Within months of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, as more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were being sent to incarceration camps, other ethnic groups also became the target of new wartime security measures. Italian citizens living near California’s coastline and military sites — some 10,000 of them — were forced to leave their homes and find somewhere else to live.  It was just one of many government measures meant to protect the West Coast from an enemy invasion that never came. Reporter Pauline Bartolone brings us this story from the Bay Curious podcast. Plus, we l ..read more

As journalists, we don’t often tell our own stories. We separate ourselves from the issues we cover. But sometimes, the story hits close to home. This week, we’re featuring a story from Erin Baldassari, KQED’s Senior Editor for Housing Affordability. Growing up in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, wildfire has always been part of her consciousness. Her earliest memory is fleeing a fire as it bore down on her childhood home. As she and her family consider moving back, she wanted to learn how people there are adapting to the rising risk of wildfires due to climate change. Erin’s story c ..read more

Proposition 8 's Lessons for One Queer Journalist In November 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, taking away the right to marry from same-sex couples. But two years later, two same-sex couples sued the State of California in federal court. Prop 8 was eventually overturned. That landmark trial was videotaped, but the recordings were never released to the public. Until a few years ago, when KQED sued for access to the tapes and won. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed them to be unsealed in October 2022. KQED’s community engagement reporter Carlos Cabrera Lomeli, spent hours ..read more

Nine months into Satsuki Ina’s parents’ marriage, Pearl Harbor was bombed. Their life was totally upended when, along with 125,000 other Japanese-Americans, they were sent to incarceration camps. After unsuccessfully fighting for their civil rights to be restored, they renounced their American citizenship. That meant the US government branded them as “enemy aliens.” Ina was born in a prison camp at Tule Lake, but didn’t know much about that difficult chapter in her parents’ life. Then she discovered a trove of letters that they sent to each other while they were separated in different camps. N ..read more

When Oscar season rolls around, everyone’s trying to catch up on the blockbuster films. But there’s rarely buzz about the short films, especially the short documentary category. This year, two joyful California films made the nominee list. Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó is a love letter from Fremont-raised filmmaker Sean Wang to his two grandmothers, 94 year old Nǎi Nai and 83 year old Wài Pó. They are in-laws turned best friends who spend their days together, even sharing a bed. The Last Repair Shop tells the remarkable stories of the people behind the scenes who fix instruments ..read more

When correctional officer Valentino Rodriguez first stepped behind prison walls, he wasn’t just starting a job, he was joining a brotherhood. What he didn’t know was that he was now bound by an unwritten code that would ultimately test his loyalty to his oath and his fellow officers. Valentino’s sudden death on October 21, 2020 would raise questions from the FBI, his family and his mentor in the elite investigative unit where they both worked. For more than two years, our colleagues with KQED’s investigative podcast On Our Watch have been looking into what happened to Valentino Rodriguez, beca ..read more

In many California cities, freeways and sprawl are just a fact of life. They’re baked into the design of much of the state. But how did we get here? Just how did freeways come to be such a big part of California life? This week, we’re featuring a story from our friends at the KPBS podcast Freeway Exit. Host and producer Andrew Bowen looks at how our relationship with the freeway has changed over time, and how it will have to change in the future.   ..read more

How The Bay Area’s Biggest City Wants to Overcome Its Sprawl The cars and trucks we drive account for nearly half of California’s total carbon emissions. And bringing those emissions down is going to require more than just swapping out gas guzzling cars for electric ones. It’s going to mean redesigning our cities around people, not cars. KQED’s Adhiti Bandlamudi takes us to San Jose where local leaders are trying to rethink how residents live and how they get around. This story comes to us from KQED’s podcast Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America.  LA’s Bé Ù Put ..read more

This week, we feature stories from our Hidden Gems series about out-of-the-way secret spots in California - places you might want to visit on a road trip! How This Oakland Business Gives Mannequins New Life (Almost) You might not notice them, but mannequins can be found everywhere from the tiniest boutiques to Target. But what happens to these non-biodegradable figures when stores go out of business or styles change? In California, many of them end up at Mannequin Madness, an Oakland warehouse run by a woman whose mission is to keep mannequins out of the landfill. This Stretch of the ..read more

Roughly a quarter of California’s carbon emissions come from our buildings and the energy that powers them. And we need to cut those emissions down to next to nothing to avoid the scary effects of climate change. Making a home green is pretty easy if you start from scratch. But it gets a whole lot harder when it comes to converting the millions of homes in California that already exist. The ones where most of us live. Climate reporter Laura Klivans takes us to East Oakland, where one city block is taking a revolutionary approach to reducing their emissions: by electrifying toget ..read more