To defend the Constitution, a young lawyer did the unthinkable. He walked.
March 28, 1942: Minoru Yasui deliberately violated the military curfew in Portland to challenge its legality.
On the night of March 28, 1942, Minoru Yasui walked the streets of Portland after 8 p.m., violating a military curfew that applied only to people of Japanese ancestry. He was not out casually.
He was trying to get arrested.
Yasui was 25 years old, a lawyer, and a U.S. Army Reserve officer. He had been born in Hood River, Oregon, graduated from the University of Oregon, and became the first Japanese American attorney admitted to the Oregon State Bar.
After Pearl Harbor, he tried to serve his country. He reported for duty and was turned away. He tried again, and was turned away again. Each time, the reason was the same: his ancestry. Around the same time, his father was arrested by the FBI and held as a potential threat.
Minoru Yasui walked the streets of Portland after curfew on March 28, 1942, deliberately violating the order to force a legal challenge.
Minoru Yasui as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves. After Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for duty, but was turned away.
Masuo and Shidzuyo Yasui with their daughter Kay, c1914. They were farmers. Years later, Masuo Yasui would be arrested by the FBI after Pearl Harbor.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
February 19, 1942 — Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, setting in motion the mass incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII
Courtesy of the University of Washington Press
Civilian Exclusion Orders posted in 1942. These notices imposed curfews and led to the forced removal of Japanese Americans.
Portland police officer, c. 1940. In 1942, police were tasked with enforcing military curfews targeting people of Japanese ancestry. But enforcement was inconsistent.
Becoming A Test Case
Yasui decided to open a law practice to support the Japanese American community. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The military imposed curfews and began restricting the lives of Japanese Americans.
Yasui decided to challenge the order in court.
He set out that night intending to be arrested. He walked for hours, but no one stopped him. He approached a police officer and asked to be arrested, but the officer simply told him to go home.
So Yasui instead went to the police station and insisted on being arrested. This time, they obliged.
The Court’s Decision
At trial, the judge ruled that Yasui had forfeited his U.S. citizenship. He was convicted and sentenced to one year in jail. While waiting for his appeal, he was held in solitary confinement for months.
His case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court acknowledged that Yasui was a U.S. citizen, but still upheld the curfew. Decided the same day as Hirabayashi v. United States, the ruling affirmed that the government could restrict the rights of its own citizens during wartime.
Yasui was released and later sent into the incarceration camps.
After the war, he moved to Denver, where he passed the bar in June 1945 with the highest scores of all the candidates. However, his wartime criminal record came back to affect him, and he was initially denied admission to the state’s bar.
Judge James Alger Fee, who presided over Minoru Yasui’s trial and ruled that he had forfeited his U.S. citizenship.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho. One of the camps where Japanese Americans, including Minoru Yasui, were incarcerated.
Minoru Yasui in a Denver courtroom, 1964. Years after his conviction, he continued his work in law and civil rights.
Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hamanaka
Minoru Yasui receives the Nisei of the Biennium Award. After the war, he continued fighting for civil rights across multiple communities.
Beyond One Community
After an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, he was finally admitted to practice law. He opened his practice in postwar Japantown, but his work extended beyond the Japanese American community.
He was a founding member of the Urban League of Denver in 1946 and helped found the Latin American Research and Service Agency and Denver Native Americans United.
Because of his cross-cultural advocacy, Yasui was appointed to Denver’s Community Relations Commission in 1959 and later became its executive director.
He Fought Until The End
Meanwhile, Yasui continued to fight his wartime conviction for the rest of his life.
In 1986, his conviction was vacated after it was revealed that the government had suppressed evidence. But the case was not fully resolved.
He died later that year, on November 12, 1986, while his case was still being contested.
Minoru Yasui walked to defend the Constitution. The Constitution that did not protect him.
In November 2015, his family was invited to the White House, where Barack Obama posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. It was late, but better than never.
Courtesy of the Yasui family
Minoru Yasui spent decades fighting for Japanese Americans’ constitutional rights, including his own.
Minoru Yasui, c1982. More than 40 years after his conviction, he was still fighting it.
A bust of Minoru Yasui at Denver’s Sakura Square