Biography
Minoru Yasui was the first Japanese-American attorney admitted to the Oregon State Bar and a U.S. Army Reserve second lieutenant. After the issuance of Executive Order 9066 he attempted to test the curfew imposed on Japanese-Americans by deliberately violating it on the evening of March 28, 1942 in Portland and turning himself in at a Portland police station. Convicted in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon (Judge James Alger Fee); sentenced to 1 year in federal custody and a $5,000 fine. Held at the Multnomah County jail in solitary confinement for 9 months and then at Minidoka War Relocation Center. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the curfew conviction in Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115 (1943) (decided same day as Hirabayashi). His conviction was vacated by writ of coram nobis in 1986 shortly before his death. President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2015.
