provost for a student outcomes focused institution of 1,373 full-time foreign language and area studies faculty teaching 22 languages to over 3,500 full-time students.

Stephen A. Haller is the Park Historian and Branch Chief for Cultural Resources at Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Formerly the Curator of Historic Documents for the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, he has also been an interpreter at a number of historic San Francisco Bay Area sites, including Alcatraz, Fort Point, and the Maritime Museum. Haller's academic background is in nineteenth century American history; he specializes in the study of shipwrecks, military history, and historic landscapes in the Bay Area. Haller is the author of Post and Park: A Brief Illustrated History of the Presidio of San Francisco and The Last Word in Airfields: San Francisco's Crissy Field; coauthor of Shipwrecks at the Golden Gate; and former editor of the Sea Letter, the journal of the National Maritime Museum Association. He served as principal investigator for World War II oral history projects at the U.S.S. Arizona National Memorial and the War in the Pacific National Historical Park on Guam. Haller coauthored the Seacoast Fortification Preservation Manual for Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which received the California Preservation Foundation's 2000 Design Award.

James Hirabayashi, Ph.D., son of hardworking immigrant farmers in the Pacific Northwest, was a high school senior in 1942 when he was detained in the Pinedale Assembly Center before being transferred to the Tule Lake Concentration Camp in Northern California. After World War II, he earned his Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Anthropology from the University of Washington, and eventually his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Dr. Hirabayashi is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University where he was Dean of the nation’s first school of ethnic studies. He also held research and teaching positions at the University of Tokyo, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and Ahmadu Bellow Univerity, Zaria, Nigeria.

Jere Takahashi, Ph.D., has been director of Multicultural Student Development at UC Berkeley since 2000. He is also a lecturer in the Asian American Studies Program and academic coordinator of Asian Pacific American Student Development. With the Center, Jere is helping to coordinate the University-Community Network internship program. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley.