Mary Yamashiro Otani ( ja, メアリー山城大谷 ''Mearī Yamashiro Ōtani'') (July 5, 1923 in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

– August 22, 2005) was a

Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was municipal corporation, incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a Richmond, California City Council, city council.

community activist.Mary Yamashiro Otani
Berkeley Daily Planet, by Tom Butt, October 28, 2005, retrieved August 1, 2007 She was a student at UC Berkeley when she was forcibly removed to an internment center for Japanese Americans following the enactment of

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

. Initially, she lived with her family at the

Tanforan Assembly Center The Tanforan Assembly Center was created to temporarily detain nearly 8,000 Japanese Americans, mostly from the San Francisco Bay Area, under the auspices of Executive Order 9066. After the order was signed in February 1942, the Wartime Civil Cont ...

San Bruno San Bruno (Spanish for " St. Bruno") is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, incorporated in 1914. The population was 43,908 at the 2020 United States Census. The city is between South San Francisco and Millbrae, adjacent to Sa ...

and later at isolated

Topaz War Relocation Center The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp which housed Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come t ...

in the desert near

Delta, Utah Delta is the largest city in Millard County, Utah, United States. It is located in the northeastern area of Millard County along the Sevier River and is surrounded by farmland. The population was 3,436 at the 2010 census. History Delta was ori ...

. Later a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

group persuaded the authorities to allow college-age students to continue their studies at East Coast schools. Yamashiro then attend Boston University where she met her husband Bill. She was the summary writer for city elections voter guides. Yamashiro set up the Richmond Farmers Market and the Richmond Annex Senior Center. She monitored the Richmond City Council and the Ports Commission for the

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV or the League) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan political organization in the United States. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for vot ...

. She was a

Unitarian Universalist Unitarian or Unitarianism may refer to: Christian and Christian-derived theologies A Unitarian is a follower of, or a member of an organisation that follows, any of several theologies referred to as Unitarianism: * Unitarianism (1565–present) ...

. She was one of six siblings born to an immigrant Okinawan family and, because of this, established a YWCA college fund for poor first-time college students of Southeast Asian descent.NSRC Fund
retrieved August 1, 2007

References

External links

Photo of the Japanese American internment center at Tanforan Racetrack
1923 births 2005 deaths Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area American Unitarian Universalists Boston University alumni Japanese-American civil rights activists Japanese-American internees American people of Japanese descent People from Berkeley, California People from Richmond, California University of California, Berkeley alumni 20th-century American women Women civil rights activists 21st-century American women {{US-activist-stub