MEMORIALS AND MEMORY
By Gil Asakawa
March 6, 1999

Minoru Yasui's name is preserved forever. At a recent ceremony, the civil rights leader was memorialized as the namesake of the very building he worked in for years, as director of what is now called the city of Denver's Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations.

The ceremony was attended by a large contingent of Japanese Americans and Yasui's family, and Denver's Mayor Wellington Webb, among others, spoke eloquently about Yasui's contributions to the civil liberties of all people. At the end of the ceremony, the Mayor unveiled a bust of Yasui, who died in 1986, in the building's lobby. Yasui was one of three Japanese American heroes (the others were Fred Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi) who first fought in the courts the injustice of the Japanese American internment during World War II.

Born in 1916 in Hood River, Oregon, and a graduate of the University of Oregon Law School, Yasui was working for the Japanese Consulate in Chicago when Pearl Harbor was bombed. The next day he returned to Oregon, and began representing Japanese Americans. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law, paving the way for internment. That April, in order to set a legal precedent, Yasui purposely ignored a Portland curfew, demanding to be arrested.

He was eventually sent to Minidoka internment camp in Idaho, and spent part of the time in solitary confinement. He fought the charges all the way to the Supreme Court -- and lost his case. But he never stopped fighting to right the wrong of internment. In the late '70s he became involved with the Japanese American Citizens League's efforts to gain governmental redress for internment, a battle that was finally won after his death.

It's worth noting that Yasui's life wasn't just focused on the experience of Japanese Americans. He came to Denver in 1944, and served as early as 1946 on a Denver mayor's committee which became the Commission on Community Relations. He became director of the commission in 1967, during a time of turbulence throughout the U.S., and ran it until his retirement in 1983. At the building dedication ceremony, Bill Hosokawa, one of the speakers who had known Min since childhood, reminded people that it was largely because of Yasui's pioneering community network efforts that Denver was one of the few major American cities which didn't suffer race-related riots and civil unrest in the late '60s.

I never met Min Yasui, but now I feel as if I knew him. I certainly know of his accomplishments, and now know that others who walk into the Minoru Yasui Plaza at 303 W. Colfax Ave. will know that he had a great impact on the city he loved.

That's the power of a memorial -- it reminds the future of the legacy of the past. And I can think of hardly a more appropriate memorial to someone of Yasui's accomplishments than to name a building after him.

Which is why, the week after the Yasui dedication, I raised the question to the board of the Mile-Hi JACL chapter to donate $1,000 -- which for us, a small chapter in terms of membership and corporate support, is a significant chunk of our finances -- to the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation.

Seeing Min Yasui's name forever gracing the edifice of a city and county building -- the first Asian American to have this honor -- was a powerful statement to me that this man made a difference in his community.

And in the larger American community, the Japanese American Memorial would be an equally powerful statement, that our community served patriotically during WWII but also that we were wronged by our own government. A plot of land has been set aside for the memorial, just north of the Capitol Building. An artist has already designed a striking crane. And the memorial foundation has undertaken a national campaign to raise the over $8 million needed to bring the project to fruition.

I'm usually too much of a cynic to believe that a memorial can affect people in any way other than mere nostalgia, but I have to admit, I think this memorial is important. It's important to me as a third-generation Japanese American, especially because no one in my family was affected by internment. It's important to me because the memorial would remind others like me, who grow up with no idea of the pain an entire generation suffered.

I urge everyone who has any interest in the history -- and the future -- of the Japanese American community to send in any amount you can afford to the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation, at 1920 N Street NW, Suite 660, Washington DC, 20036.

I'd bet anything that if Min Yasui were alive today, he'd be asking you to do the same.

You can read more about the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation at its Web site: http://njamf.org and learn more about Min Yasui at the Auraria Library Archives of Denver, Colorado, at http://www.cudenver.edu/public/library/archives/yasui/yasui.html

Gil Asakawa is a third-generation Japanese American who has lived in Denver since 1972, and he is the president of the Mile-Hi Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and a board member of the Japan America Society of Colorado. He spends way too much time surfing the Web. His "Nikkei View" column is posted online weekly at:

http://home earthlink.net/~gillers/nikkeiview.html