Mary Yamashiro Otani was a Richmond, California community activist. She was a student at UC Berkeley when she was forcibly removed to an internment center for Japanese Americans following the enactment of Executive Order 9066. Initially, she lived with her family at the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno and later at isolated Topaz War Relocation Center in the desert near Delta, Utah. Later a Quaker group persuaded the authorities to allow college-age students to continue their studies at East Coast schools. Yamashiro then attend Boston University where she met her husband Bill.