Biography
John Diaz was a Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union activist and Communist candidate for supervisor in San Francisco’s North Beach district. A 1934 Western Worker report described him imprisoned on Angel Island facing deportation. A letter dated November 2, 1934 from fellow detainees protested his arrest and demanded his release.
Page 6's family-relief appeal places John Diaz, father of seven children living with their mother in San Francisco, in a federal penitentiary the article locates at Steilacoom Island off Washington. It lists a charge of posing as an American citizen, while asserting he was Hawaiian and therefore American, and attributes the prosecution to Communist and unemployed organizing. It says deportation to Spain would follow his sentence. These are attributed claims; the location wording is retained without assigning an unverified institution, and threatened future deportation is not treated as completed removal. Identity and any relation of this criminal prosecution to his earlier Angel Island detention require further corroboration; no second case is manufactured from the abbreviated account. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n306-NY-dec-20-DW-Q.pdf
Sources and evidence limits
Full legal identity, nationality, exact admission and release dates and final deportation outcome remain unknown. No demographic or citizenship field is inferred.
Historical claims are attributed to the contemporary newspaper. No present-day custody status, demographic classification or precise date is inferred.
The November 3 report identifies the CAWIU organizer and former North Beach supervisor candidate as held at Angel Island facing deportation. A November 2 letter is signed George Williams, Joe Sedanoff, O. Anderson and K. Nielson; signatures alone do not establish separate political-custody histories. PDF page 14 again reports detention, without actual deportation or release.
Daily Worker, December 20, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
