Columns

Clara Estelle Breed (1906-1994)

Do you assume much doesn’t go on in the lives of library staffers beyond the spectacles and reading all those books? Well, meet Miss Breed, a professional librarian who took chances, risked her career and income by taking an activist stance during World War II. Does any of this sound familiar in today’s library milieu? It does to me—for several reasons. Read on. 

Clara Breed was the San Diego Public Library’s first Children’s Librarian. She worked in the branch used by the city’s Japanese American children. Within four months of December 7, 1941, San Diego Nikkei were forced to leave their homes, schools, jobs, and public libraries. At the train station Miss Breed distributed self-addressed post cards to “her children.” And she continued her concern by sending them packages of books and other necessities that she purchased as she became aware of their locations in various internment camps. And she wrote about their condition and struggled to get published in so-called library literature. There’s more. 

I learned of this strong woman in October 2007 when I happened to tune into Book-TV. Joanne Oppenheim was relating her experiences writing Dear Miss Breed; True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference to an audience that included many of Miss Breed’s children and their children at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (www.janm.org). 

I’ve described this wonderfully illustrated and written book in the barest terms. One of the subject headings suggested by the U.S. Library of Congress catalogers is JUVENILE LITERATURE, but it should be read for enlightenment and pleasure by everyone. It is listed in the Berkeley Public Library collections’ catalog.