Editor’s Introduction (From the Humboldt Historian)

Ambassador Katsuji Debuchi is at left. Photos via the Humboldt Historian.

At the beginning of May 1930, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Katsuji Debuchi, together with his wife, set out on their first tour of our country since Debuchi had taken up his post in Washington, D.C. two years previously. The couple traveled by train from D.C. to Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, they would continue north up the coast to Vancouver, B.C., with stops in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, to visit the significant Japanese communities in each of these cities.

Of course, good will celebrations were planned for them in each city. In Los Angeles on May 6, 7, and 8, the ambassador and his wife were feted by the Chamber of Commerce and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, and while in San Francisco on May 11 through 14, Debuchi officiated at ground breaking ceremonies for the Japanese YMCA building to be erected on Buchanan Street, for which he had assisted in raising part of the funds contributed by Japan. The couple had made other stops on their way up the coast, too: they played golf at Pebble Beach and visited Stanford University. After leaving San Francisco on May 14, the Debuchis were no doubt looking forward to additional sightseeing stops as they drove through the redwoods. According to writings left by William McClure of Redway, however, the welcomes that the couple had enjoyed thus far did not await them when they entered Humboldt County. They encountered something else entirely.

Here is William McClure’s account, introduced by his daughter, Ruth McClure.

My Father, William McClure, and the Japanese Ambassador

A treasure left by my father, William McClure, are his writings about his memories of Humboldt County during his early years. William was an infant when his family came to Eureka in 1911. His father operated an optical shop at 417 G Street, but the family spent their summers at their family cabin in Redway. After graduating from Eureka High in 1928, William attended Stanford University, graduating in engineering. He worked for one year on the Sweasey Dam and pipeline, then was recruited to the airline industry by United Operations, and was ultimately appointed Station Manager at Bellingham, Washington just after December 7, 1941. In 1951 he brought his family back to Humboldt, to the family home in Redway, the place of his strongest childhood memories. Both he and his wife, Elenor, loved music and they spent the next decade and a half teaching music to children in logging families.

In his later years my father wrote his memoirs. In one of these writings, he recounts an incident in Garberville involving the Japanese ambassador as he was traveling through Humboldt County in 1930.

The following is my father’s personal account of what he witnessed. He was twenty years old. It was something which troubled him all his life, and he wrote this narrative to the Redwood Record newspaper in 1982, asking for their help in finding an article he’d seen in a magazine following WWII, which stated that the Garberville incident he had witnessed as a young man was in fact one of the reasons recorded by the Japanese government for wanting to declare war on the United States.

The Narrative of William McClure, Written in 1982

The following is a story I have been going to do for about thirty-five years, about an incident that happened in Garberville.

As far as I know, no one else in the Garberville area saw the incident, and I was just standing by watching. It will be all from my memory going back about 56 years.

About the summer of 1926 — it could have been 1925 or 1927 [May 1930] — I had walked from my home in Redway to Garberville. I had gone up to the bridge and sat down to loaf. No one else was around.

Suddenly about six or seven cars came up from the direction of Eureka — the bridge was on the old highway from Eureka to San Francisco. They parked their cars to block any traffic. The men got out — about fifteen to twenty of them. They were armed with clubs, ball bats, axe handles, and guns. They stood around on the south side of the bridge waiting.

After awhile about five or six cars led by a big limousine of those days, which was a Pierce-Arrow, came from the south toward the bridge. The Eureka men stopped the northbound cars in no uncertain terms — just like a lumber camp brawl of those days. The occupants were forced to get out.

One was the Japanese Ambassador to Washington, D.C.

Now, as far as the Eureka delegation was concerned an ambassador was not any better than any other person from the Orient. Using the racial slurs of the time, they ordered him to go back. Now in this delegation with the ambassador were some American officials — I believe from the State Department in Washington. They took over the argument with the Humboldt bunch.

They gave an argument the gist of which was something like this: Washington would raise hell about this.

The end result was that the ambassador and delegation would be allowed to proceed to Portland only if the ambassador and other Japanese would not get out of the cars to eat or even to use a bathroom until they got to Del Norte County, which was at least ten to twelve hours away in those days. In fact, it took at least four and a half hours to get to Eureka. What happened en route, I do not know. I am sure no one else in Garberville saw this. I was the only one.

During the war years and for about five years afterward, I was station manager for United Airlines in Bellingham, Washington. One day a man came into my office and put a magazine in front of me and opened it to a page that was titled something like Six Reasons Why Japan Declared War on the United States. He asked, “Aren’t you from Garberville?”

Later in the day when I was not busy I read the article. When General MacArthur’s occupation men took over some or all of the files of the various government agencies they found a paper or document listing the reasons why Japan declared war on the United States. There were six or seven of them, some of which I have forgotten. But I do remember some:

• USA was spreading economic influence into Japanese area.
• USA was spreading cultural influence into Japanese area.
• USA was spreading military might into Japanese areas including Pearl Harbor, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, Philippines, etc.
• An incident in Garberville, California — gave date — where the Japanese Ambassador and other Japanese officials had been stopped and insulted by a bunch of American hoodlums.

As I read the last reason my memory flashed back to the scene I had witnessed. The man picked up his magazine later that day. I was going to buy a copy in town. When I got around to it a few days later, the issue had been sold out.

— William McClure, 1982

A Daughter’s Unfinished Quest

Further writings from my father indicate that years later he searched as well as he was able for the magazine with the article mentioning the Garberville incident as a reason Japan declared war on the United States, but he was not able to find it. He writes:

William McClure’s Eureka High School graduation picture, 1928.

I hope some person interested can pursue this matter by researching magazines in the library system. I do not believe the item was in the Saturday Evening Post, but it is in some magazine. Someone get the proof. I hope this is added to the historical facts of Humboldt County.

I have searched for this article. Visiting several university libraries, I have looked in Liberty Magazine, Life, Time, Newsweek and the Saturday Evening Post. I have contacted the MacArthur Memorial Research Center, Hoover Institute, Japanese American Citizen League, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, the National Archives in D.C., the California State Library and have looked in several books about WWII, including those written by Gordon Prange, an authority on the war in the Pacific. I also have been unable to locate the article.

I did find references in two books to the incident my father witnessed in Garberville, in which the Japanese ambassador and his entourage were threatened by locals. The books are: California, Where the Twain Did Meet, by Anne Loftus, Macmillan, 1973, pages 177-178; and The Seven States of California, A Natural and Human History, by Philip L. Fradkin, University of California Press, 1995, page 184.

I would love to be able to locate the magazine article my father saw. This find would be a positive element to add to my father’s writings, and would be the final chapter of this story.

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The story above is from the Winter 2013 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

Having heard, perhaps erroneously, of a plan to hold a pro-Palestinian event in Arcata on October 7, I am writing to urge the organizers not to do so unless they intend the event to be an expression of sorrow for all the lives destroyed by intolerance in the region through the decades. Anything else would be a grave disservice to the Palestinian people.

Many of us agree that Palestinians of all kinds and Arabs more generally have been and continue to be the targets of racial-ethnic bias by European, U.S., and Israeli power-mongers and bigots. We also see the moral failures of our own government. However, those who designate themselves pro-Palestinian lose the moral high ground and trample on the bedrock idea of reverence of life when they limit those they grieve for to one “side.”

Do not confuse Hamas with the Palestinian people. That’s what the anti-Arab bigots do. Do not cold-heartedly deny the suffering of those killed or taken hostage on that day last year. That stance is no different from the worst pro-Netanyahu thugs. Please be a beacon of honorable action based on a reverence for all lives and, in that way, attract other good-hearted people to your cause.

Rev. Molly Cate
Unity of the Redwoods

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Reader, you can expect to see a lot fewer mugshots in the news and on social media for the foreseeable future thanks to a recent ruling in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. 

Both the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and the Eureka Police Department confirmed to the Outpost that they have stopped regularly publishing pre-trial booking photos of arrestees in light of the court’s ruling in the case of Houston v. Maricopa County. (You can read the ruling in full via the link at the bottom of this post.)

That case, which originated in Arizona, concerned a man name Brian Houston, who was arrested by Phoenix police in January 2022, charged with assault and had his booking photo published on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office “Mugshot Lookup” website.  

That sheriff’s office regularly posted such arrestee photographs on its website, accompanied by identifying information including each person’s full name, birthdate and an entry under “Crime Type” describing the category of their alleged offense. Pushing a “More Details” button would have revealed Houston’s sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color and the specific charges on which he was arrested.

The “Mugshot Lookup” website showed pictures and personal information of recent arrestees only for three days, after which the posts were removed. But, of course, the court observed, three days is plenty of time for that info to be scraped and redistributed by anyone with an internet connection.

Houston, whose charges were dropped shortly after his arrest, sued the county, alleging that his post on the “Mugshot Lookup”” page caused him to suffer “emotional distress and public humiliation,” “permanently damaged” his “business and personal reputation” and “placed [him] at risk of identity theft, fraud and extortion.”

In its defense, Maricopa County argued that its “Mugshot Lookup” posts promote transparency in the criminal legal system. The court’s three-judge panel gave that argument the side-eye, noting that the “Mugshot Lookup” page was pretty one-sided in its commitment to transparency. For example, Houston’s entry didn’t “contain the names of the arresting officers, the division of the County police department responsible for the arrest, whether charges were pursued or dismissed, or the jail in which Houston was held.”

“The ‘Mugshot Lookup’ posts thus shed light only on arrestees, not on the operations of the Sheriff’s Office or County law enforcement,” the decision notes.

As for the county’s defense of “transparency,” the court opined, “that word is not a talisman that dispels the specter of government punishment.”

The court allowed that mugshots can sometimes serve public safety and “system transparency” functions — for example, when the F.B.I. issues photos of post-conviction sexual offenders to inform the public or when police departments distribute fliers with the face of an active shoplifter to local businesses. But the court said Maricopa County failed to provide clarity and support for its “transparency” argument.

“In short,” the ruling says, “even if transparency is a legitimate government interest, no rational relationship exists between that goal and the County’s gratuitous inclusion of at least some of Houston’s personal information in its public ‘Mugshot Lookup’ post,” such as his birthdate and weight.

Seems plausible that the intent of such posts is punitive, the court says.

“The result is public exposure and humiliation of pretrial detainees, who are presumed innocent and may not be punished before an adjudication of guilt.”

As such, the court found the publishing of mugshots in this way unconstitutional.

Laura Montagna, public information officer with the Eureka Police Department, told the Outpost via email that EPD is no longer posting pre-trial mugshots on social media, but some booking photos may be distributed upon request.

Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Meg Ruiz said via email that, in light of this recent decision, “the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office will not be publishing or releasing booking photos unless there is a public safety need for us to do so.”

Anyone seeking a booking photo must submit a California Public Information Act request, she added, “and there is no guarantee that it will be granted as it will need to meet a public safety need criteria in order to be released.”

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DOCUMENT: Houston v. County of Maricopa 

Press release from the Arcata Fire District:

On September 27, 2024, at 11 a.m., units from Arcata Fire District, Cal Fire Trinidad, Westhaven Fire, Blue Lake Fire, Fieldbrook Fire and Samoa Fire were dispatched to a vegetation fire on U.S. Highway 101 near Murray Road in McKinleyville.

Arcata Fire units arrived on scene to find about a quarter of an acre of grass and brush burning along the highway with a moderate rate of spread. The Arcata Fire units attacked the fire and had the forward spread stopped within ten minutes. At that point the additional responding units were canceled, with the exception of Samoa Fire who handled additional calls in the Arcata Fire District while the Arcata Fire units were mopping up the fire scene. Arcata Fire personnel conducted an origin and cause investigation but were unable to determine what the cause of the fire was. Due to the proximity to the highway, investigators could not rule out dragging chains or discarded smoking materials.

Arcata Fire District would like to remind everyone that vegetation is very dry this time of year and is easily ignited, even near the coast. Please ensure your vehicles are in good running order and not dragging parts or chains. Also, never discard smoking materials from a moving vehicle.

If you have any questions, please contact the Arcata Fire District at 707-825-2000.

PREVIOUSLY:

• BREAKING: Eureka Police Responding to Fatal Traffic Collision on West Harris Street

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Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On September 27, 2024 at approximately 7:58 a.m., Eureka Police Officers were dispatched to the vicinity of W. Harris and Elizabeth Streets in Eureka on a report of a vehicle versus pedestrian traffic collision. Humboldt Bay Fire (HBF) personnel were also dispatched and arrived on scene first, locating an unresponsive male subject in the roadway. HBF personnel initiated immediate life saving efforts and were supported by City Ambulance. Despite their efforts, the pedestrian died at the scene. A member of EPD’s Traffic Investigations Team, along with Detectives from the Criminal Investigations Unit and a Forensic Analyst, responded to the scene and took over the investigation.

The initial investigation has revealed that a male was crossing W. Harris Street on his mobility scooter outside of a crosswalk and away from the intersection of W. Harris and Elizabeth Streets. Vehicle 1 was traveling east in the left lane of W. Harris Street and struck the scooter in the roadway. The male on the scooter was knocked from the scooter and into the roadway. Vehicle 2, which entered W. Harris Street from Prospect Avenue, failed to see the male lying in the roadway and struck him with their vehicle. Both vehicles and all involved parties, including witnesses, were located on scene and are cooperating with the investigation. There were no injuries reported to the occupants of the vehicles.

The name of the victim will be released following the notification of the next of kin. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to be a factor in this collision. Speed also does not appear to be factor, as witnesses described the vehicles traveling at speeds that were not excessive. The rising sun, which created visibility issues, does appear to have been a factor in this collision.

This is an ongoing and active investigation and EPD is asking anyone that may have information about this collision to contact Field Training Officer Mark Sheldon at 707-441-4300.

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At a meeting held Thursday evening in Eureka’s Wharfinger Building, the board of directors of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) opted not to accept an allocation of nuclear energy into the mix of power sources it purchases on behalf of local ratepayers.

Through PG&E’s California’s Community Choice Aggregation program, RCEA functions as the default provider of electricity generation for the vast majority of consumers in Humboldt County. Since 2017, the agency has been purchasing electricity from a variety of mostly green, renewable sources and then re-selling that energy to its roughly 63,000 local customers at slightly lower rates than PG&E customers would otherwise pay.

The dilemma the board faced last night was this: Should RCEA accept a short-term allocation of the power being generated by the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant — power that all electricity users in California are already paying for — or should it refuse on principle given environmental concerns such as the problem of safe nuclear waste storage?

At last month’s RCEA meeting, the board heard from Jaclyn Harr, an account director with nonprofit portfolio management company The Energy Authority. She reminded board members that the two nuclear reactors at the Diablo Canyon plant, owned and operated by PG&E, were scheduled to be retired from service by the end of 2025. But 2022 legislation will allow the reactors to keep running through at least October of 2030.

While California is working to transition to renewable energy, it’s had trouble getting clean alternatives to carbon dioxide-spewing sources online as quickly as anticipated. And so, in 2022, at the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state legislature approved a $1.4 billion loan to PG&E to help maintain the reliability of California’s power grid by keeping Diablo Canyon running. It currently supplies 10 percent of the energy in the state grid.

As part of the deal to keep the nuclear plant operating, all jurisdictional entities under the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) are paying a share of the costs, and they all have the option of receiving an allocation of the power generated by Diablo Canyon. This power would be “free” in the sense that all ratepayers across the state, including us here in Humboldt County, are already paying for it, whether we like it or not. 

But RCEA has a longstanding provision in its risk policy prohibiting the inclusion of nuclear power in its portfolio, except for short-term purposes. Members of RCEA’s board of directors, including Eureka City Councilmember Scott Bauer, voiced serious concerns last month about the long-term consequences of storing nuclear waste, including isotopes such as uranium-235, which remains radioactive for hundreds of millions of years.

At the same time, however, RCEA is working to reach a 100 percent carbon-free energy supply in the coming years, and the nuclear power coming from Diablo Canyon technically meets that criteria.

And then there are financial concerns. The cost of emissions-free energy resources have been increasing, especially when looking for long-term deals, and while RCEA has some financial reserves, is it fiscally prudent to turn down “free” electricity? Accepting the allocation would save the agency about half a million dollars, which represent about 5.4 percent of RCEA’s net losses for 2025.

Specific allocation amounts have not yet been published, but according to a staff report, RCEA’s allocation would likely only meet about 2% of 2025 power portfolio. 

“So it’s a modest savings, either of money or a modest savings in [greenhouse gas] emissions,” RCEA Power Resources Director Richard Engel told the board. He said staff knows of two other community choice aggregators in California that have accepted the allocation.

During the public comment period, a number of people urged the board to turn down the allocation.

“I think it would be reprehensible of RCEA to accept nuclear power into the mix of quote-unquote, clean energy that we accept,” said Arcata resident Kathleen Marshall, adding that it’s not carbon neutral to build a nuclear power plant or mine for uranium. She also voiced concerns about the potential for disaster if an earthquake were to strike either near Diablo Canyon or here in Humboldt, where spent nuclear fuel rods are stored along Humboldt Bay.

Fellow Arcata resident Dave Ryan called nuclear power “a really messy source of energy,” and with more community solar power projects coming online, including a recently approved 2.8 megawatt array along Hwy. 36, Ryan urged the board to “exercise some integrity” and “send a message that you’re not going to be an agency to support this.”

Cal Poly Humboldt grad student Alexander Brown spoke about the long-term ramifications of storing spent nuclear fuel, saying, “I don’t think, as a nation, we know what we’re doing with it.”

Michael Welch, reading a statement on behalf of the environmental organization Redwood Alliance, also urged RCEA to reject the allocation, arguing that accepting it would send the wrong message.

“Any amount of saying ‘yes’ to nuclear energy only bolsters the efforts of the nuclear industry,” he said.

When the matter came back to the board, Bauer reiterated the concerns he expressed at last month’s meeting.

“We’re always looking at how to run efficiently,” he said. But he also argued that RCEA has a responsibility to the community, to the world and to the “800 generations, at least” that could be forced to coexist with radioactive waste. “[O]ur responsibility should be to not accept it,” he said.

But fellow Director Skip Jorgensen, who represents the City of Ferndale on the board, expressed concerns about RCEA’s dwindling financial reserves and said he’d favor a one-year agreement to accept the allocation “with my nose pinched.”

Director Elise Scafani, representing the City of Blue Lake, asked whether accepting the allocation would be more palatable if RCEA dedicated the half-million-dollars in savings to the development of local, renewable energy. 

“We know that this energy is being generated … whether we accept it or not,” she said. “What can we do with that reality to make our overall picture going forward improved?”

Humboldt County Supervisor Mike Wilson, an alternate on the board sitting in on behalf of fellow Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, spoke at length about various dimensions of this quandary, touching on such matters as the importance of fiscal responsibility and the scientific reality that, despite the creative dynamics of community choice aggregation, the vast majority of electricity actually being used here in Humboldt County comes via the fracked natural gas that powers PG&E’s Humboldt Bay Generating Station just south of Eureka.

As such, Wilson said, RCEA’s choice really comes down to the importance and efficacy of sending a message. “I don’t know if we’re going to lead the charge or just be sort of standing out in the cold” if the agency takes a stand and rejects its allocation, he said.

He also noted that Arroyo was leaning toward receiving the allocation, though he said his own heart wants to do away with nuclear power generation.

Director Jason Ramos, representing the Blue Lake Rancheria, said he agreed with Bauer and thinks accepting nuclear power would dilute RCEA’s mission. “Doesn’t seem worth it to me,” he said. [DISCLOSURE: The Blue Lake Rancheria is a minority owner of the Outpost’s parent company, Lost Coast Communications, Inc.]

Bauer made a motion to not accept the allotment. Alternate Director Michelle Fuller, who was sitting in for Board Chair Sheri Woo, offered to second the motion but she was reminded that as the representative for the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, she’s a non-voting member.

Bauer’s motion never did receive a second. 

Scafani then made a motion to accept the allocation for calendar year 2025 and dedicate the savings to developing local, renewable energy. Jorgensen seconded the motion after asking for inclusion of a provision to revisit the decision early next year. He also quipped, “Getting clean is a dirty business.”

Several board members were absent, and when it came time to decide, the motion received only two “yes” votes — Scafani’s and Jorgensen’s. The absent board members count as “no” votes in RCEA’s proceedings, In order for the motion to pass, a staff member explained that every voting member present would need to vote “yes,” and thus the motion failed.

A letter will be sent to the CPUC explaining the agency’s decision, and staff will come back at a future meeting to ask the board whether it would like to revise its current nuclear policy.

Promotional video for the FLIR M300 series.

Disposable cameras are 12 bucks apiece, an off-brand Polaroid costs about $75, and a cheap DSLR goes for $500 — but none of those can see people in the dark, stay still while going over waves or make objects 30 times larger. The $30,000 camera the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is about to purchase can do all of that and more.

The FLIR M364C thermal camera can see heat even in foggy conditions, and the Sheriff’s Office will buy one with funding from the state’s Boating Safety & Enforcement Equipment Grant Program, which is run by California State Parks.

The Sheriff’s Office wants it the camera because it will make finding people stuck in the water much easier — a common problem in a place where waterways are often foggy and even small waves can flip a kayak over. 

“The technology of thermal cameras includes detection of invisible heat radiation emitted by objects, regardless of lighting conditions,” Public Information Officer Meghan Ruiz told the Outpost. “With Humboldt County’s adverse weather conditions of heavy rain and fog, a FLIR device helps law enforcement identify issues with increased efficiency.”

About $1.3 million in total grant money from the Boating Safety program was split between various sheriff’s offices around California. 

“Recreational boaters underestimate the power of the water, how cold the water is, and how quickly a minor incident can turn fatal … FLIR cameras allow for situational information that cannot be seen with the naked eye during these adverse conditions and aid deputies with navigation during darkness,” reads a staff report from the sheriff’s office. “Having this equipment helps create a safer community on our waterways and helps partnerships with other agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard.”