She's the Woman in Charge of All the Men
In the Department of Corrections, Hisami Yoshida is one of the few. But you can call her superintendent.
Hisami Yoshida is no stranger to leadership positions. She is a mother who has raised two daughters and is a former student activist who naturally became a leader of the local Asian Pacific American community in Olympia, Washington.
In September, she also earned a title that puts her in charge of over 400 male inmates as superintendent of Cedar Creek Corrections Center, a minimum-security prison. The new title makes Hisami, a Shin Nisei, not only the first APA woman to head up a prison in the state of Washington, but also one of the few APA female prison superintendents in the United States.
The immensity of the role isn't lost on her.
"Being in such a position of power is empowering especially for an Asian American woman," said Hisami by phone from her Cedar Creek office. "We tend to get seen stereotypically as being in a weaker position."
Her journey to the top did not happen overnight. Hisami started with the Department of Corrections (DOC) 17 years ago as a counselor and had been in several associate positions at both male and female prisons prior to taking the lead at Cedar Creek.
So do men or women tend to respect her authority more?
"Eventually they both do," said Hisami.
Not a Stereotypical Anything
"It usually takes people some time to get used to especially being female and being Asian American," said Hisami about her leadership role. "I don't see that happening as much at work with white men or black men."
As a little girl growing up in a Central California town near Lompoc, Hisami was not dreaming of a career in corrections. Not many girls aspire to become head of a prison, but they should, she said.
Hisami, who came to the U.S. from Tokyo when she was five, had eclectic role models growing up. Isadora Duncan danced on a pedestal next to Mahatma Gandhi, who was "enthralling" for a young adult in the 1960s involved in civil rights and the anti-war movement.
She moved to Washington in 1971 to study multicultural arts at Evergreen State College in Olympia. As a student, she noticed a need for English as a Second Language classes and started the movement. She along with the university's Third World Coalition also discovered that only about 1 percent of minority students were using counseling services on campus, so Hisami decided to do something about that too.
Her foray into the field of corrections happened by chance. She saw a sign - literally. Hisami had been working several contract jobs out of college and craved something steadier, so she took some administrative jobs with the state.
"I was bored, so bored."
Until one day Hisami saw a sign advertising a job opportunity with the Department of Corrections counseling inmates - she thought it was time for a career change.
Boh Taylor, Hisami's youngest daughter, remembers the day her mother said she got the DOC job. At first, criminal justice just didn't seem like a career that her family thought Hisami would be interested in.
"She was my mom! You see a different side of her," said Taylor, 34. But the more she learned about the system, the more it made sense.
"It's her passion."
But it didn't stop her family from worrying at first.
"I was curious what a prison counselor to be," said her husband Richard Sinclair. They met in 1974 through a mutual friend when Hisami was a devoted mother to Boh and her older daughter, Burgandy Kahout, now 37.
"I think when I first met her, she was baking pies," said Sinclair. Back then, he never imagined the avid cook and gardener he fell in love with would be the superintendent of a men's prison, but then again he's not surprised.
"She is not a stereotypical anything."
Growing with Cedar Creek
Hisami's job is hardly a normal nine-to-five slog. She's had a few minor brushes with danger over the years, but nothing she rushes home to tell her family about. In fact, she doesn't talk about her work with her family mostly because it involves a language all of its own.
"It becomes arcane, almost cultish!" she said.
She had to learn what a "shank" (a homemade knife) and "the hole" (solitary confinement) meant. And a "snitch jacket," isn't the latest fashion statement.
Hisami was the associate superintendent of a much larger men's prison at McNeil Island, when the position at Cedar Creek opened up. And compared to many other correctional facilities, Cedar Creek is an environmental haven.
The Littlerock minimum security working facility is situated inside a 38-acre forest that inmates help protect. When a fire is sparked, trained inmates suit up and help put the fire out.
"I don't think people understand that firefighting is not funded very well. When your house catches on fire, local firefighters come put it out," said Hisami, who added that funding is limited for forest firefighters.
Cedar Creek inmates also plant trees, build swing sets, bridges and fences. Cedar Creek has its own worm farm for composting and beehives, which they use to make hand lotion and lip balm. In the future, Hisami wants to develop a program to sell the products for a nominal fee and donate the proceeds to charity.
"Our population is 410 and every person is working and or going to school. Twenty five percent or more are doing both."
And Cedar Creek is growing under Hisami's guidance. A $3.8 million expansion project is slated for completion at the end of 2008.
"Hisami has played key roles in a lot of different aspects of the department," said Dick Morgan, prison administrator for Western Washington. "Cedar Creek plays an important role in our overall re-entry initiative and we're in the process of increasing its capacity. Hisami's experiences, skills and knowledge were a natural fit for the future of Cedar Creek."
Community Leader
Growing up as a minority in the 1950s "with all of the anti-Japanese movies," Hisami knows what it is like to be ostracized - on the playground she was always chosen to be the enemy.
"It was strange being the person who was always being killed!" she said with a laugh. She does not want to repeat the same kind of abuse on the inmates. "Sometimes you do it unconsciously, and you catch yourself, but I try as much as possible not to abuse my power. That's what attracted me to this business: how do you as a system have control over human beings without stepping over the line?
"It's also the ability to model this job for younger Asian women and to let them know that it is rewarding work. It's the kind of work where you can make a difference in someone's life and by extension, you can make a difference in their families and in the community."
It's important work, especially since more APAs are coming into the prison system on both sides of the law. On the inside, APA inmates face unique challenges, especially with language barriers. In America, we use prisons as a legally sanctioned apartheid - a way of punishing people of color through our criminal justice system, she said.
"We have to start that national conversation: is that really our intent?"
Outside of Cedar Creek, Hisami is also a former PNW district governor and current president of the Olympia JACL.
For Hisami, it is all about creating a sense of community and working to turn people's lives around.
"By extension you eliminate the potential for harm in the community.... That's a tremendous cause."
And Hisami has shown that the cause can be lead by a woman.
"Absolutely. I think we're better at it."
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