By KEITH VANCE
Wendy Tokuda has spent more than 30 years in front of a camera. She started her career in broadcast journalism in 1974 at the Seattle television station KING. Looking back at more than three decades of broadcast journalism Tokuda, 57, said that covering the Japanese Internment Redress Movement of ‘70s and ‘80s and her work with the education of underprivileged teenagers are “the two most meaningful things for me.”
Tokuda is a 3rd generation Japanese American. She was born in Seattle in 1950 and graduated from Cleveland High School in 1968. After high school Tokuda spent a year at Whitman College in Walla Walla before transferring to the University of Washington. Like many college students, she struggled to find a degree that fit her. “I changed my major about six times,” Tokuda said. In her senior year she settled on political science.
After graduating, Tokuda considered a career in law, but after working for a law firm for about a year, she decided it wasn’t for her.
Tokuda left the legal profession behind her and moved to Japan. She lived with a Japanese family for a year. While she lived in Japan Tokuda taught English to employees of a company, studied the Japanese language and traveled. She said: “It was a great experience.”
When Tokuda returned to Seattle she decided to pursue a career in broadcast journalism. What interested her in broadcast journalism was how excited her father would get when he saw an Asian American on television. According to Tokuda, at the time, the only Asian American doing the news in Seattle was Barbara Tanabe on KOMO. Whenever Tokuda’s father saw Tanabe on television, he would shout, “’Barbara’s on TV!’”
Two years after graduating from the UW, a friend arranged for an opportunity for Tokuda to shadow Tanabe for a day at KOMO.
“She let me watch and do a story,” said Tokuda.
After that day her career search was over, she would pursue a career in broadcast journalism. All she needed now was a job. That same year she was hired at KING as a secretary in public affairs. She wanted be a reporter but she didn’t have any experience and she graduated with a degree in political science not journalism.
While she worked in public affairs she kept inquiring about openings for a reporter. “I got turned down, I don’t know how many times,” Tokuda said. She persevered and in 1976 she was promoted to consumer reporter.
“I will never forget how excited my parents were,” said Tokuda.
The first story she covered was a pothole. “There we were,” laughs Tokuda, “on the UW bike trail.” A Seattle woman had been complaining about a pothole on the bike trail, and with the help of consumer reporter Wendy Tokuda, it was repaired.
She picked up broadcast journalism quickly. Within a year she was anchoring the weekend news. When she started anchoring at KING, Lou Dobbs, now on CNN, worked there too. Tokuda said he “was the first anchor I ever worked with.”
When she was 27, the budding journalist was offered a job at KPIX in San Francisco, to replace the Asian American reporter Kaity Tong who was moving to Sacramento. “This is when the term ‘token’ came about,” said Tokuda. Every station, she said, had to have one Asian American. Tokuda took the job; some people at the station referred to her as the “new Kaity Yong.” Before she turned 30, Tokuda was anchoring the evening news at six and 11.
Tokuda has spent most of her career working in the Bay Area, leaving only once in 1992 to live in Los Angeles. While working in Los Angeles she started a news segment called “Beat The Odds.” The idea was to raise money by profiling low-income high school students who have the grades but not the means to attend college. Tokuda said the initial response was shocking. In the first year, she said they raised about $60,000.
“We’re just making this up,” Tokuda said. “I’m just a reporter doing these stories.”
The program really took off when she moved back to the Bay Area in 1997. The name was changed to “Students Rising Above” and it has been awarded a Peabody and a national Emmy.
In 1998, “Students Rising Above” became a non-profit organization. According to the Web site, the program has raised nearly $5 million and has sent almost 150 kids to college who might never have gone.
“Our first passed the Bar,” said Tokuda. “We have two in law school.”
Her work with “Students Rising Above,” she said is “the first time I’ve been able to do stories where the work has changed lives.”
Tokuda is also proud of her reporting on the Japanese Internment during World War II and in particular the Redress Movement that gained momentum in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Her parents and grandparents were sent to internment camps during World War II. Tokuda’s mother and father met at the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho where her brother was born.
Tokuda said that when the war was over, and the camps were emptied, people just wanted to get back to living their lives. “No one talked about it.”
But that changed in the ‘70s. In 1976, when Tokuda was working at KING, President Gerald Ford proclaimed that the internment of Japanese Americans was “wrong.”
“I was one of the first reporters,” she said “to report on” the Redress Movement.
“I would get phenomenal hate mail,” said Tokuda. “It was huge!”
In addition to her career in broadcast journalism, Tokuda has also written a couple of books. She is the co-author of two children’s books – one of which is still in print. It’s called Humphrey the Lost Whale. Humphrey was an actual whale that in 1985 had gotten lost in the San Francisco Bay and wound up wandering the Sacramento River.
Tokuda said she remembers thinking, if this whale makes it, this will make a great children’s book. Humphrey did make it, and oddly enough, he got lost again in the San Francisco Bay five years later. He made his way back to sea that time as well.
Last year Tokuda returned to KPIX, where she started her career in San Francisco. She anchors the 5 p.m. news Monday through Friday and she continues her work with “Students Rising Above.”
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