Walter C. Woodward (1910-2001) and his wife, Mildred (1909-1989), lived on Bainbridge Island across Puget Sound from Seattle and were among the only courageous souls who spoke up for the Japanese Americans in the days before evacuation.[1] They published the community newspaper, The Bainbridge Review and “used the paper throughout the war to remind Bainbridge Islanders that ‘Island Japanese’ were not the enemy overseas but schoolmates and neighbors with the same constitutional rights as all Americans.”[2]
On December 7, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, Walt and Millie labored through the night to produce the only extra edition in the Review’s history. In his editorial, Plain Talk, Walt addressed the mounting anger and hysteria directed against those of Japanese descent.
There are on this Island some 300 members of 50 families whose blood ties lie with a nation which, yesterday, committed an atrocity against all that is decent. . . . [T]here is the danger of a blind, wild hysterical hatred of all persons who can trace ancestry to Japan. That some of those persons happen to be American citizens, happen to be loyal to this country and happen to have no longer a binding tie with the fatherland are factors which easily could be swept aside by mob hysteria. . . . To other Islanders, The Review says this: These Japanese Americans of ours haven’t bombed anybody. In the past they have given every indication of loyalty to this nation. They have sent, along with our boys, their own sons . . . into the United States Army. . . . Let us so live in this trying time so that when it is all over, loyal Americans can look loyal Americans in the eye with the knowledge that, together, they kept the Stars and Stripes flying high.[3]
Woodward warned against the “danger of a blind, wild, hysterical hatred of all persons who can trace ancestry to Japan.”[4] His protests in The Review, however, were not enough as 227 Bainbridge Islanders became the first Japanese Americans incarcerated en masse: “On March 24, a detachment of soldiers arrived from Seattle, rifles at the ready. Fanning across the Island, they nailed up copies of Civilian Exclusion Order #1, ordering all persons of Japanese ancestry to leave Bainbridge Island by March 30, 1942.”[5] Woodward expressed his outrage in print: “Where, in the face of their fine record since December 7, in the face of their rights of citizenship, . . . in the face of American decency, is there any excuse for this high-handed, much too-short evacuation order?”[6] The “brutal” eviction order “gave those Japanese American citizens only a very few days to arrange their businesses, their home, their animals, and their strawberry farms, then only three months away from a potential profitable harvest. They could take with them only those possessions that they could carry. The financial losses suffered . . . must have been monstrous.”[7]
Paul Ohtaki, a Japanese American Christian, was working at the time as a janitor for The Review, but Walt needed a correspondent in the camps. So as Ohtaki prepared for evacuation, Woodward offered him $5.50 a week to write a weekly column from the inside. Woodward believed that up-to-date news from their Japanese neighbors would prepare the Islanders to receive them back after the war concluded. Even before the evacuation, Woodward had the foresight to plan for resettlement. Ohtaki would struggle to write those weekly columns, but later described his first reflections of Manzanar with poignant clarity:
Our hearts sank to a new low. Even some of the soldiers who escorted us down couldn’t believe what they saw. [S]ome had tears in their eyes as they left us. . . . We suddenly realized that tar-papered barracks divided into 20 x 20 ft. rooms were supposed to be our new homes. They were just being put up. . . . The floors were laid with wet green lumber, so as it dried out, the cracks in the floor became wider each day. In the evening, the winds would churn up and blow fine sand all over the room and all over our bodies.
Immediately upon our arrival, our very first assignment was to put straw into canvas ticks to make mattresses, which we placed over our wired spring cots. We were issued old olive-drab Army blankets. Each compartment had a small Coleman oil heater to take the chill out of the evenings.
Our first lunch was horrendous. We had canned spinach . . . the same dark-green color as the Army trucks, . . . but worse. . . . We got sick on our first meal. Many suffered from diarrhea. Some thought we were being poisoned. What had happened was that the kitchen crew . . . were new on the job. [They] had washed the dishes for the first time with strong detergent, which they hadn’t rinsed off very well. The latrines were not completed. The stools and wash basins were not working, stall partitions were not set up, and there was a long line of people with upset stomachs, waiting their turn. What a mess on the first day.[8]
Walt Woodward was a voice for the voiceless and his sacrificial courage would be honored during his final years of life. He embodied the exhortation in Proverbs 31:8-9, “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” As founding members and lifelong parishioners of the Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church, Walt and Milly’s defense of the Japanese on Bainbridge Island was based on their Christian faith and firm belief in the rights of U.S. citizens. Their example led many others to welcome the Nikkei home following the war. As Walt would attest, “When American citizens of Japanese ancestry did return to their homes, many of them had to face flaming crosses at night, burned barns and ugly ‘No Japs Wanted Here’ signs. None of that occurred on Bainbridge Island. Our Nisei came home to quiet welcomes and, as we all know, now are respected and integrated members of our community.”[9] Heroes come in all forms. Some wield the sword or rifle. Others a typewriter and a keen sense of wit.
[1] More of the Woodwards’s story can be found in their biography, Mary Woodward, In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story (Bainbridge Island, WA: Fenwick Publishing Group, 2008). Learn more also through the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial.
[2] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 4.
[3] Walter Woodward, “Plain Talk,” editorial in The Bainbridge Review (8 December 1941).
[4] Woodward, “Plain Talk” (5 February 1941).
[5] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 7. This was the first of 108 Civilian Exclusion Orders issued to apply exclusively to persons of Japanese ancestry living in the West Coast states.
[6] Woodward, “Plain Talk” (26 March 1942).
[7] Tom Welch, “Evacuation Order Brutal, Says Woodward,” The Bainbridge Review (16 September 1981), cited in The Seattle Times.
[8] Paul Ohtaki, “What I Remember About the First Few Days,” It Was the Right Thing to Do!: Walt and Mildred Woodward (San Francisco: Self-published, 2005), 10-11. Woodward later enlisted other internees besides Ohtaki to write articles for him from inside the camps: Sadayoshi “Sada” Omoto, Tony Koura, and Sachiko “Sa” Koura Nakata.
[9] Walt Woodward, The Bainbridge Review (1986), cited in Woodward, Defense of Our Neighbors, 139.
