San Francisco – Raw sewage overflows since January 2017 at the San Francisco’s main 850 Bryant St. jail are making prisoners sick, according to a class action lawsuit asking for $150,000 or more in damages filed July 30 against the City and County of San Francisco, the Sheriff and other law enforcement personnel.

The raw sewage spill was reported in the District Attorney’s Office in January 2017 but not in the jail.

“Inmates who have come into physical contact with the sewage have developed skin rashes … intestinal problems, lung problems, breathing problems and headaches. Inmates have slipped and fallen on the sewage and slippery floor, injuring themselves and then contracting skin rashes,” according to Bay Area civil rights lawyer Yolanda Huang, who filed the action on behalf of at least seven named inmates.

In addition to the City and County of San Francisco, also named are Sheriff Vicki L. Hennessy, Undersheriff Matthew Freeman, Chief Deputy Sheriff of Custody Operations Paul Miyamoto and other San Francisco Sheriff’s Office officers, deputies and employees.

The prisoners, who are in “A-Block,” are locked inside their cells 24-7 and spend no more than three hours a week outside those cells, which have been hit by regular, frequent and ongoing sewer backups, causing sewage, feces, urine and other bio-hazardous materials to spew out from the toilets. The sewage sometimes just overflows; other times the backup is explosive and sprays.

Raw sewage overflows since January 2017 at the San Francisco’s main 850 Bryant St. jail are making prisoners sick, according to a class action lawsuit asking for $150,000 or more in damages filed July 30 against the City and County of San Francisco, the Sheriff and other law enforcement personnel.

According to Ms. Huang, when sewage backflows out of the toilets, inmates are required to yell “Water!!” and sheriff’s deputies need to unlock a closet and shut off the entire water system for at least A Block. The prisoners claim the water shut-off affects other blocks as well.

Then inmate workers use blankets to sop up the sewage. These inmate workers are not provided with face masks and are usually provided nothing more than gloves.

“Once the wet blankets are removed, the inmates who live in these cells are usually required to clean the floors … Supplies provided inmates are inadequate, do not disinfect and are provided for limited time periods … The floors and furniture inside these cells are never truly disinfected. The foul smell and odors are pervasive. During this entire period, prisoners are forced to remain in their cells (and) forced to eat in their cells while there is sewage on the floors.”

Ms. Huang said that even after much of the sewage is sopped up and removed, the water remains turned off. Inmates cannot use the bathrooms and have no water to drink. Even during hot days, inmates are forced for long periods of time to be without water. Access to the bathroom is not usually provided, and inmates are forced to hold their bladder and bowels, including those with prostate problems.

Attorney Yolanda Huang

Inmates often lose personal property and canteen items when the sewage wets their property. Inmates have no choice, due to the danger of bacterial and viral contamination, but to throw their belongings out, losing hundreds of dollars of canteen items.

“Being forced to live in this unsanitary, disgusting, nauseating, offensive and outrageous situation is creating severe hardships for the prisoners … Some have developed severe psychological stress, including extreme despair and suicidal ideation,” said Ms. Huang.

The claimants are asking that the “unconscionable situation (that) has existed for an extensive period of time,” be corrected immediately by the City and County, and they are asking for damages of at least $150,000 for physical injuries, emotional stress and loss of personal property damaged by the sewage spills.

Attorney Stanley Goff files second suit

A second suit on behalf of more of the sickened prisoners was filed by attorney Stanley Goff on Aug. 12, 2018. His suit provides more information on the constantly recurring toxic waste spills San Francisco prisoners have been forced to endure for nearly two years.

While District Attorney Gascon’s offices in the same building were professionally cleaned and disinfected and the plumbing problem repaired, the much worse raw sewage spills in the jail that prisoners must live with 24/7 have been ignored. The Goff suit reports the following in its Statement of Facts:

“On Jan. 3, 2017, there was a plumbing malfunction at 850 Bryant St., the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. The faulty plumbing caused raw sewage and other hazardous toxins to flood the floor in the Hall of Justice that contains the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

“The City’s immediate response to this flooding was to evacuate the District Attorney’s Offices until the flooding was stopped and a Hazmat crew properly cleaned and properly disinfected the area.

“Subsequently, plumbers contracted by San Francisco placed a ‘trap’ device into the pipes at the Hall of Justice, which prevented the District Attorney’s Office from being subjected to that type of flooding again.

“However, this ‘trap’ device caused the sewage pipes to ‘back up’ and flood the jail area inside the building (County Jail #4 or CJ4).

A second suit on behalf of more of the sickened prisoners was filed by attorney Stanley Goff on Aug. 12, 2018. His suit provides more information on the constantly recurring toxic waste spills San Francisco prisoners have been forced to endure for nearly two years.

“From that time period in the beginning January of 2017 to the present, raw sewage floods have occurred almost every day and at times occur three times a day affecting inmates housed in the A-Block portion of CJ4. …

“These floods have occurred in the middle of the day and at times in the middle of the night when the plaintiffs are trying to get their rest.

“When the raw sewage floods occur, on average, there is between a half-inch and an inch and a half of raw sewage through the entire 8-foot-by 20-foot living space in the plaintiffs’ A-Block cell.

“The plumbing in plaintiffs’ A-Block cell was such that when a toilet in the cell was flushed, sewage would back-flow into the toilet and raw sewage would overflow on the floor of the cell. When the raw sewage floods occur, the plaintiffs are able to observe visible pieces of fecal matter and used toilet tissue in the water.

“When the floods occur, deputies turn all running water off on the entire floor for several hours at a time. During these periods of no running water, the plaintiffs are forced to hold their urine and bowels, causing extreme pain and discomfort for hours at a time.

“The beds in the plaintiffs’ A-Block cell do not have a storage shelf, so the plaintiffs are forced to place their personal belongings, such as books, hygiene products, commissary food items and court documents, on the floor under their bed areas. When the raw sewage flooding occurs, these personal items belonging to the plaintiffs are almost always severely damaged – contaminated – and destroyed.

“When the raw sewage flooding occurs, the plaintiffs are forced to use their own personal bedding materials (jail issued blankets) to soak up the sewage, and are not given any protective gear such as Hazmat suits or masks to clean up the sewage or provided with proper disinfectant agents to adequately sanitize the contaminated areas.

“As a result, the plaintiffs’ A-Block cell consistently smells of human feces, urine and other sewage materials. Pursuant to jail policy, the plaintiffs are forced to eat all of their meals in their A-Block cell so they are forced to endure these hazardous fumes and nauseating smells while eating.

“Due to the direct exposure to the raw sewage emanating from these constant floods, the plaintiffs have developed intestinal problems, are having difficulty breathing and have been suffering from constant headaches. …

“The plaintiffs have notified defendants [the City, Sheriff and other jail authorities] and/or other Sheriff Deputies in writing of the unsanitary and dangerous conditions caused by the raw sewage flooding and have submitted numerous grievance forms giving the defendants notice of these hazardous and or dangerous conditions.

“Despite plaintiffs’ written and verbal notices to defendants, the horrendous and dangerous conditions in the plaintiffs’ A-Block housing area have never been properly addressed by the defendants and continue to this day.

“The plaintiffs filed a timely government claim against defendants pursuant to California Government Code §910, et seq. The plaintiffs’ claims were subsequently rejected by San Francisco on July 17, 2018.” Suits could be filed only after the claims were rejected.

Stanley Goff, left, accompanies client Daryle Washington at the Hall of Justice in 2015.

The Goff suit calls for compensatory, general and punitive damages.

San Francisco’s main jail, on the top floors of a downtown building, is seismically unsafe and has chronic problems with rats, cockroaches and asbestos as well as raw sewage flooding. But a vigorous “No New Jail” campaign, which the Bay View strongly supported, defeated plans to replace it.

The jail population, which is 57 percent Black in a city that is 3-5 percent Black, needs to be reduced through the elimination of racist policing and bail, and the city has other jail facilities. When the plan to replace the jail was defeated, then-Supervisor now Mayor London Breed said, “850 Bryant needs to come down, but more importantly we need to tear down the system of mass incarceration it represents.”

Attorney Yolanda Huang can be reached at 510-329-2140 or yhuang.law@gmail.com and attorney Stanley Goff can be reached at 415-571-9570 or scraiggoff@aol.com.

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When Giichi Matsumura arrived at his final resting place in late December, the people who knew him best when he disappeared from a Japanese internment camp in 1945 already were there.

His wife, Ito, who had mourned his passing for 60 years before her death in 2005, was buried in the same plot, as was his daughter, Kazue, who died in 2018. His father, Katsuzo, who died in 1963, was nearby. His brother and two of his three sons were a short walk away, all buried in the shady, grassy haven of Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica

They last saw Giichi alive in the waning days of World War II at the Manzanar internment camp, one of 10 where the U.S. government held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent for more than three years, claiming without evidence they might betray America in the war.

In the summer of 1945, Matsumura hiked from camp into the nearby Sierra Nevada the rugged spine of California, and never returned. His remains were committed to a lonely mountainside grave left to the elements.

His journey home, 75 years in the making, only happened after a hiker bound for the summit of Mount Williamson, a massive peak overshadowing Manzanar, veered off route near a lake and spotted a skull in the rocks. He and his partner uncovered a full a skeleton under granite blocks.

It was 2019, and the duty to bring him back fell to a granddaughter born decades after he died.

Lori Matsumura never expected to play that role. She knew of her grandfather’s unfortunate death, but it wasn’t something she often thought about.

Then an Inyo County sheriff’s sergeant phoned and asked for a DNA sample to see if the unearthed bones belonged to her grandfather, the only Manzanar prisoner who died in the mountains.

“It was a complete surprise when I received a call from the sheriff,” Lori said. “There were stories my grandmother told me about her husband passing on the mountain. They were stories to me, and it wasn’t reality. But then when the sheriff called it, you know, brought it into reality.”

That conversation set her on the first step of a mission to reunite her ancestors, a journey that awakened her to a history she had largely seen through a child’s eyes, the edges softened by a generation more inclined to look forward than dwell in the past. Stories that once seemed rosy lost their bloom when faced with the harsh landscape where her relatives spent more than three years in captivity.

Until the U.S. entered WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Giichi Matsumura and his family lived what seemed like a quiet life in the leafy oasis of Santa Monica Canyon, a retreat for artists and stars of old Hollywood.

Born in the Fukui prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1916, arriving in San Francisco on a steam ship with a single bag. His father already was there and they worked as gardeners and lived on property owned by the Marquez family, Mexican land grant owners of an area that became parts of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

Giichi’s wife, Ito, arrived from Kyoto in 1924, according to U.S. Census records. The couple had four children born in the U.S.: sons Masaru, Tsutomo and Uwao, and a daughter, Kazue, the youngest. Kazue, Lori’s aunt, recalled a fun childhood in an interview by Rose Masters, a ranger with the Manzanar National Historic Site, a few months before her death in 2018.

Her mother would pull her in a wagon to play at the beach. She remembers seeing the actor Leo Carrillo, later known as sidekick Pancho to TV’s “The Cisco Kid,” doing lasso tricks.

Giichi Matsumura, who signed up for the World War I draft, registered again on Feb. 14, 1942. Five days later, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that would force people of Japanese descent on the West Coast into prison camps in waves.

Under an April 20, 1942 order, the Matsumura family had about a week to leave their life in the canyon behind.

Kazue, who wasn’t even aware there was a war, recalled her experience as a 7-year-old.

Her father had to give away his car and they were only allowed to bring a single suitcase to camp.

She had been excited about taking a bus trip, but the novelty after a long ride from LA through the desert along the dramatic eastern flank of the Sierra quickly faded when they arrived at Manzanar.

“I noticed it was all dirt,” she said. “Nothing there. Like a desert.”

Manzanar, which means apple orchard in Spanish, quickly became home to 10,000 people of Japanese descent — two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — living in hundreds of cramped, tar-paper covered barracks.

The family would have shared a barrack with four to six other families, each unit separated only by a thin wall that did not extend to the pitched roof. There was little privacy.

The shacks were so poorly built that frequent winds blew sand through the cracks in walls and floors. There was no insulation, making scorching summers intolerable and frigid winters unbearable.

Giichi Matsumura worked as a cook. In his spare time, he painted watercolors, capturing the guard tower, barracks and Mount Williamson, the second-highest peak in California.

His eldest son, Masaru, Lori’s father, had been about to graduate from high school when they were imprisoned. Instead, he had to wait until the next spring when he was in the internment camp’s first graduating class.

Lori remembers her father talking about the camp’s most infamous incident when guards shot into a crowd of people, killing two and injuring nine.

But she doesn’t know much about his time there. He didn’t like to discuss it.

What she knew came mostly from her grandmother and Aunt Kazue, who lived together across the street, stories about squashing scorpions on the way to the bathroom using geta — elevated wooden sandals.

Lori Matsumura always meant to visit Manzanar. But she’s not sure she would have made the more than three-hour drive north from Los Angeles.

A few weeks after the sheriff’s call, she and her boyfriend, Thomas Storesund, drove to the station in Lone Pine where she gave an oral swab for DNA. They then drove a few miles north where the National Park Service operates the camp as a sort of living museum.

The sentry house still stands at the entrance. A replica of one of the eight guard towers looms overhead and replica barracks, a latrine and a mess hall recreate what the camp looked like, minus hundreds of other structures crammed into a square mile of high desert surrounded by barbed wire.

The buildings display vestiges of life in camp and some of the many indignities experienced, such as the loyalty questionnaire adults had to complete.

“How could something like this happen in America?” Lori thought.

But she wasn’t struck by the gravity of her family’s loss until she visited where they had lived.

Standing near a sign for Block 18, Matsumura looked out at an inhospitable barren patch of scraggly rabbitbrush, fiddleneck weed and a row of barren locust trees. She was filled with sorrow.

“I was blown away by how desolate the place was,” she said. “Seeing it in person made it so sad for me. I don’t think I could have survived that.”

For the first time, Matsumura felt a connection to the place her family lived. She was walking in their footsteps. It was now real.

While the buildings were gone, one reminder stood out: Mount Williamson standing at 14,374 feet (4,381 meters) to the west. It was the site of her grandfather’s first grave.

Giichi Matsumura left camp July 29, 1945 heading toward that peak with a group of trout fishermen for a several-day outing. He planned to sketch and paint.

Prisoners had been free to leave camp six months earlier, but about 4,000 internees remained. Many, like the Matsumuras, had nowhere to go or feared racist reprisals in places they once called home.

Ito Matsumura didn’t want her husband to go on the trip. She forbade him from taking his art supplies because she feared he would stop to paint and get lost, Lori’s Aunt Kazue recalled.

It takes at least a full day to ascend about 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) to reach the chain of lakes where they were destined. The trail eventually ends and hikers must navigate a forbidding jumble of granite in the thin air at the high altitude.

On Aug. 2, Matsumura stopped to paint as others fished.

When a storm blew in, the fishermen, who had been there before, knew where to shelter in a cave, said Don Hosokawa, whose father, Frank, was on the trip. The men couldn’t find Giichi after the storm and returned to camp, hoping he headed there.

Exactly what happened to Giichi Matsumura remains unknown. Aunt Kazue said she heard her father slipped on wet rocks and hit his head. Don Hosokawa said the body was later found next to a bloody rock.

His disappearance came four days before the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima that would hasten the Japanese surrender.

Three search parties looked for him in the following weeks. They found only his sweater.

About a month after he was lost, a hiker from nearby Independence was trying to summit Mount Williamson with her husband and a friend, but rain ruined their plans. They stopped for lunch, and Mary DeDecker, a botanist, noticed a branch in the rocks below, which struck her as unusual because trees don’t grow at that altitude.

A closer look revealed a body.

A small burial party from camp made a last trip into the mountains, carrying a sheet from Ito Matsumura to wrap her husband in. They buried him under granite and affixed a simple piece of paper to a block to mark the grave. In Japanese characters, it gave his name, age and said, “Rest in Peace.”

The group returned with locks of his hair and nail clippings, a Buddhist tradition for a body that couldn’t be returned.

About 150 people attended a funeral ceremony back at the camp. A photo by Toyo Miyatake, famous for documenting Manzanar life, shows mourners in dark suits and dresses behind a wall of crepe paper flowers.

Aunt Kazue lamented that it was difficult never having seen her father’s corpse or his gravesite.

“To this day it seems like he’s not passed away,” she said. “It seems like he’s gone some place because I don’t see his body.”

At the Manzanar cemetery, where a tall white obelisk is often decorated with chains of origami cranes left by visitors, a sign says 150 people died at camp. Most were cremated and their ashes buried after their families left camp. One man, Giichi Matsumura, the sign says, died exploring the Sierra and “is buried high in the mountains above you.”

That sign will have to be changed.

The gravesite was not widely known so it initially appeared to be a mystery when hikers unearthed it Oct. 7, 2019. Officers from Inyo County Sheriff’s Office flew by helicopter to retrieve the remains.

When word reached rangers and historians at Manzanar, they had a hunch who it was.

“It wasn’t a huge mystery,” Ranger Patricia Biggs told Lori Matsumura in February last year. “We would have been amazed if it wasn’t your grandfather.”

Sgt. Nate Derr had called Matsumura for a DNA sample because she was listed at the historic site as a contact person for her aunt. It took about three months for the Department of Justice to match her DNA with a tooth from the remains to positively identify her grandfather.

Derr notified her in January last year. Then she had to decide what to do with the bones.

Manzanar wouldn’t allow her grandfather to be buried in the small cemetery where only six bodies, interred when the camp was operating, remain. His bones also couldn’t be returned to the mountain.

The thought of scattering his ashes at one of those places held some appeal. Although it’s illegal to scatter ashes on public lands, Lori said she was told by one official that no one would stop her.

But it was unlikely her family would trek up the mountain for a burial service and returning him to a place he’d been captive seemed in poor taste.

After consulting her siblings and cousins, they decided he should be cremated and laid to rest with his wife. His name was already on the grave marker, his toenail clippings and hair buried with her.

Lori had to sign paperwork amending the death certificate from a burial to a cremation. And she wanted to view the remains.

On Presidents Day last year, she and other family members went to the small city of Bishop, about 45 minutes north of Manzanar, to Brune Mortuary, which is also the county coroner’s office.

Coroner Jason Molinar began to lead Lori and her niece, Lilah, from his office to a private viewing room when Lori halted in the doorway to reassure the 11-year-old, who was scared.

“They’re just his bones. That’s all it is,” Lori told the girl.

Laid on a sheet-covered gurney were the remains of the grandfather she’d never met.

The skeleton was roughly arranged in order. The skull was bleached white, most likely from sun exposure. The ribs, spine and joints were stained a shade of brown.

Molinar pointed to a coil of fishing line, the remains of a rusty pocket knife and two buttons found with the bones. A pair of shoes and belt he had worn were next to his lower leg bones.

It was remarkable to find the body 99% intact, Molinar said, a testament to a good burial in a climate where the remains were probably encased in snow and ice much of the year and undisturbed by people or critters.

“The crazy part is the fact that it’s this well-preserved,” he said. “Usually after this many years, you just find fragments.”

Lori made a video call to her sister, Lisa Reilly, who lives in San Francisco and couldn’t make the trip.

“Do you want to see Grandpa’s bones?” she asked.

She then turned the camera to the skeleton and artifacts. She paused at the skull and pointed out the sutures, the fine cracks where the bones of the skull are joined that had begun to separate from exposure. The cracks had led the hikers to speculate on social media about foul play.

Lori and her niece stood with their hands clasped in prayer and heads bowed. They prayed he would rest in peace and be reunited with his family.

After the viewing, they went to Manzanar to donate the shoes, belt, fishing line and knife, to be put on display.

As Biggs looked at the weather-beaten shoes and withered belt, she was almost overcome with emotion.

“I just want to have a moment,” the ranger said. “Out of respect. Wow. It’s amazing to me the things that last forever and the things that don’t.”

In a guest book, Lori’s nephew, Lukas, 9, wrote: “We are bringing you home Great Grampa Giichi Matsumura. We love you.”

Two weeks later, Lori retrieved the ashes.

Lost once and found twice, it was now time to properly bury Giichi Matsumura.

On Dec. 21, Lori, her brothers, Wayne and Clyde, along with Clyde’s wife, Narumol, and two children brought his ashes to a burial service at Woodlawn, which is a block from where they grew up.

The Rev. Shumyo Kojima, a Buddhist priest, assembled a small altar with a framed photo of Giichi Matsumura in front of the box containing his remains.

“He moved from the high Sierra to here. All of you are eyewitnesses,” Kojima said. “This is a kind of house-warming party. So, everyone will be here to celebrate his new residence.”

Kojima lit incense and picked up a bell that he rang at different intervals as he chanted ancient sutras, bowing repeatedly.

Each family member stepped forward to sprinkle incense in a burner while Kojima chanted.

Kojima showed a document from the Zenshuji Buddhist Temple that recorded memorial services Ito held for her husband on important milestone anniversaries over the years. It showed how she kept thinking about him, the priest said.

Three cemetery workers then moved the altar to reveal a hole in the ground. One of them placed the box of ashes in the shallow grave.

As the interwoven threads of incense smoke drifted northeast — the direction of Manzanar — the family members each took a turn dropping a shovel full of dirt on the box.

The grave-diggers finished the job and placed a bouquet of white flowers on the grass. Kojima sprinkled water over the grave for purification.

Lori Matsumura wished the hikers hadn’t disturbed the grave. She imagined it was a beautiful setting in mountains her grandfather admired.

Yet she was satisfied he was back with those who loved him.

“His body is laid to rest with everyone, so it’s kind of just closed the chapter on my dad and his siblings and parents,” she said.

She only regretted they weren’t alive to see it.

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