Wendy Yoshimura

{{Infobox person

|name = Wendy Yoshimura

|birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1943|1|17}}

|birth_place = Manzanar Internment Camp, California

|death_date =

|death_place =

|occupation = Painter

|birth_name = Wendy Masako Yoshimura

|image = Wendy yoshimura in 1976 (cropped).jpg

|caption = Yoshimura in 1976

|other_names =

|movement = Symbionese Liberation Army

|organization =

}}

File:WENDYYOSHIMURA1976FRESNOphotobyNancyWong.jpg

Wendy Masako Yoshimura (born January 17, 1943) is an American still life watercolor painter and convicted felon. She was a member of the leftist terrorist group the Symbionese Liberation Army during the mid-1970s. 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. 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.{{cite journal |last1=Malkki |first1=Leena |title=How Terrorist Campaigns End: The Campaigns of the Rode Jeugd in the Netherlands and the Symbionese Liberation Army in the United States |journal=Acta Politica |date=June 11, 2010 |url=https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/files/159439821/Malkki_PhD.pdf |access-date=February 15, 2022 |publisher=University of Helsinki |issn=0515-3093}}{{cite news |last1=Hoge |first1=Patrick |title=SLA's Yoshimura keeps mum while ex-comrades serve time / Enigmatic artist lives alone with her dog and will talk only about her watercolors |url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SLA-s-Yoshimura-keeps-mum-while-ex-comrades-serve-2524852.php |access-date=February 15, 2022 |work=SFGATE |date=December 27, 2003}}{{cite book |last1=Toobin |first1=Jeffrey |title=American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst |date=2017 |publisher=Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC |isbn=978-0-345-80315-3 |page=231 |oclc=1152901585 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1152901585 |language=en}} 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).{{cite web |url=http://www.askart.com/askart/y/wendy_yoshimura/wendy_yoshimura.aspx|title=Wendy Yoshimura (1943 - )|website=AskArt.com}}

=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."{{cite web|title=Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst|publisher=Public Broadcasting Service|url= https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/guerrilla-timeline-guerrilla-taking-patty-hearst/}} 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.courttv.com/trials/soliah/docs/street.pdf|title=70s Radical Bombing Case Court motion|website=CourtTV.com}} 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.{{cite web|title=People v. Yoshimura (1979) 91 Cal.App.3d 609|url=http://www.lawlink.com/research/CaseLevel3/55479}} She was released on parole in September 1980.{{cite web|title=Densho Encyclopedia|url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Wendy_Yoshimura}}

=Symbionese Liberation Army=

Also in 1974, married couple Bill and Emily Harris, with kidnapping victim-turned fugitive Patty Hearst, relocated to rural Pennsylvania. The Harrises were surviving founding members of the Berkeley terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. Six of their members had died in a May 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police at a house in Los Angeles. Sports writer and political activist Jack Scott had helped the high-profile fugitives make their way east. He arranged for Yoshimura to join them and handle shopping and other public transactions.

After two months with the group, Yoshimura left and returned alone to California, taking up residence in San Francisco. Hearst and the Harrises found their own way back into the state and regrouped in Sacramento. When the FBI found Yoshimura's thumbprint in the SLA's rural hideout, newspaper headlines tied her to the group. She fled San Francisco and reunited with the SLA members in Sacramento.

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. Bank customer Myrna Opsahl was shot and killed. 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. After the robbery, the group abandoned Sacramento and fled individually to San Francisco.

=Arrest and conviction=

{{float|{{coord|37.720423|N|122.440653|W|name=625 Morse Street, San Francisco, CA|type:landmark}} }}{{break}}

File:Press conference 2 with Lloyd Wake and Wendy Yoshimura,.jpg,

San Francisco, in 1976, left to right, Raymond Y. Okamura,Okamura, Raymond. "[https://www.nps.gov/tule/forteachers/upload/Ray_Okamura.pdf The American Concentration Camps: A Cover-Up Through Euphemistic Terminology]{{dead link|date=June 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}." The Journal of Ethnic Studies 10, no. 3 (1982): 95–109. 99.{{cite news |last1=Sato |first1=Hiroaki |author1-link=Hiroaki Sato (translator) |title=American legal principles and the Magna Carta |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/01/29/commentary/japan-commentary/american-legal-principles-magna-carta/ |access-date=February 15, 2022 |work=The Japan Times |date=January 29, 2016 |quote=Attorney Raymond Okamura found these thoughts offensive. Mittwer may be "a derivative American citizen," but he was culturally, educationally, Japanese, Okamura argued, and didn't understand the values that make the U.S. what it is: "individual rights, presumption of innocence, fair trial by jury, equality under the law, and 'liberty and justice for all.' " Whatever Japan did was "not germane to the issue."}} James Larson,{{cite web |title=People v. Yoshimura |url=https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1830630.html |website= :en:California Court of Appeals |publisher= :en:Findlaw}} Lloyd Keigo Wake,Chairman of the Wendy Yoshimura Fair Trial Committee, Reverend, of :en:Glide Memorial Church{{cite web |title=Lloyd Wake Obituary (1922 - 2017) |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/lloyd-wake-obituary?id=1622385 |website=San Francisco Chronicle |publisher=Legacy.com |access-date=February 15, 2022}} Wendy Yoshimura, and Gail Aratani.{{cite web |last1=Leong |first1=Kathy Chin |title=Mystery Solved! Mural Artist Revealed |url=https://www.chinatownbooksf.com/post/mystery-solved-mural-artist-revealed |website=Chinatown Book |language=en |date=August 11, 2021}}{{cite web |title=Reclaiming Our Roots: Silkscreened Posters from the Movement 1963-2014 |url=https://www.kearnystreet.org/reclaiming-our-roots |website=Kearny Street Workshop |access-date=February 15, 2022}}{{cite web |title=5th Anniversary Benefit. Japantown Art and Media Workshop screenprint poster by Gail Aratani, artist |url=https://www.bolerium.com/pages/books/235394/gail-aratani-artist/5th-anniversary-benefit-japantown-art-and-media-workshop-screenprint-poster |website=Bolerium Books}}]]

File:Demonstrators at the International Hotel in San Francisco, 1977.jpg, with protesters on eviction night, August 4, 1977]]

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.Yoshimura's arrest at {{coord|37.720423|N|122.440653|W|name=625 Morse Street, San Francisco, CA|type:landmark}}{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913456-6,00.html|title=Radicals: Patti's Twisted Journey|magazine=Time|date=September 29, 1975|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100720205202/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913456-6,00.html|archive-date=July 20, 2010|url-status=dead}} Padden and Casey failed to read Hearst and Yoshimura their Miranda rights and did not obtain a search warrant until twenty-six hours later. Weapons evidence, including a handgun in Yoshimura's purse and a shotgun in the bedroom, was suppressed because of this oversight.

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.{{cite web|title=Attorney, Community Activist Garrick Lew Dies at 65|url=https://www.rafu.com/2016/04/attorney-community-activist-garrick-lew-dies-at-65/|date=April 7, 2016}} They did this through the Wendy Yoshimura Fair Trial Committee.{{cite book |title=Anyone's Daughter |author=Alexander, Shana |year=1979 |publisher=Viking Press |page=101 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gUTPAAAACAAJ |isbn=0-670-12949-6 |author-link=Shana Alexander}}

Ultimately, Yoshimura was convicted on explosives and weapons charges and sent to state prison for six months; she was paroled in 1980.{{cite web|url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SLA-s-Yoshimura-keeps-mum-while-ex-comrades-serve-2524852.php|title=SLA's Yoshimura keeps mum while ex-comrades serve time|work=San Francisco Chronicle|date=December 27, 2003}}

=Grand jury investigation=

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.{{cite web|title=Symbionese Liberation Army members, then and now|agency=Associated Press|date=May 11, 2004|url=http://www.religionnewsblog.com/7233-.html|via=Religion News Blog}} One SLA member, Michael Bortin, had pleaded guilty to the robbery. No indictments resulted at the time.

In 2002 five former SLA members and associates were arrested, and four of them pleaded guilty to charges related to the homicide.

Present day

Yoshimura is an artist and resides in north Oakland, California. She teaches water color painting at her studio and at a San Francisco community center.{{cite web|url=http://www.jcccnc.org/programs/arts.htm|title=Cultural Arts & Crafts Programs|website=JCCCNC.org|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050215063955/http://www.jcccnc.org/programs/arts.htm|archive-date=February 15, 2005}} Her still-life watercolors are often displayed in the Bay Area.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.missionarts.org/0506/0506.pdf|title=Mission Arts Monthly|magazine=Mission Arts Monthly|date=June–July 2005|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051105090025/http://www.missionarts.org/0506/0506.pdf|archive-date=November 5, 2005}}{{cite web|last=Spicer|first=Jakki K.|url=http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/in_the_galleries_june_13_20__2007/Content?oid=440986|title=In the Galleries June 13-20, 2007|website=EastBayExpress.com|date=June 13, 2007}}{{cite magazine|title=San Pablo Arts Gallery|department=Art Listings|author=Han, Sarah|date=Jan 12–18, 2005|volume=39|number=15|magazine=San Francisco Bay Guardian|url=http://www.sfbg.com/39/15/x_list_art.html|access-date=February 15, 2008|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050405131525/http://www.sfbg.com/39/15/x_list_art.html|archive-date=April 5, 2005}}

In media

American Woman (2003) by Susan Choi is a novel related to Yoshimura's life during that period of involvement with Hearst and the SLA. Characters are given other names and circumstances changed. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
It was adapted as a 2019 film by the same name, written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Semi Chellas. Hong Chau plays the activist Jenny.
Wendy... Uh... What's Her Name is a 2006 documentary by Curtis Choy.{{cite web |title=Wendy...uh...What's Her Name |url=http://chonkmoonhunter.com/WWHN.html |website=The Chonk Moonhunter Catalog |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060226060359/http://chonkmoonhunter.com/WWHN.html |archive-date=February 26, 2006 |url-status=dead}}