ABFFE Book Review: In Defense of Our Neighbors by Mary Woodward
Foreword by David Guterson

Book Review by Audrey Eisman

        Woodward, Mary. In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story (Bainbridge Island, WA: Fenwick Publishing, 2008), 978-0974951072.

On March 30, 1942, following the orders of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, soldiers bearing rifles with fixed bayonets entered Bainbridge Island, a small community on Washington State’s Puget Sound, taking 227 American citizens of Japanese descent (men, women and children) from their homes. Heavily armored trucks brought these people to an internment location for the duration of World War II. This group constituted nearly 10% of the island community, and was the first to be forcibly exiled in the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The majority of these families were unable to regain their homes and possessions after the war.

Walt and Milly Woodward were the young, idealistic co-editors and co-publishers of The Bainbridge Review, a local newspaper on Bainbridge Island. During this internment, the Woodwards published news of the Japanese islanders’ births, deaths, weddings, and other milestones, as well as detailing the conditions in these camps.

In Defense of Our Neighbors is the compelling narrative by the late couple’s daughter detailing the struggle of Walt and Milly Woodward. Mary Woodward still lives on Bainbridge Island and is well positioned to provide insights into this disturbing chapter in America’s history and her brave parents who remain symbols of heroism to the Japanese American Community and other defenders of civil liberties.

Even before the formal engagement of the U.S. into war with Japan, the Review covered the increasing presence of the U.S. Navy, which in 1941 hired the Winslow Marine Railway and Shipbuilding Company to build four steel minesweepers. The Review called it ‘the largest single industrial development in the history of Bainbridge Island.’ The newspaper also disregarded a naval request for voluntary censorship on reports of a damaged British warship that was docked in the Bremerton shipyard in late summer 1941. The Woodwards said that they strongly approved of U.S. support to this effort but felt that the American public should know about it.

The success of the Review during the years of internment was heightened by young Japanese Americans who provided on-site reports of life in the camps.

David Guterson, who provided the foreword to this book, was the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Snow Falling on Cedars, a novel that had its roots in the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the Puget Sound area. The character of the editor in his book was patterned after Walt Woodward and, at Walt’s funeral in 2001, Guterson said that after 60 years, Walt “is still inspiring us all to be as decent and good and fair as we can be.”

In Defense of Our Neighbors is a very moving account of a beacon of hope during a very shameful time in our history. It is enriched by many pictures of Japanese Americans during their internment, and the Woodwards as they worked to bring their story to light.

 

Audrey Eisman spent several years working for ABFFE and the American Booksellers Association.  During that time, she helped to organize Banned Books Week, the ABFFE silent auctions, and other ABFFE events.  She also wrote book reviews for ABFFE.  Since then, she has been a fundraiser for various non-profit organizations, is working on a book of her own, and serves as our free-lance book reviewer.
 

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