Day 61: Minoru Yasui, Hood River, Oregon
📌APIA Every Day (61) - Minoru Yasui, born in Hood River, Oregon, in 1916, was a distinguished civil rights leader and lawyer who served as the director of Denver's Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations. Yasui was one of the first Japanese Americans to earn a degree from the University of Oregon Law School and the first Japanese American member of the Oregon Bar. His career led him to work at the Japanese Consulate in Chicago until the Pearl Harbor incident in 1941, prompting his resignation.
On March 28, 1942, Yasui contested a military curfew imposed on Japanese Americans in Portland to test the legality of the orders. Despite Judge Alger Fee declaring the orders unconstitutional for American citizens, Yasui and other Japanese Americans were unjustly classified as enemy aliens. This resulted in Yasui receiving a one-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. The Supreme Court, in 1943, upheld that their rights could be overridden based on race during times of war, deeming Japanese Americans a military threat. Following most of his sentence, Yasui was later sent to the Minidoka camp in Idaho [APIA Every Day 32] under Executive Order 9066 until his release in 1944.
After his incarceration, Yasui relocated to Denver in 1944, where he continued his legal practice and emerged as a civil rights advocate for Japanese Americans. In 1982, he reopened his case, alleging racial discrimination in the curfew order. Although his indictment was vacated, an evidentiary hearing on racial discrimination was denied. Actively participating in the Japanese American Citizens League's initiatives for governmental redress regarding incarceration in Denver, Yasui served on a mayoral committee from 1946 and assumed the role of director of the Commission on Community Relations in 1967, maintaining the position until his retirement in 1983. Yasui passed away in 1986, the same year his criminal conviction was overturned.
In 2015, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Yasui the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his significant contributions to Japanese American civil rights, making him the first recipient from Oregon. The following year, the Oregon Legislature officially designated March 28 as Minoru Yasui Day, commemorating the day in 1942 when Yasui challenged the military curfew. Additionally, Yasui was immortalized through the naming of Minoru Yasui Plaza, situated in Denver, Colorado, the very building where he dedicated his efforts to Japanese American civil rights. During the building's naming ceremony, Mayor Wellington Webb unveiled a bronze bust of Yasui, further honoring his legacy.
LEARN MORE:
Oregon Encyclopedia: Minoru Yasui (1916-1986)
Columbia Gorge News: Salem Tour Supports 'Minoru Yasui Day’
Desnsho Encyclopedia: Minoru Yasui
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