May is Asian American month. As a third-generation Japanese American, I am sharing with you some of my family’s history, along with an account of a real Japanese American hero from Oregon who grew up on a small farm in Hood River. Throughout his life, he fought for the civil rights of Japanese Americans and other vulnerable populations.
My family story began with my maternal and fraternal grandparents immigrating from Japan to California. Like so many immigrants, they sought economic and educational opportunities in America. Both families became farmers and raised families in Northern and Southern California. My dad was born in Watsonville, California, and my mom was born in Riverside, California. My dad worked on farms and at a gas station as a youth. He went on to graduate from the University of California at Berkeley and became an accountant for the State of California. My mom became a talented seamstress. I am the youngest of three children; our generation is known as Sansei, or third-generation Japanese American.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, my mom and dad’s families, along with the entire country, suffered tremendous upheaval. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 authorizing the internment of people of Japanese ancestry. Tens of thousands were uprooted all along the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps far from their homes. My mom and her family ended up in Poston, Arizona, in the middle of a dry desert on a Native American reservation surrounded by barbed wire fences and military guards aiming their weapons at them to prevent escape. My mom’s family lost their home, and buried some valuable possessions, which were never recovered.
My father was not interned, but was active duty U.S. Army, stationed in Minnesota, serving in military intelligence. He translated intercepted messages written in Japanese and also taught Japanese to military personnel. While visiting his brother in the internment camp, he was introduced to my mom, who was friends with my dad’s sister-in-law. I sometimes wonder the emotions and hurt my dad must have felt wearing a uniform while visiting family and friends incarcerated because of their ethnicity. After being introduced, their courtship continued through letter writing. After a few months, a proposal came via U.S. mail. My mom took a long train journey to Minnesota where they were married. When she arrived in Minneapolis, she was not aware that there were two train stations. When she got off the train there was no one there to meet her, so she decided to go shopping. Hours later, she discovered there was another station and when she made her way to the station where my dad was waiting, she found him standing impatiently surrounded by spent cigarette butts. Despite the initial miscue, they went on to get married and started a family while stationed at Fort Snelling. I still retain the letters that they wrote to each other over the course of their courtship. Reading these letters provides a real insight to how life was during wartime.
During this tumultuous time, in Portland, a man named Minoru Yasui observed the injustice of the mass incarceration of a group of people based solely on their ethnicity. Yasui was a graduate of the University of Oregon Law School and possibly was the first Japanese American to be accepted by the Oregon Bar. His parents ran a small farm in Hood River. When war broke out between Japan and the U.S., a blanket curfew was established for only people of Japanese descent. Yasui knew this was unconstitutional and purposefully had himself arrested in order to prove to the courts how wrong this was. He served a year in jail fighting for his freedom and was eventually released, only to be sent to an internment camp in Idaho. Yasui was a patriot and, as a ROTC Army reserve officer, he tried to volunteer for the U.S. Army, but was rejected by military bases between Oregon and Illinois due to his ethnicity.
The Oregonian newspaper wrote, “Mr. Yasui never stopped fighting for civil rights. He opened a one-man law office in Portland representing many people of Japanese descent as anti-Japanese sentiment started to rise. His office closed when he, along with tens of thousands of people of Japanese descent, were relocated to internment camps. Mr. Yasui was interned at Minidoka, Idaho, and he described the experience. ‘Japanese Americans had started arriving at the isolated Idaho camp when only the barbed-wire fencing had been finished. They stepped onto the train platform, choking on dust, stunned by the nothingness rolling out before them. I know people who got off the train and cried,’ Yasui said in 1985 when he returned to the Minidoka site.”
After the war, Yasui moved to Denver, where he set up a law office that his daughter Holly would recall as “a proverbial hole-in-the-wall in the heart of downtown Denver’s Skid Row.” Early on, many of his clients were Japanese Americans who had lost everything during their wartime imprisonment. One client gave him a live turkey as payment.
While in Denver, Yasui was active in the community. He assumed leadership positions with the Japanese American Citizens League and became a founding member of the Urban League of Denver. He later served as executive director of the Denver Commission on Community Relations. “Because he had such strong relationships with other minority groups,” writes the National Park Service-backed Densho Encyclopedia, “he was credited with preventing race riots [in Denver] during the turbulent civil-rights era of the late ’60s.
“We are born into this world for a purpose: to make it a better place for our having been there,” he would say.
Yasui was outraged at the treatment of the Japanese Americans, but still was proud, he said, that the men, women, and children imprisoned solely for their ancestry had not been broken by the experience.
“The resiliency of the people [held at Minidoka] could not be overcome by this harsh environment,” he declared.
In 1984, two years before Yasui died at 70, the federal district court in Portland vacated his conviction.
In honor of Minoru Yasui, March 28 was designated as Minoru Yasui Day by the Oregon Legislature. Despite this annual honor, the late “Min” Yasui is not particularly well known in his native state, but his impact has been widely felt.
President Barack Obama awarded Yasui a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, pointing out that “Min never stopped believing in the promise of his country” despite facing dire injustices. “He never stopped fighting for equality and justice for all.” If you are interested in finding out more about Minoru Yasui visit the Minoru Yasui Legacy Project website.
Minoru Yasui’s legacy is a reminder that we should never take our freedom for granted and it requires us to sometimes leave our comfort zone to fight for our freedoms and advocate and support all citizens, particularly in light of recent violence against Asian Americans.