Minoru Yasui Day in Denver

The principle of equal justice under the law must be constantly defended; issues like racial profiling, indefinite detention, and due process demand our attention today. That too is Min Yasui's legacy.
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September 10, 2015 is Minoru Yasui Day in Denver, proclaimed by Mayor Hancock to commemorate Yasui's arrival in the Mile-High City in 1944, having been released from the Minidoka concentration camp with a government check for $25. Not the most auspicious start, but Min, as his friends and family called him, was not deterred (actually, I called him Dad, since he was my father). He had a knack for not giving up.

When the U.S. declared war on Japan, President Roosevelt authorized a series of military orders to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. My dad, then a young lawyer, deliberately violated the first of those orders, a curfew, in order to initiate a test case. He knew it was unconstitutional to restrict the freedom of any individual based on ancestry.

He loved telling the story: how he walked the night streets of Portland, Oregon until his feet got tired, so he marched to the police headquarters with the curfew order and his birth certificate in hand and demanded to be arrested. The desk sergeant said "Go home, son. You're going to get into trouble." But my dad insisted and final got thrown into jail.

He spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1943.

In Denver, he passed the bar exam with the highest score of all the candidates in 1945, but was denied entrance because of his criminal conviction. He appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, and won the right to practice law in the state.

Thus began an illustrious (but not lucrative) career in a shabby, cluttered office on Larimer Street in downtown Denver, which at that time was "skid row."

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He continued to fight for justice, against discriminatory Alien Land Laws, and for naturalization rights for immigrants denied U.S. citizenship due to race. He helped found many organizations serving diverse communities: the Urban League, Latin American Research and Service Agency, and Native Americans United. He was scoutmaster of a multi-ethnic Boy Scout troop; on the board of the Red Cross, the Denver Opportunity "War on Poverty," the YMCA; a consultant for the Denver Public Schools. All pro-bono.

In 1959, Mayor Stapleton appointed him to the newly created Commission on Community Relations. He served as Vice-chair and Chair, and in 1967, Mayor Currigan appointed him Executive Director. He initiated and oversaw a plethora of programs: for ethnic and religious minorities, the elderly, children, youth, refugees, etc. He and the Commission are credited with keeping peace in Denver when racial strife exploded into violence in other cities throughout the U.S.

In the 1970s and 80s, he was a leader of the redress movement, a national effort to win reparations and an apology from the government for the incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

I remember a speech he made at the university I was attending; at first I was a little embarrassed by his old-fashioned oratorical style, how the hip young students rolled their eyes and snickered. But little by little they grew silent as his stentorian voice filled the room and his passionate sincerity broke through their radical chic. In the end when he rousingly declared "this shall NEVER happen again!" they gave him a standing ovation.

During this period of working for redress, researchers found documents in the National Archives indicating that government officials falsified evidence in the cases of Minoru Yasui and two other litigants, Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu. This discovery enabled my dad to reopen his case in 1983.

After retiring from his job with the city, he went into action full-blast for redress. He wrote letters to the President and his Cabinet, members of Congress, friends and colleagues with political influence; made thousands of calls and visits, hundreds of speeches and interviews; attended meetings every day, usually several per day. He criss-crossed the country, a lobbying machine set on high drive because he knew his time was limited - and that of his parents' generation, even more so.

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Min Yasui died in 1986, while his re-opened case was on appeal. My mom, True Yasui, continued the appeal, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it.

In 1988, Congress passed and the President signed the Civil Liberties Act, an official apology and reparations of $20,000 for every person imprisoned in the U.S. concentration camps during World War II.

My dad didn't live to see all the fruits of his labor, but he always said his work was not for himself, but for the ideals of American democracy. So victories for our civil rights were his victories, in the end.

The principle of equal justice under the law must be constantly defended; issues like racial profiling, indefinite detention, and due process demand our attention today. That too is Min Yasui's legacy.

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The proclamation of Minoru Yasui Day is part of a Legacy Project that is preparing activities and events to celebrate the centennial of his birth in 2016, minoruyasuitribute.org. More on that in my next post.

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