(by Student #10 AMH 2010 1115)
Ayako Kanda. She was a female criminal. I chose this
casefile because female criminals are rare, and at that a minority female
criminal. To begin my research, I wasn’t sure what to except and had an open
mind to explore Ayako’s life and anything I could find. I dove into my research
with basic questions like,” What did she do?” and, “Did she deserve her
conviction sentence”.
To start, I called San Quentin’s prison in California to
see if they could give me information on a past inmate. They led to me to their
inmate database. I went on California’s inmate database to see her initial case
file. Her criminal case file shared a lot with me on its own. She was received
at this prison on October 1, 1932. The name they have listed in San Quentin’s
prison was Mrs. Ayako Kanda which gave me the idea that she was married. Her
occupation listed was also “Housewife”. This made my curiosity grew to an even
bigger concept than just her but also her husband. I couldn’t find much on her
husband until I found one article, from “San
Quentin News”, stating that she in fact killed her Politian husband.
She received a first-degree murder charges for her actions and a life sentence.
I pulled the articles to the side and wanted to find out about her past before researching
her means behind this impulse kill. I went onto Ancestory.com and simply
searched her first and last name to see if anything would come up. Following up
my search to find more into her Japanese descent, I discovered her father’s
name was Manabu Kanda and brought Ayako over in the early 1900’s. By looking at
the transcripts of crew ships and immigration ships, my theory is that her
father brought her over originally from Hawaii which explains the Hawaiian last
name but her nationality in being Japanese.
During this time, 1930’s, the Great Depression was just
beginning. With her husband being a Politian her motive behind the attack is
still unknown to me but raises possible curiosities as to why. Possibly she was
frustrated with the horrible economy and her husband lacked to improve it?
Maybe she didn’t agree with her husband’s political stances? Or maybe it has
nothing to do with politics and she was being beaten by him?
The death of her husband made her famous. Even though
there’s not too much information to uncover about her I enjoyed discovering her
family history and roots that she grows from.
