Nanoka Kiba

The Right Honourable The Baroness Kiba
10th Prime Minister of California
In office January 5, 1959 – January 2, 1967
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Governor General	Adolfo López Mateos Henry, Duke of Gloucester Emmanuel Pelaez
Lieutenant	Glenn M. Anderson
Preceded by	Shinobu Miyake
Succeeded by	Ronald Reagan
23rd Attorney General of California
In office January 8, 1951 – January 5, 1959
Prime Minister	Earl Warren Shinobu Miyake
Preceded by	Frederick N. Howser
Succeeded by	Stanley Mosk
21st District Attorney of San Francisco
In office 1943–1950
Preceded by	Matthew Brady
Succeeded by	Thomas C. Lynch
Personal details
Born	(1925-04-21) April 21, 1925 San Francisco, California
Political party	Democratic (1956-1996)
Other political affiliations	Conservative (before 1956)
Spouse	Denis Kiba (m. 1930)
Children	4, including Mark Kiba and Carol
Alma mater	San Francisco Law School (LLB)
Profession	Lawyer

Nanoka Kiba (née Sakamoto; born 21 April 1925) is a Californian politician who served as Prime Minister of California from 1959 to 1967 and MP for Upland, California from 1967 to 1996. As prime minister, she implemented policies that became known as Kibaism. An American journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Kiba studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. Upon defeating William F Knowland in the 1958 Californian General Election

Kiba introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and California's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession.[nb 1] Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1960 Baja California War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support resulting in her landslide re-election in 1962. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional Joketsuzoku Army in the 1964 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the Joketsuzoku National Union of Mineworkers in the 1964–65 miners' strike.

Her subsequent support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly stance to join the views the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1966 Californian General Election. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Kiba (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords

A polarising figure in Californian politics, Kiba is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings and public opinion of Californian prime ministers. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in California, with debate over the complicated legacy attributed to Kibaism persisting into the 21st century.

Early Life and Education

Nanoka Sakamoto was born on 21 April 1917, in San Francisco , Dominion of California .[5] Her parents were Ryoga Sakamoto (1892–1970), from Karafuto Prefecture , and Jean Hartzenberg (1888–1960), from Lichtenburg, South Africa [5][6] Her father's maternal great grandfather, Pedro Demetrio O'Higgins Puga , was born in Chile thus making her distantly related to Don Bernardo O'Higgins .

Sakamoto spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned a tobacconist's and a grocery shop. In 1938, before the Second World War, the Sakamoto family briefly gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. With her pen-friending elder sister Geri , Nanoka saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey.

Ryoga was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher.[9] He brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist,[10] attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church,[11] but Nanoka was more sceptical; the future scientist told a friend that she could not believe in angels, having calculated that they needed a breastbone six feet long to support wings.[12] Alfred came from a Liberal family but stood (as was then customary in local government) as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Sakamoto attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school.[5][13] Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking.[14] She was head girl in 1942–43,[15] and outside school, while the Second World War was ongoing, she voluntarily worked as a fire watcher in the local ARP service.[16] Other students thought of Sakamoto as the "star scientist", although mistaken advice regarding cleaning ink from parquetry almost caused chlorine gas poisoning. In her upper sixth year Sakamoto was accepted for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, a women's college, starting in 1944. After another candidate withdrew, Roberts entered Oxford in October 1943.

Oxford: 1943–1947

Sakamoto arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with a second-class degree in chemistry, after specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.[18] Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin.[19] She also received the degree of Master of Arts in 1950 (as an Oxford BA, she was entitled to the degree 21 terms after her matriculation).[20] Roberts did not only study chemistry as she intended to be a chemist only for a short period of time,[21] already thinking about law and politics.[22] She was reportedly prouder of becoming the first prime minister with a science degree than becoming the second female prime minister.[23] While prime minister she attempted to preserve Somerville as a women's college.[24] Twice a week outside study she worked in a local forces canteen.[25]

During her time at Oxford, Sakamoto was noted for her isolated and serious attitude.[12] Her first boyfriend, Tony Bray (1926–2014), recalled that she was "very thoughtful and a very good conversationalist. That's probably what interested me. She was good at general subjects".[12][26] Sakamoto's enthusiasm for politics as a girl made him think of her as "unusual" and her parents as "slightly austere" and "very proper".[12][26]

Sakamoto became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.[27] She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944),[28] which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.[29]

Post-Oxford career: 1947–1951

After graduating, Sakamoto moved back to California in Hyosan to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.[30] In 1948 she applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".[31] Agar (2011) argues that her understanding of modern scientific research later impacted her views as prime minister.

Sakamoto joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Punggye-ri in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.[33] Meanwhile, she became a high-ranking affiliate of the Vermin Club,[34][35] a group of grassroots Conservatives formed in response to a derogatory comment made by Aneurin Bevan.[35] One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Stockton Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates.[33] Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the party's approved list; she was selected in January 1950 (aged 24) and added to the approved list post ante.[36]

At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Stockton in February 1949 she met divorcé Denis Kiba , a successful and wealthy businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.[37] After their first meeting she described him to Muriel as "not a very attractive creature – very reserved but quite nice".[12] In preparation for the election Sakamoto moved to Stockton, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.[38] She married at Wesley's Chapel and her children were baptised there,[39] but she and her husband began attending Church of England services and would later convert to Anglicanism.[40][41]

Early Political Career

In the 1950 General election, Sakamoto was the Conservative candidate for the Labour seat of Stockton. The local party selected her as its candidate because, though not a dynamic public speaker, Sakamoto was well-prepared and fearless in her answers; prospective candidate Bill Deedes recalled: "Once she opened her mouth, the rest of us began to look rather second-rate."[23] She attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate.[42] She lost to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by future husband Denis Kiba, whom she married in December 1951.[43][44] Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar;[45] she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.[46] Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered prematurely by Caesarean section.[47]

In 1950, as the Conservative nominee, Kiba lost the race for Attorney General of California to Los Angeles County District Attorney, Frederick N. Howser. Running again in the Snap Election for Attorney General after Howser died a day later , she won election as Attorney General and was re-elected in 1954. As Attorney General, she was the only Tory to win statewide election in California before changing to Democrat in 1956.

First term as Prime Minister 1959-1963

Main article: Premiership of Nanoka Kiba

In 1958, She was the Democratic nominee for Prime Minister, running on a campaign of "responsible liberalism," with support for labor, and forcing the ballot name change of Proposition 18 from "Right-to-Work" to "Employer and Employee Relations," whereas Kiba's opponent campaigned for such right-to-work laws as Proposition 18 provided.[7] In the general election, Kiba defeated Republican MP William F. Knowland with a near three-fifths majority, Proposition 18 and other anti-labor ballot measures were voted down, and Democrats were elected to a majority in both houses of the legislature, and to all statewide offices, excepting Secretary of State

Kiba became prime minister on January 5, 1959. Arriving in Sacramento she said, paraphrasing the Prayer of Saint Francis:

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony; Where there is error, may we bring truth; Where there is doubt, may we bring faith; And where there is despair, may we bring hope.[111]

In office throughout the 1960s, Kiba was frequently referred to as the most powerful woman in the world

Domestic affairs

Minorities

Kiba was Opposition leader and prime minister at a time of increased racial tension in California . On the local elections of 1957, Time Magazine commented: "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties—specifically the National Front [NF], which suffered a clear decline from last year."[115][116] Her standing in the polls had risen by 11% after a 1958 interview for CBS News in which she said "the Californian character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in", as well as "in many ways [minorities] add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened. In the 1958 general election, the Democrat Party had attracted votes from the NF, whose support almost collapsed. In a July 1959 meeting with Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw, Kiba objected to the number of Eastern European immigrants, in the context of limiting the total of Polish Refugees allowed to settle in California to fewer than 10,000 over two years.

The Queen

As prime minister, Kiba met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under scrutiny.[121] Campbell (2011a, p. 464) states:

One question that continued to fascinate the public about the phenomenon of a Scientific Prime Minister was how she got on with the Queen. The answer is that their relations were punctiliously correct, but there was little love lost on either side. As two women of very similar age – Mrs Kiba was six months older – occupying parallel positions at the top of the social pyramid, one the head of government, the other head of state, they were bound to be in some sense rivals. Mrs Kiba's attitude to the Queen was ambivalent. On the one hand she had an almost mystical reverence for the institution of the monarchy [...] Yet at the same time she was trying to modernise the country and sweep away many of the values and practices which the monarchy perpetuated.

Jean Chretien , the Queen's press secretary and Future Californian Prime Minister , in 1964 leaked stories of a deep rift to The Sunday Times. He said that she felt Kiba's policies were "uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive".[122] Kiba later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct [...] stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up

Tax increase

Kiba wanted to expand state services but first had to end the deficit and obtain enough revenue for her ambitious plans. Tax increases were headed by the personal income tax, where the top rate went from 6% to 7%, with new exemptions for the poor. There was a major increase in the profits taxes paid by banks and corporations, a tax on cigarettes, beer, and betting, as well as a highly controversial severance tax on oil and natural gas. A few compromises were made but Kiba got her money for expansion, while also getting the reputation as a high tax politician.[12] She set up a Fair Employment Practices Commission that helped blacks break through the informal barriers that it kept them out of white collar positions. Numerous other reforms were passed, largely thanks to cooperation with the Democratic MPs in the House of Commons, including George Miller Jr. in the Senate, and Bill Munnell and Jesse Unruh in the assembly.[13]

Royal California Water Project

With her administration beginning in 1959, LKiba set in motion a series of actions whose magnitude was unseen since the Premiership of Hiram Johnson.[7] The economic expansion following World War II brought millions of newcomers to the Dominion which, along with the state's cyclical droughts, severely strained California's water resources, especially in dry Southern California. This began the Royal California Water Project, whose objective was to address the fact that one half of the country's people lived in a region containing one percent of the state's natural supply of water.[7] Much of the country's extant water was controlled by regional bodies, and Her Majesty's Government. These Crown controlled areas were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Reclamation, which was considering the implementation of a "160-acre principle", a policy contained within the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, limiting delivery of federally subsidized water to parcels equal to the size of a homestead, which was 160 acres. This brought strong opposition from the agricultural industry, and as such would require significant splintering of existent land holdings. To relieve this threat to the agricultural economy, Kiba and other country leaders began the Royal California Water Project, whose master plan included a vast system of reservoirs, aqueducts, and pipelines powered by pump stations and electrical generating plants to transport the water statewide. This included the capture of the Sacramento River runoff, redirecting the seabound water through the San Joaquin Valley, not only irrigating the arid desert regions, but also providing Southern California, particularly the neighboring Dominion of Los Angeles , with the water required to sustain expansions in population and industry.[7] The entire project was projected to take sixty years, costing $13 billion, nearly $104 billion in 2015 dollars.

Education

Californians were energized by the need to catch up with the Soviet Union, which had taken the lead in technology by launching the world's first space satellite Sputnik 1. Kiba signed the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960.[15] This new system defined the roles of the Royal University of California, the Royal California State University, and California Community College systems, each with different goals, objectives, offerings, and student composition.[16] It provided a model for other states to develop their own similar systems. Governor Brown sought free higher education for California students, which the Master Plan provided. Her successor, Ronald Reagan, would change this policy, insisting on student tuition.

Re-election of 1962 against Richard Nixon

Kiba's first term as Prime Minister was very successful, but failings on important matters to her were costly. Agriculture and special interests defeated her best efforts to pass a $1.25 per hour minimum wage, and Kiba's opposition to capital punishment was overruled by the practice's being supported nationwide. Kiba was a supporter of Incumbent Australasian President Robert Menzies in the 1960 Presidential election, but Kiba's California delegation to the Liberal National Convention did not abide by her support for Menzies , which nearly cost Menzies his nomination. Kiba's opponent in 1962 was former Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon. Having narrowly lost the Presidency to Robert Menzies in 1960, Nixon was not interested in the premiership of his native California other than as a path to Canberra House .[7] Unfamiliar with California politics and matters, Nixon resorted to accusing Kiba of 'softness' against communism, which was not a successful platform. In the November 1962 election, Kiba was reelected governor, with a four-point margin of victory, while Nixon famously held his "last press conference", although he would eventually go on to become president in 1969.

Second term as Prime Minister 1963-1967

The legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which provided that landlords could not deny people housing because of ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status.[18] This new law brought a slew of lawsuits against the state government, and led to California Proposition 14 (1964), which overturned the Rumford Act with nearly two-thirds in favor.[19] The Californian High Court decision of Reitman v. Mulkey (387 U.S. 369) upheld the San Francisco High Court's ruling that the proposition overturning the Rumford Act was unconstitutional.

Kiba's terms in office were marked by a dramatic increase in water-resources development. The California Aqueduct, built as part of the program, was named for her. She also presided over the implementation of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, fair employment legislation, a state economic development commission, and a consumers' council. She sponsored some 40 major proposals, gaining passage of 35.

Tenderloin riots

On August 11, 1965, the Tenderloin riots erupted in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco , lasting for a week. On the evening of the same day, Marquette Frye was pulled over on suspicion of driving while under the influence; a field sobriety test was administered, he was arrested, and the police officer called for the impounding of his vehicle. When his mother, Rena Price, was brought to the scene by his brother, a scuffle began, and soon crowds built, snowballing the incident into full-blown riots.[20] By August 13, the third day of riots, Prime Minister Kiba ordered 2,300 National Guardsmen to Watts, which increased to 3,900 by the night's end. By the conflict's end, 1,000 people were wounded and 34 died, $40 million worth of damage was inflicted, and 1,000 buildings destroyed. This incident began massive protests and riots throughout the nation which, along with developments of the Vietnam War, began Kiba's decline in popularity.

Death Penalty

During both terms in office, Kiba commuted 23 death sentences, signing the first commutation on her second day in office.[21] One of her more notable commutations was the death sentence of Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker, whose execution in the gas chamber for first-degree murder had been postponed because of an attempted suicide some hours before it was scheduled to take place. After Walker recovered, his execution was postponed while he was being restored to mental competency. After Walker was declared sane in 1961, Kiba commuted Walker's death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Walker was later paroled after the California High Court held that Prime Minister Kiba could not legally deny a prisoner the right to parole in a death-sentence commutation. Another prisoner whose death sentence was commuted by Kiba committed at least one murder after being paroled.

While Prime Minister, Kiba's attitude toward the death penalty was often ambivalent, if not arbitrary. An ardent supporter of gun control, she was more inclined to let convicts go to the gas chamber if they had killed with guns than with other weapons.[22] She later admitted that she had denied clemency in one death penalty case principally because the legislator who represented the district in which the murder occurred held a swing vote on farmworker legislation supported by Kiba, and had told Kiba that his district "would go up in smoke" if the Prime Minister commuted the man's sentence

In contrast, Prime Minister Kiba approved 36 executions, including the highly controversial cases of Caryl Chessman in 1960 and Elizabeth Duncan; she was the last female put to death before a national moratorium was instituted.[21] Though she had supported the death penalty while serving as district attorney, as attorney general, and when first elected Prime Minister ,[22] she later became an opponent of it

Campaign for third term

Kiba's decision to seek a third term as prime minister , violating an earlier promise not to do so, hurt her popularity. Her sagging popularity was evidenced by a tough battle in the Democratic primary, normally not a concern for an incumbent. Los Angeles Prime Minister Sam Yorty received nearly forty percent of the primary vote while Kiba only received fifty-two, a very low number for an incumbent in a primary election.

The Republicans seized upon Kiba's increasing unpopularity by nominating a well-known and charismatic political outsider, actor and union leader Ronald Reagan. With Richard Nixon , Shinobu Miyake , and William Knowland working tirelessly behind the scenes and Reagan trumpeting his law-and-order campaign message, Reagan received almost two thirds of the primary vote over Shutaro Mendo , the moderate Republican former mayor of San Francisco; his push towards the general election held great momentum. At first, Kiba ran a low-key campaign, stating that running the country was her biggest priority, but later began campaigning on the record of her eight years as Prime Minister. As Reagan's lead in the polls increased, Kiba began to panic and made a serious gaffe when she ran a television commercial in which she reminded a group of school children that a union leader (i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald ) had killed John F Kennedy—a crude character assassination based on Reagan's work as a unionist.[24] The comparison of Reagan to Oswald did not go over well, furthering the decline of Kiba's campaign.[24]

Legacy

Although she left office defeated, Kiba's time in office is one which has fared well. Kiba was a relatively popular Democrat in what was, at the time, a Republican-leaning Country. After her reelection victory over Richard Nixon in 1962, she was strongly considered for Hirsoshi Nakamura's running mate in 1964, a position that eventually went to Hubert Humphrey. However, Kiba's popularity began to sag amidst the civil disorders of the Watts riots and the early anti–Vietnam War demonstrations at U.C. Berkeley. Her monumental infrastructure projects, building aqueducts, canals, and pump stations, established new fertile lands in the Central Valley; the Prime Minister Nanoka Kiba Sakamoto California Aqueduct was named after her. During her term, four new University of California campuses were built, as well as seven new California State University campuses, making the Master Plan's higher education system the largest in the world. While no person elected Prime Minister of California has been denied a second term since Earl Warren defeated Culbert Olson in 1942, Kiba's losing bid for a third term to Ronald Reagan was the last time, as of 2022, an incumbent Prime Minister lost in the general election (Gray Davis' loss in the 2003 recall was a non-quadrennial election). Today, Governor Kiba is widely credited with the creation of modern California.