Biography
Wendy Yoshimura is a Japanese-American artist prosecuted for the 1972 Berkeley explosives and weapons case. She was arrested September 18, 1975 and convicted in 1977. Contemporary reporting distinguishes approximately six months in prison, transfer to a Volunteers of America work-furlough halfway house in late December 1979, and actual parole August 25, 1980. These stages do not establish uninterrupted prison confinement from her 1975 arrest. Her own convictions should not be conflated with kidnapping, murder or bank-robbery convictions of other SLA defendants.
Prison, work furlough and actual parole distinguished
The complete January 1980 Pacific Citizen, physical page 3, and August 26, 1980 contemporary AP report, physical page 6, were rendered and visually reviewed. Existing identified portrait retained. The two existing case rows represent the same prosecution; no destructive merge is performed in this plan.
The article expressly reports actual freedom on $25,000 bail after SantaRita prison-farm detention, following JudgeLionelWilson’s reduction from $100,000. It describes restricted family contact, contrasting Hearst’s treatment, and identifies the case as the1972 explosives/material prosecution rather than any newly filed SLA count. Yoshimura’s Manzanar birth is biographical context. The release is established by issue, not an exact gate-discharge day, and proves an interruption before later prison service. Existing corrected later-custody chronology and duplicate-row warning remain intact.
The two-part report describes Judge Martin Pulich’s concurrent one-to-fifteen-year sentence, six contempt counts with a possible additional two-and-a-half years, and a mistrial on another explosives-intent count. Threatened retrial, a possible life maximum and possible sentencing-law reductions are not completed outcomes. The report says bail was set at $50,000 and another $25,000 had to be raised by March 31 or she would return to prison; this is not proof she entered prison on sentencing day. It quotes the denied defense request for credit for three years of childhood confinement at Manzanar. Later prison and work-furlough chronology remains intact.
