October 12, 1953 — December 24, 2023
Gayle Hane Wong passed away peacefully on December 24, 2023, at the age of 70. She was born on October 12, 1953, in San Jose, Calif., the first of five children to Satoshi and Masako Hane. The Hane family moved to San Mateo and later to Millbrae, where Gayle grew up and was a top student at Capuchino High School. She was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1975. It was at Berkeley, in an Asian American studies class where she met her lifelong partner, Craig, whom she married four years later. Moving to San Francisco and later to Chicago, where she returned to school at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. Gayle was actively involved in the growing Asian American, peace and social justice movements.
In 1980, she returned to the West Coast, moving to Los Angeles to join the movement for Japanese American redress and reparations. She was a founding member of the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations and was active in other progressive causes including the 1984 and 1988 campaigns of Jesse Jackson, Asian Americans for Nuclear Disarmament and more recently, Nikkei Progressives.
While living in Los Angeles, she built a successful career in commercial real estate and raised a son, Reed, born in 1983. She retired from real estate in 2005 to pursue her many interests – pottery, jewelry-making, travel, going to concerts, plays, museums, and volunteering with non-profit organizations and community groups. One of the groups she volunteered with was the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC). Because her experience and expertise in real estate matched well with LTSC’s mission of building affordable and special needs housing, she allowed herself to be lured out of retirement to become LTSC’s director of asset management. For a decade she worked tirelessly to expand LTSC’s portfolio of affordable housing and regarded her stint at LTSC as the highlight of her working career. A 2010 cancer diagnosis and treatment did not slow Gayle down. She continued her work at LTSC, tended to her family and pursued many of her varied interests and made her retirement travel plans. Her second and final retirement came in 2016.
Retirement for Gayle meant even more volunteer work – serving on the board and as board president of the Center for the Pacific Asian Family and supporting community organizations such as Nikkei Progressives. She traveled the world, visiting Southern Africa, Cuba, France, Russia, multiple trips to both Japan and China, Southeast Asia, Canada and Peru. Joining Senshin Buddhist Temple, she was active in many temple activities including the Buddhist Women’s Association and Wasabi-kai. Gayle will be dearly missed by the many who knew and worked with her. She was fearless, direct, passionate and committed to changing the things she could not accept. She had a loud and ready laugh and beneath her tough exterior, she was warm and compassionate.
Gayle is survived by her husband of 43 years, Craig; her son, Reed; her mother, Masako; and four siblings, Diane, Marianne, Robert and Mark. Services will be held at Senshin Buddhist Temple on Saturday, February 3, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. Attire is casual. In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting donations to Senshin Buddhist Temple, Little Tokyo Service Center and the Center for the Pacific Asian Family.