Wendy Yoshimura
Wendy Masako Yoshimura is a
watercolor artist living in
Oakland,
California. She was born in
1943 at the
Manzanar Internment Camp for
Japanese Americans where her American-born parents were incarcerated. She is famous for her involvement with the
Symbionese Liberation Army.
After the war the Yoshimura family moved to
Etajima, a small island off the coast of
Hiroshima, where her father worked for the
Allied Occupation forces. 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 school system. She graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now
California College of the Arts) in
1969.
Revolutionary Army
Yoshimura was associated with the "
Revolutionary Army," a radical group founded by her boyfriend
Willie Brandt. In
1972, police discovered a weapons and explosives cache in a Berkeley garage she had rented. Police described the finding as a "massive bomb factory"[
1].
They also found letters taking credit for planned future bombings targeting the
University of California, Berkeley campus including the Naval Architecture building, and notes describing a plan to kidnap or assassinate
World Bank President and former defense secretary
Robert McNamara. Brandt and two others were arrested and subsequently convicted, but Yoshimura evaded a police dragnet and fled California. She lived under an alias in
New Jersey until
1974.
Symbionese Liberation Army
Also in 1974, the three surviving members of the
Berkeley terrorist group
Symbionese Liberation Army (
Bill Harris,
Emily Harris, and
Patty Hearst) relocated to rural
Pennsylvania after six of their comrades died in a shootout with
Los Angeles police. Sports entrepreneur and political activist Jack Scott, who had helped the high-profile fugitives make their way east, arranged for Yoshimura to join them and handle shopping and other public transactions.
After two months, Yoshimura returned alone to California. Some weeks later, Hearst and the Harrises also slipped back into the state. When newspaper headlines tied Yoshimura to the SLA, she reunited with the group at its new hideout in
Sacramento, California.
Arrest and Conviction
In September,
1975, Yoshimura was arrested in
San Francisco. She was convicted of the 1972 weapons charges. In 1991 she was granted limited immunity and testified during a grand jury investigation into a fatal 1975 bank robbery thought to be tied to the SLA. No indictments resulted at the time. In 2002 five former SLA members and associates were arrested and pled guilty to charges related to that crime [
2].
|
Several of Yoshimura's prints are available for purchase on her website |
Today, Yoshimura lives in North
Oakland, California. Her still-life watercolors depicting fruits, vegetables, flowers and seashells are often displayed in the Bay Area. Several prints are online at www.wendyyoshimura.com[
3]. She is a member of the
Asian American Woman Artists Association and teaches watercolor technique at the Japanese Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco and at her home studio.
She works part time at the
Berkeley Juice Bar Collective.
American Woman is a fictionalization of Yoshimura's story by Susan Choi that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Christopher Sorrentino's 2005 novel, "Trance", also details a fictional version of Yoshimura, Hearst and their times.
