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Hardly “Small Talk”: Discussing Race in the Writing of Hisaye Yamamoto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Matthew M. Briones
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On Saturday, April 13, 1946, an unremarkable headline on page 4 of the Los Angeles Tribune, one of the area's black weeklies, read, “Fontana tragedy was accident, Kenny reports after probe.” Without a credited byline, the article proceeds to deliver the facts of the case: on December 16, 1945, a suspicious fire broke out in the partially built home of O'Day Short, an African American, in the predominantly white suburb of Fontana, fifty miles east of Los Angeles. Mr. Short, his wife, and their two children perished in the fire. Robert W. Kenny, attorney general of California, investigated the incident after “protests of ‘whitewash’ from black organizations and sympathetic white groups,” aided by the San Bernardino County Court. The article reprinted the attorney general's formal statement: “There is no evidence that the fire was of incendiary origin or indicating the identity of any person or persons as the perpetrator of a crime; to the contrary, all evidence adduced supported the conclusion that the fire was accidental.” According to the article, “Kenny's report, besides officially clearing the case of arson, also dismissed the possibility of organized vigilante activity in Fontana with its terse concluding statement, ‘No evidence of such activity has been found.’”

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 29 , October 2005 , pp. 435 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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