A Mountain View elementary school has a new name a year after initial outrage over the previous namesake’s racist and nativist views coming to light.
The Mountain View Whisman School District’s five-member board of trustees on Thursday unanimously voted to rename Huff Elementary School after Amy Imai, a Japanese American woman and longtime community leader in the area.
The school said Friday in a Facebook post it is now known as Amy Imai Elementary School, effective immediately.
Imai was born in Mountain View in 1930, and returned to the area as a teenager after being interned at Heart Mountain Detention Center in Wyoming during World War II. She was a fixture in the community until her passing in 2013.
Imai ran a carnation with her husband for nearly three decades, taught Dharma school at the Mountain View Buddhist Temple for 45 years and was active in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School district. She also shared her internment experiences with numerous local organizations.
"We were given one month to settle all of our affairs before we were forced to leave our home," Imai recalled to Palo Alto Online in 2008. "All we were allowed to bring was what we could carry with us. We left everything we knew behind, and we had no idea where we were going."
Amid local and national reconsideration of public imagery and iconography following George Floyd’s murder last Memorial Day, district superintendent Ayindé Rudolph announced in an email last June 19 that the school board would consider a name change from the school’s namesake, Frank L. Huff.
Huff’s biography in 1922’s "History of Santa Clara County, California" indicated that he was "strongly opposed to the immigration into our country of people who are out of harmony with American institutions and ideals, particularly those of such blood as cannot be assimilated by the Caucasian race to its benefit."
Megan Henderson, an equity coach with the district, said during last week’s meeting that a group of students – including one currently in middle school who spoke anonymously Thursday – first informed the board of Huff’s sentiments a year ago, and it didn't take long for the revelation to cause outrage among the school's staff, parents and students.
"Huff’s views do not represent us," the anonymous student said. "And because he was doing so in being the namesake of the school that will formerly be known as Huff, we thought a change should be made."
A yearlong review culminated in Thursday’s board vote, with pioneering NASA scientist Katherine Johnson and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg among the options stakeholders in the district considered. Imai garnered support from district leadership and students alike, and Henderson wrote to the superintendent last month that 68.4% of classrooms at the school wanted to rename it after Imai.
