May — Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month—a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the U. S. May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.
Notable Asian American Lawyers:
artwork courtesy of DiversityStore.com
XX George R. Ariyoshi, (1926-present) was elected the governor of Hawaii in 1974,
and was the first Asian American to be so elected of any state in the U.S.
XX Hiram Fong (1906-2004) was elected as a Republican U.S. Senator from Hawaii in 1959, and was the first Asian American to be so elected of any state
in the U.S. He then went on to become the first Asian American to run for his
party’s nomination for President of the United States in 1964.
XX Herbert Young Cho Choy (1916–2004) was the first Asian American to serve
as a United States federal judge when he was appointed to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the ninth circuit in 1971. He was also the first person of Korean
ancestry to be admitted to the bar in the United States. XX Colleen Hanabusa (1951-present) is president of the Hawaii State Senate
and is the first woman to lead either house in the Hawaii legislature.
XX Joyce Luther Kennard (1941-present) is the longest-serving justice of the Supreme Court of California. She was born in a Japanese concentration camp in
the province of West Java in Indonesia.
XX Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink ( 1927-2002) was the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, and served for a total of 12 terms. She was also the
first woman elected to Congress from the state of Hawaii, and in 1972 was
the first Asian American to seek the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
XX Mia Francis Yamamoto (1943-present) was born in a Japanese Internment
Camp during WWII. Yamamoto later served in the U.S. Army receiving both an
Army Commendation Medal and a Vietnam Campaign Medal. She currently
serves as co-Chair of the Multi-Cultural Bar Alliance (a coalition of minority,
women’s, and gay and lesbian bar associations).
Korematsu v. United States (1944)
In February of 1942, in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government declared that all people of Japanese ancestry were to be
excluded from the Pacific coast of the United States. Approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were forcibly relocated
to internment camps. Fred Korematsu refused to obey the order to leave his home, and was arrested and convicted. His case was eventually appealed to the US Supreme Court, where the Court ruled that the government’s need to protect against espionage outweighed Korematsu’s rights.
Justice Black argued that compulsory exclusion, though constitutionally suspect, is justified during circumstances of “emergency and peril.” Many
years after this decision, during the 1980s, Congress reassessed the Japanese American Internment, and concluded that military considerations
had not required the removal of Japanese Americans and that the Korematsu decision had been “overruled in the court of history.” In 1998, President Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The heart of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge lies within our people and the many different experiences
and perspectives we share. We recognize, embrace and celebrate our differences and believe we can only
provide our clients with the best possible representation if we reflect the diversity of the clients and
communities we serve.
Get Real . . . Real People. Real Diversity.
eapdlaw.com