<Begin Segment 25>

MN: Now, in 1975, Wendy Yoshimura, who was connected with the Revolutionary Army and the Symbionese Liberation Army, was arrested in San Francisco with Patty Hearst. How did you get involved in that case?

LW: There was a, we had heard smatterings of Wendy's as the FBI was trying to track her down, and then there was a story, photo story on page one -- I think it was the, it must've been the Chronicle -- of her father in, a gardener in Fresno in the midst of his gardening, and said this is Wendy Yoshimura's father. So that caught our attention, and so it was either that day or maybe the next day that I called Roy Sano, who was teaching at Mills College at that time, he later became a bishop of the United Methodist Church, and I mentioned to him, we had been in conversation on a number of things and I said, "Roy, we really need to check out the Yoshimura family. Let's try to find out more about the family. And can you, let's get a group of us together." So it was either that evening or the next evening that we gathered a group of six or seven of us at Glide Church, and we met and decided what can we do to learn more about this situation? And so Edison Uno said, "Well, the next day, tomorrow I'm going down to Fresno. I'll go down and check out as much as possible." So he did report back a couple days later. We gathered again and found out more about (her mother and father). I forgot his first name. Anyway, the Yoshimuras, they were both gardeners that, the Fresno, he was a member of the Fresno Buddhist Church. There was a, his insurance agent was close to the situation and seemed to be the communications link between the Yoshimuras and the rest of the community, so this was the report that Edison brought back, and we said, "We really need to get the whole Japanese American community here in San Francisco together," so I think it was the following, we decided to get a, have a meeting the following Sunday and they decided to meet at Glide Church. And about seventy, eighty people showed up. We got the word out as best we could. It may, we may have had time to get out a notice in the papers. At that time we had two dailies, so we could get the word out very quickly. So a good number of mostly young people showed up at the meeting and decided how to do, first they decided to become a committee in support of Wendy. They asked me to be the chair, so I said, "Okay, I'll do it," knowing that we have a great group of young people to be a part of the committee.

MN: And how did the Yoshimura family react to this involvement from the Japanese American community?

LW: We didn't get any public notices. Anything they did they spoke to, I think they related it to whoever they could, probably the real estate agent, not the real estate, the insurance agent in Fresno, and then he would communicate with us. But there was no official word: "Yeah, we really appreciate that." I think it was really Wendy herself and then her supporters that, that said we're doing a very important thing to form this committee and in support.

MN: Now were, was the committee able to keep her out of jail?

LW: Yes, because we raised enough bail money to keep her out. Edison did a lot of work around that. He went to a number of Japanese-owned businesses. He himself plunked in some money, and enough, I think we had to raise fifty thousand bail in order to keep her out, and we were able to meet that. I think a lot of the community, several of community pitched in to be able to put together fifty thousand.

MN: Ultimately, though, during trial she was convicted and she served some time, I think that, that was the result.

LW: Yes, she did serve time.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.