B-Ball Blunder: Racist NBA player yet to apologize (in National News) Equality for All: SFUSD plan targets racial disparities (in Bay Area News) Business in the Aftermath of Census 2000 (in Business) Asian American Oscar predictions (in A&E) Emil Amok: Roundball Asian Gals and the Census (in Opinion)

Walt Woodward, 1910 – 2001

Walt Woodward

Publisher opposed Japanese-American internment

By Associated Press

Walter C. Woodward Jr., a former newspaper publisher who regularly editorialized against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, has died at the age of 91.

Woodward, who died last Tuesday, and his late wife Mildred, edited and published the weekly Bainbridge Review during the years before, during and after the war.

Gerald Elfendahl, a local historian for Bainbridge Island, said the Woodwards were the only editors on the U.S. West Coast to regularly editorialize against the relocations of people of Japanese ancestry during the war.

Bainbridge, an island in Puget Sound about six miles west of Seattle and now a ferry-commuting suburb of the city, has a history of Japanese-American population, much of it tied to farming. Its residents of Japanese ancestry were relocated during the war, and the island was the setting of the best-selling novel Snow Falling on Cedars, later made into a movie. Woodward was the inspiration for the novel’s character Arthur Chambers, the newspaper editor, Elfendahl said.

Woodward was one of 100 citizens inducted into Washington state’s Centennial Hall of Honor for humanitarian and civil libertarian contributions to the state’s quality of life. He was a recipient of the National Japanese American Citizen League’s Edison Uno Civil Rights “Dove of Peace Award,” the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association’s “Freedom Light Award,” and other recognitions.

Woodward was born Feb. 25, 1910, in Seattle. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1933.

He worked as a reporter for The Seattle Times and the Juneau (Alaska) Empire, where he met his wife. They moved to Bainbridge and, with friends, purchased the Review in 1940.

When the war arrived and island residents were relocated, “there was one voice who stood with us,” said Isamu Nakao, an elder of the island’s Japanese community. “That was Walt Woodward’s. That I will never forget. I know that he took a big beating as far as subscription and advertising losses. However, he kept his integrity. He knew what the Constitution and Bill of Rights were all about.”

The Woodwards also enlisted Paul Ohtaki, Sa Nakata, Tony Koura and Sada Omoto to become “Camp Correspondents,” reporting births, deaths, marriages, baseball scores, Miss Minidoka beauty pageant winners, and volunteers into the Army from the internment camps.

“While we were in camp, he kept the island people informed of our situation and did us all a favor I can never forget,” Nakao said. “When the government said that we could go, Walt and Milly had paved the way for our return.”