OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
May 2, 2016
Volume 26 Number 9
May 2, 2016
ISSN: 1094-9453
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TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
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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.
