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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (May 2, 2016)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER May 2, 2016 Volume 26 Number 9 May 2, 2016 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2016. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n Polo Correspondence: The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): Half year: $14 Full year: $24 Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): Half year: $24 Full year: $40 Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): Half year: $40 Full year: $75 Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): Half year: $100 Full year: $180 Two years: $280 NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. Celebrating civil-rights pioneer Minoru Yasui Honoring civil-rights activist Peggy Nagae ood River-raised, Portland lawyer Minoru Yasui did everything right. Of course he did. He met his immigrant elders’ super-duper expectations of studying hard, of working late. He did good for his family and his community, he did right by their elegant ancestors and our blessed America. Min completed U of O’s ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps); he earned a U.S. Army Infantry second lieutenant com- mission. He then earned a doctorate in law. There wasn’t a thing Min Yasui should’ve or even could’ve done different. There was no wrong in being born Asian American in 1916; his family had no part in Imperial Japan attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941; there’s no fault in being a lawyer believing in the United States Constitution. Indeed, Min Yasui did not back away, he didn’t deny any of these truths. Not ever. Less than a week after the tragic bombing of the U.S. Naval station at Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested then released Mr. Yasui. Our government suspected he was an enemy alien. The feds confiscated his property. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the removal of more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their cozy homes, from their vigorous businesses. Portland’s robust Japantown vanished in three weeks. On March 28, 1942, edgy lawyer Min Yasui deliberately stayed out late, breaking the military-imposed nighttime curfew ordinance targeting only Nikkei Portlanders. He turned himself in. He was again released on bail. When the federal internment authorities ordered him to report for removal to one of many internment camps for Japanese Americans, Min Yasui refused. He told them he was going to break another law, the one prohibiting his ethnic community from travel, by going back to his family’s Hood River farm. H Making a better and bigger Us Seventy-five years later, every student of Anglo-American Constitutional Law reveres the Supreme Court case of Yasui v. the United States of America (1943). We love the man, we’re awed by what he did to the rule of law. By what he gave to democracy. Three quarters of a century after Mr. Yasui’s stubborn refusal to get off the sidewalk, after his ignoring travel prohibitions, after his “Peggy leads with her heart. She consistently and selflessly deflected credit to everyone else on every team she was on. But these honors for Mr. Yasui would NEVER have happened without Peggy’s vision, her determination and leadership.” -- “Voices of Change” award committee refusal to report for imprisonment, President Barack H. Obama posthumously awarded his Ore- gon family the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. On the evening of May 6, 2016, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) will present the Minoru Yasui “Voices of Change” award to local lawyer and national civil-rights activist, inspiring lecturer and prolific writer, Peggy Nagae. No one is more deserving. Boring-born and raised Ms. Nagae was lead attorney in the decades-long coram nobis effort to overturn Mr. Yasui’s 1942 criminal convictions — prosecutions for him being Japanese American. She later led national efforts which ultimately led to Mr. Yasui’s Presidential Medal of Freedom award, and then to the congressional declaration, passed unanimously in both Oregon chambers, making March 28 Minoru Yasui Day, in perpetuity. Continued on page 7 Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.