Minoru Yasui was the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon’s law school. He was working as a lawyer in Portland when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 that allowed the military to impose a curfew on Japanese Americans and relocate them to internment camps. On March 28, 1942, Masui challenged the curfew by walking in downtown Portland after 8pm to get himself intentionally arrested. His case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost.
In honor of Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon on March 28, we listen back to a conversation we recorded on Nov. 24, 2015, with Joan Emerson Yasui, a niece of Minoru Yasui, the same day her uncle was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Joan Emerson Yasui died in 2016.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Today is Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon. Yasui grew up in Hood River. He was the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon Law School. On March 28, 1942 – meaning 83 years ago today – he bravely challenged the military curfew that was imposed on Japanese Americans by intentionally getting arrested. He then took his legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost. That ruling stands to this day.
Yasui died in 1986, but 10 years ago, President Barack Obama posthumously granted him the highest civilian honor the government bestows: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We’re going to listen back now to a conversation we had in 2015, the day that honor was bestowed. We talked to Joan Emerson Yasui, one of Minoru’s nieces.
I started by asking if she could tell us about the laws that her uncle challenged in 1942 and 1943.
Joan Emerson Yasui: There was a curfew put on Germans, Italians and Japanese Americans when the war broke out. And my uncle felt that it was important to challenge the government’s wish to confine people within five miles of their homes, that it was not constitutional. And the one thing about Uncle Min that was really important to know is that as an attorney, he always told me at least – and I was quite close to him – that he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. He took that very, very seriously. So I’m sure in his mind that’s what he was doing when he challenged that curfew. It wasn’t just, oh, I think I’ll challenge that and maybe I’ll win. It was that he was bound to do that. He had to do that. He felt that.
Miller: Now I’ve read that he actually tried to find somebody else to take on as a client to test these laws, to basically perform an act of civil disobedience. And he couldn’t find anyone, so he had to do it himself. How did he go about breaking the law and trying to be caught for it?
Emerson Yasui: Yes, well, I think he asked a number of Japanese Americans who, by that time, had been terrified by all that was going on. Mostly, people said, “oh no, I can’t do that.” So Uncle Min said to his secretary, “well, I’m going to walk the streets of Portland, try to get arrested and test this curfew law myself.” The secretary could sort of follow. He would keep in touch with her … Now, I’m on such and such a street, and so forth.
He even found some policemen and he said, “I’m of Japanese ancestry and I’m not supposed to be out here. Could you arrest me?” And it was like they weren’t up on things and they didn’t know what was going on. And “come on, son, go home.” It’s, “what are you doing out at this hour?” Finally, he did turn himself in at the police station, got himself arrested and spent time in jail.
Miller: Where do you think the bravery to do that came from?
Emerson Yasui: Well, I was thinking about that myself. I think my grandparents were very unique in that my grandmother was college educated in Japan, which was very unusual for that part of that time in history. And his father was also very principled. He was a real admirer of Jeffersonian democracy. That’s why he came here, amongst other things, that he had heard of this thing called democracy, didn’t much care for what was going on in Japan at that time and wanted to see how this worked. So he came over. He came over here legally and he settled in Hood River, which reminded him quite a bit of Japan.
My family put a huge value on education, so you will find that all of my uncle Min’s brothers and sisters were highly educated people and in the professions. With that kind of education comes a certain degree of confidence, I think. And I would still argue for more education for kids today because I have seen that work that way, that you become very confident in yourself and what you’ve learned.
Miller: Eventually, your uncle Min, as you call him, spent nine months in solitary confinement in Multnomah County.
Emerson Yasui: He did.
Miller: Did he ever tell you about what that time was like?
Emerson Yasui: It was pretty awful. Because his family was taken away to the so-called “internment camps,” he didn’t have family to visit him.
Miller: You say “so-called.” What do you call them?
Emerson Yasui: In the strongest words, I suppose you could call them like concentration camps.
Miller: And that’s where you were born, right?
Emerson Yasui: I was, yeah. So I think that it was very difficult for people in those days to come to terms with all that was going on in the world. I mean, it was scary and it was not what they had that they had worked for … Issei is the first generation and Nisei is the second. And those were adults then and they just couldn’t put this in some kind of context that made any kind of sense to them. So most of them just felt, well, if this is what the government is asking us to do, probably we should go along with it, obey, because we don’t really know what’s going to happen to us. Are we gonna be taken out and shot if we don’t know or what?
Miller: But as as has become clear from history that the context that your uncle put this in was the U.S. Constitution, which he had studied. And for him, it was very clear that the laws that were passed, these wartime laws were unconstitutional. He fought all the way to the highest court in the land and the highest court said, “No, you’re wrong. This is war and these laws are constitutional.” For decades, he tried to get that case essentially reheard in various legal ways and he was never successful.
What did it mean to him that he never had the highest court say to him, “we were wrong”?
Emerson Yasui: It meant a lot to him. He was a firm believer in the Constitution of the United States and the three parts of the government. And he really believed that he was going to be proven to be correct. It did not turn out that way. One of the reasons was that he graduated near the top of his class, if not the top, at the U of O Law School, but he couldn’t get a job in a regular law firm after he graduated, I’m going to say because of the prejudice during that time.
Therefore, he had to get a job. So he took a job with the consulate of Japan in Chicago, writing speeches, welcoming guests, that kind of thing. And the United States government said, “Because you chose to work for a foreign country like that, you lost your citizenship. You’re no longer a citizen of the United States.” And that was one thing. And the other thing they said was that the government can take away your rights during wartime if it’s deemed a necessity, and he really argued against that. He didn’t see anything in the Constitution that supported that.
Miller: It’s worth pointing out that the day after Pearl Harbor, he immediately resigned from that job at the consulate in Japan and came back to the Northwest. What do you think this honor would have meant for your uncle, this Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor that the president gives?
Emerson Yasui: I don’t think he would have seen it in terms of a great honor for himself. He would have been overjoyed, and it just breaks my heart that he’s not here to receive this honor himself. He would have seen it as a vindication for what they had tried to do to protect the Constitution. He always thought in those terms, that this is my country. This is a country I was born in. This is a country I love. The Constitution is so wonderful. I tried to protect it. They must think that I did that. I’m sure that’s what he would have thought.
Miller: Although I can’t help but come back to what you mentioned – the three branches of government. During his lifetime, he was able, through a lot of hard work and lobbying, to get the Congress to officially apologize and give some kinds of reparations to some people. And other chief executives have apologized before, but you could see today’s honor as a very public, very official apology and acknowledgement that what went on was wrong. But he never got … and we still haven’t seen the judicial branch saying we got this wrong.
Emerson Yasui: That’s right. That’s right. They didn’t ever say that and that was his hope. I mean, that’s why he kept fighting. He never gave up, my uncle, and he really believed that the stance he took would be proven to be correct. And in his lifetime that did not happen.
Miller: What have you taken from him in terms of lessons as a niece?
Emerson Yasui: I was close to the man and I just loved him. He was a unique and distinctive personality. He was kind of a protége, I suppose, of Wayne Morse and therefore his public speaking was very dynamic like that. He also had the mustache. I don’t know how much of that really relates to what he did. But he was a such a principled human being, absolutely principled. He said, “I know that I’m right. I know this is what we must do to protect the Constitution.” And he used to tell me, if the rights of even one American are abrogated, then the rights of all are challenged and made less, so be careful about that. He also believed that citizens should challenge things that they thought were wrong, and don’t just sit there and look blank. I mean, try to improve things. That was something very basic.
He was a humorous man, lots of fun and liked to travel, liked to eat, and was always cheerful. You asked about his time in the county jail. I don’t think he was cheerful then, but somehow he saw that as part of the package that you had to go through, and he was willing to do that. And as you know, he wasn’t allowed showers. He wasn’t allowed to cut his fingernails. One of his little pinky nails, he always kept long to remind him of those days in jail.
Miller: For the rest of his life?
Emerson Yasui: All his life.
Miller: Wow.
Emerson Yasui: Yeah, yeah.
Miller: It was striking that last week, two days after the White House announced your uncle would get this award, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia wrote in a statement about Syrian refugees. He said, “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to Americans from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.” He added at the end of this note, “Better safe than sorry.”
What do you think your uncle would have made of today’s debate?
Emerson Yasui: I think Uncle Min was very understanding of why people thought the way they did, number one. Whether he liked it or not is another thing, but he would understand that. But he would have pointed out that Americans of Japanese ancestry are American citizens. Japanese were American citizens who got put away, but what we’re talking about in terms of refugees are a kind of a different case in that they are not yet American citizens. I have listened to news reports and stuff, and they say that the refugees are going to be completely vetted before they’re admitted to this country. And being a refugee does not connote that you’re a terrorist. I mean, it should not. Some people might be, but that’s where the vetting comes in. But I’m sure Uncle Min would say that it’s slightly different, but nonetheless you have to use your compassion and humanity. It’s happened to a lot of groups of people in history, and it’s not good to continue the suffering.
Miller: Joan Emerson Yasui, congratulations on your late uncle’s behalf and thanks very much for coming in.
Emerson Yasui: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Miller: Joan Emerson Yasui died in 2016. We spoke in 2015 on the day when her uncle, Minoru Yasui, was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In fact, he wasn’t the only Northwesterner to receive that honor that day. Billy Frank Jr., a member of the Nisqually Tribe, was another posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal. Frank was arrested more than 50 times during protests for tribal fishing rights. He helped bring about the landmark Boldt Decision, a ruling that said 20 Western Washington tribes are entitled to half of the annual fish harvest in their area. He died in 2014.
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