REVIEW BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
Friday,February 6, 2015 | Vol. 90, No. 6 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
KRL to launch online access to Bainbridge Review’s wartime papers
INSIDE: Double OT thriller: Sports A10
FEB. 10 SPECIAL ELECTION
BY SERAINE PAGE
Bainbridge Island Review
Walt and Milly Woodward’s efforts to document life in America’s concentration camps will reach a new audience next week. It’s a dark part of history that local historians and fact checkers never want us to forget. On Saturday, Feb. 14, the Kitsap Regional Library will launch online access to the contents of the Bainbridge Review newspaper published from 1941 through 1946. It will be the first time that these historic editions will be readily available to students, historians or anyone else interested in reading them. The project has been three years in the works. “Up until now, this historic local reporting only existed on microfilm,” said Rebecca Judd, manager of the Kitsap Regional Library’s Bainbridge location. “We had an opportunity to do a small-scale digitization project that has local, regional, and national significance.” The editions were digitized from microfilm records, and the new version will allow readers to see each page of the paper during those years. A keyword search will be available on text of all stories, photo captions and advertising that were published. The historical significance of the Review’s reporting lies in the articles published following the attack on Pearl Harbor. More than 200 Bainbridge islanders were the first of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps. Some of the families had been on the island since the 1880s. Walt and Milly Woodward, owners of the newspaper, vigorously opposed the internment and published news from the island internees while they were in the camps. According to KRL Library Director Jill Jean, an estimated 1,500 hours of work was spent on the project by more than 50 volunteers. Library staff also contributed to helping with the project. “KRL is happy to donate staff resources to coordinate this proj-
Image courtesy of Anson Brooks
An aerial view of the Sakai property shows the 2.2-acre lake and surrounding grounds.
Park bond opponents hammer away on tax issue BY BRIAN KELLY
Bainbridge Island Review
Photo courtesy of the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum
Walt and Milly Woodward, former publishers of the Bainbridge Review, and one of their wartime editions, right. ect,” Jean said. “This supports our mission. In this case, we want to be part of making an important part of our own history accessible to students and historians around the world.” A new $15,000 microfilm scanner was purchased for the project with funds raised by the Kitsap Regional Foundation. The scanner will be available for the public to use as a microfilm reader/printer. Over the last six months, volunteers took individual issues of the paper and compared the microfilm to the text files to correct errors from the scanning. In the process, Judd learned interesting tidbits from her volunteers who proofed the pages. “We have shared funny stories, for instance, there is a bear that appears in no less than 20 articles over a span of three years — and
poignant ones as well,” she said. As the volunteer hours reflect, the project took quite some time. Unfortunately, documents had to be scanned twice, according to Judd, but a fellow staffer was able to help out during a critical time. While the work might have been tedious, volunteer Charles Browne said he enjoyed spending time watching the project come to life and learned a bit, too. “My knowledge and understanding of what was happening on Bainbridge Island definitely expanded,” he said. “It struck me how often, in early 1941 issues, Japanese-Americans were mentioned in so many aspects of the community — educational, cultural, social, agricultural, etc.
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Taxes and parks. Opponents of the upcoming $5.9 million bond measure to buy nearly 23 acres of land along Madison Avenue to create a central park for Bainbridge Island say they have enough of both already. Those fighting the park land purchase are mostly leaning on the issue of taxes, however, as they try to convince voters to reject the Feb. 10 ballot proposal. Critics of the proposal have complained that the purchase will result in an increase in the tax bills of Bainbridge property owners while also removing nearly two dozen acres of land from the tax rolls. “I’m a taxpayer, I’m a senior and really love living here, but I’m seeing taxes all over the place,” Jean Capps, chairwoman of the Committee Against the Measure, told the Review. Capps said the Sakai property that’s eyed for purchase is overpriced, and noted the assessed value was well below the $5.9 million that the park district would spend to acquire the land. If people want the land as a park, they should help the Bainbridge Island Land Trust raise money for the purchase, she said. “That doesn’t burden us as taxpayers for something that I feel is nonessential. We need to take care of our roads and our schools,” she said. The island also has plenty of
Two ballot items support BIFD improvements BY BRIAN KELLY
Bainbridge Island Review
Bainbridge voters will decide next week if property taxes should be increased to pay for more firefighters and EMTs on the island. Residents will also decide if it’s time to rebuild and renovate Bainbridge’s cramped and worn-out fire halls. Proposition 1 is ballot measure that would increase the property tax levy for the Bainbridge Island Fire Department by 9 cents (per $1,000 of assessed value). TURN TO BIFD | A4
parks, and creating a new one on the Sakai property would mean the removal of nearly 23 acres from the tax rolls, Capps added. Other critics of the park proposal have also raised the issue of the impact of removing the land from the property tax rolls, and Capps estimates the property would bring in $400,000 in taxes every year if the land were developed. Supporters of the parks bond dispute those claims, however. TURN TO PARK | A4