The first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon is one of 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Tuesday. Minoru Yasui was born in Hood River in 1916, the son of Japanese immigrants.
Yasui protested the government's discriminatory policies during World War II and was later placed in an internment camp in Idaho. Later, using his law degree, he pursued reparations for the more than 100-thousand Japanese Americans who were interned. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Yasui lost. He reflected on that time in a 1983 documentary.
Yasui: "I don't think my faith in America has diminished one whit. I think my idealism, a little tired perhaps, but if I were a youngster, 26-years-old, you bet I'd do it again."
Minoru Yasui died in 1986, two years before the U.S. granted reparations to interned Japanese-American families.
Yasui protested the government's discriminatory policies during World War II and was later placed in an internment camp in Idaho. Later, using his law degree, he pursued reparations for the more than 100-thousand Japanese Americans who were interned. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Yasui lost. He reflected on that time in a 1983 documentary.
Yasui: "I don't think my faith in America has diminished one whit. I think my idealism, a little tired perhaps, but if I were a youngster, 26-years-old, you bet I'd do it again."
Minoru Yasui died in 1986, two years before the U.S. granted reparations to interned Japanese-American families.
