The Bainbridge Island Review is a weekly newspaper distributed in Bainbridge Island, Washington. The Review is primarily focused on Bainbridge Island and its surrounding communities.
Ownership history
The Review was owned by Walter Woodward, along with the North Kitsap News, from about 1940 to 1962, when former Albany Democrat-Herald editor David Averill purchased them both. Woodward was to remain as editor of the Review; the News was to be discontinued.[3] Verda Averill sold the Herald and the Review, as well as the Kitsap Advertiser, to Black Press in 1988, which owned seven U.S. papers and 24 Canadian papers at the time.[4]
The Woodwards and Japanese internment
The Woodwards purchased the Review in 1940. Woodward and his wife, Mildred Woodward, reported on the Japanese internment as it transpired, and were among the few who publicly opposed it, as well as the only English-language newspaper on the West Coast to openly criticize it.[5][6][7][8] Woodward and his wife warned about "the danger of a blind, wild hysterical hatred of all persons who can trace ancestry to Japan", the day after the Attack on Pearl Harbor.[9] Bainbridge islanders of Japanese ancestry were the first in the United States to be relocated to internment camps. On Bainbridge Island alone, 227 Japanese civilians were incarcerated without charge.[10] The Woodwards continued advocating for members of the community, and hired several as correspondents.[11] These correspondents reported on camp events for publication in the Review.
^"A1 Revisited: The Seattle Times' coverage of the 1942 removal of 227 Bainbridge residents left a harmful legacy". The Seattle Times. 2022-03-27. Retrieved 2023-09-17. On the other end of the spectrum was the response of Walt and Milly Woodward, the owners and publishers of the Bainbridge Island Review, one of the few publications to stand up to Executive Order 9066 at the time. In addition to editorials opposing incarceration, the paper engaged incarcerated Japanese Americans to write for the paper about the camp experience.