Minoru Yasui
Minoru Yasui was a Japanese American civil rights attorney born in Hood River, Oregon, to immigrant parents. Educated at the University of Oregon, he earned degrees in both arts and law, and briefly served in the Army Reserve. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Yasui faced severe discrimination against Japanese Americans, including the unjust imprisonment of his father. In a bold act of civil disobedience, Yasui violated a military curfew aimed at Japanese Americans, leading to his arrest and imprisonment. His case drew attention and was ultimately taken to the Supreme Court, which recognized him as a citizen despite his earlier forfeiture of citizenship for work purposes. After being interned during the war, Yasui continued to advocate for civil rights, extending his efforts beyond the Japanese American community to include African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics. He was actively involved in civic organizations and played a significant role in the Japanese American Citizens League, which pushed for reparations for wartime injustices. Yasui's lifelong dedication to civil rights left a lasting impact, and he passed away in Denver in 1986.
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Subject Terms
Minoru Yasui
Lawyer and social reformer
- Born: October 19, 1916
- Birthplace: Hood River, Oregon
- Died: November 12, 1986
- Place of death: Denver, Colorado
Minoru Yasui was a Japanese American lawyer and civil rights activist. During the height of World War II, at the age of twenty-six, he gained international notoriety for deliberately violating the wartime curfew established for Japanese Americans in Portland, Oregon. His actions magnified the civil rights debate surrounding the constitutionality of wartime internment and prosecution of Americans from different cultural backgrounds.
Area of achievement: Social issues
Early Life
Minoru Yasui was the third son born to Shidzuyo and Masuo Yasui in Hood River, Oregon. His father and mother were both born in Japan and came to the United States in 1903 and 1912, respectively. His father was a successful agriculturalist, businessman, and prominent member of the city’s community and its Japanese Methodist church. Yasui’s parents placed great emphasis on maintaining the cultural traditions of their native Japan, as their son would do throughout his life and work.
Yasui earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1937, supplementing his academics with Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) training and earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve upon graduation. He graduated from the University of Oregon Law School in 1939 and shortly thereafter passed the state bar exam.
In 1940 Yasui officially forfeited his American citizenship in order to accept a job as a clerk at the Japanese Consulate in Chicago, Illinois. In December of 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. The attacks created a nationwide mistrust of Japanese Americans, which affected Yasui immediately. He returned to Hood River to find that his father had been imprisoned as an enemy alien. When Yasui attempted to report for his army assignment he was ordered off a military base and deemed unfit for service, despite his officer commission.
Life’s Work
Like many Japanese Americans, Yasui was quick to regard the notion that American citizens could so suddenly be considered second-class citizens, or even as potential enemies, as unconstitutional. Late on the night of March 28, 1942, Yasui entered a Portland police station and demanded to be arrested under violation of Military Proclamation No. 3—a curfew that required all Japanese Americans to be in their homes after 8:00 p.m.
Yasui spent months in jail awaiting trial before a judge determined that the law had in fact applied to Yasui, since he had previously forfeited his US citizenship and was thus an enemy alien. He was sentenced to nine months in solitary confinement. In 1943 the Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s designation of Yasui as an enemy alien, because he had forfeited his citizenship as a diplomatic formality for employment. Yasui was removed from solitary confinement and in 1943 was sent to an internment camp, where he stayed until 1944.
At the end of the war Yasui established a private law practice in Denver, Colorado, where he remained a prominent civil rights litigator. His work in Colorado expanded his civil rights efforts from the plight of Japanese Americans to include work with African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics. He also fought diligently against commercial interests eager to develop Denver’s oldest residential communities. He died in Denver in 1986 at the age of seventy.
Significance
In addition to his work in civil rights litigation, Minoru Yasui served prominently in nearly a hundred Denver-area civic organizations during his lifetime. He was a major participant in the Japanese American Citizens League, which sought reparations for the harsh treatment of their citizenry during World War II. The League would play a key role in the conception of the United States Civil Liberties Act, passed by Congress in 1988.
Bibliography
Aitken, Robert, and Marilyn Aitken. “Japanese American Internment.” Litigation 37.2 (2011): 59–70. Print. Discusses four court cases filed by Japanese Americans against the internment during World War II, including Yasui’s court case.
Ng, Wendy. Japanese American Internment During World War II: A History and Reference Guide. New York: Greenwood, 2001. 78–82. Print. Includes biographical information on Minoru Yasui.
“Notable Oregonians: Minoru Yasui—Civil Rights Leader.” Oregon Blue Book. Oregon State Archives, Jan. 2011. Web. 3 Mar. 2012. One-page overview of Yasui’s life, with links to other resources.
Yasui, Minoru. “Minidoka.” And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. Ed. John Tateishi. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1984. Print. Presents Yasui’s account of his life, work, and imprisonment.