Specialty Bar SeriesAPABA, 1216 COBJ, Vol. 45, No. 12 Pg. 41
| Author | Lance J. Ream, Jaclyn Cook, J. |
Lance J. Ream, Jaclyn Cook, J.
Minoru Yasui: Lessons of Yesterday for Today
The current political climate is reminiscent of the period of anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1940s. Japanese American Minoru Yasui experienced first-hand the effects of that sentiment and spent the rest of his life fighting for civil rights for all. A look at his efforts provides valuable lessons for attorneys dealing with civil rights issues.
Today, politicians are incorporating anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Muslim, rhetoric into their platforms,1 which creates a political climate reminiscent of the anti-Japanese sentiment of the 1940s. Ironically, just last year, Minoru Yasui posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Yasui was a pioneer in the Colorado legal community who fought against the anti-Japanese laws of his time and dedicated his life to ensuring civil rights for all people, regardless of their background. With xenophobic sentiments on the rise, an examination of Yasui’s life provides valuable lessons, particularly for attorneys concerned with protecting civil rights.
The Making of a Leader2
Yasui was born on October 19, 1916, in Hood River, Oregon. After graduating as his high school’s valedictorian, he enrolled in the University of Oregon, where he was an ROTC cadet and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1937. Yasui then became the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon School of Law and was admitted to practice in Oregon. However, unable to find employment there, Yasui accepted a position as a consular attaché for the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago in 1940.
Yasui’s time with the Consulate General of Japan was short lived. After Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Yasui resigned so he could return to Oregon and volunteer for the U.S. Army. He received orders to report to Fort Vancouver in Washington but, upon reporting, was rejected due to his Japanese heritage.
Unshaken, Yasui returned to Oregon. This time, he opened his own law practice in Portland to help people of Japanese descent during the chaos that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yasui was the only practicing attorney of Japanese ancestry in Oregon during this time of increasing anti-Japanese sentiment, and the Japanese American community kept him busy with requests for legal services.
The Yasui Test Case
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which stated:
[B]y virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.3
This Order allowed Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, Military Commander of the Western Defense Command, to issue Public Proclamation No. 3, which imposed travel restrictions and a curfew for German, Italian, and Japanese nationals.4 While the Proclamation applied to American citizens of Japanese descent as well, it did not apply to American citizens of German or Italian descent. Viewing this order as unlawful discrimination based on race and thus a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, Yasui challenged these restrictions.
On March 28, 1942, Yasui deliberately violated the Proclamation by walking the streets of Portland after curfew. He approached a police officer, insisting that he be arrested. Despite his showing the officer a copy of the Proclamation, the officer refused. Yasui then went to a police station, where he was arrested and would spend the weekend in jail for violating the curfew.
On June 12, 1942, Yasui’s trial commenced before Judge Fee in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Because the facts of the curfew violation were not in dispute, the trial centered on Yasui’s loyalty to the United States. The prosecution focused on Yasui’s employment with the Japanese Consulate and statements that he had made during prior enemy alien hearings against his father. Judge Fee took an active role in the prosecution’s case, himself asking questions about Yasui’s upbringing and his understanding of Shintoism, which was Japan’s national religion, despite the fact that Yasui testified he was a Methodist. Following the one-day trial, Judge Fee reserved ruling to consider the evidence.
While awaiting ruling, Yasui was detained at the Portland Assembly Center with other persons of Japanese descent pending their relocation pursuant to the Proclamation. He was eventually sent to the Minidoka Relocation Camp in Idaho until Judge Fee issued his decision. On November 16, 1942, Judge Fee ruled that the curfew order, as applied to American citizens, was unconstitutional. However, he found that Yasui was not a U.S. citizen due to his past actions, particularly his work for the Japanese Consulate, which the court concluded effectively constituted a renunciation of his citizenship. Thus, as an “alien” of Japanese ancestry, Yasui had violated a lawful regulation. Judge Fee found him guilty, imposed the maximum fine of $5,000, and sentenced Yasui to the maximum one-year sentence. Yasui spent the next nine months in solitary confinement, where he was allowed to bathe only once per month, while awaiting his appeal.
Yasui’s case was certified by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. On the Ninth Circuit’s certification, the Supreme Court also accepted direct review of Gordon Hirabayashi’s contemporaneous appeal from his conviction for violating both the curfew and reporting orders.5 In Hirabayashi v. United States, the issues were whether the curfew restriction was a n unconstitutional delegation of power by Congress to the military and “whether the restriction unconstitutionally discriminated between citizens of Japanese ancestry and those of other ancestries in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”6 Hirabayashi, like Yasui, was an American citizen who knowingly violated the curfew restriction.7 Deferring to General DeWitt’s supposed military judgment and resting its analysis on race, innuendo, and speculation, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the curfew order in Hirabayashi’s case, finding that the order was within the...
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