Southwestern University will host a screening of the documentary “Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice” on campus Thursday, December 7th. This important film directed and co-produced by Holly Yasui and Will Doolittle relates the life history of American hero Minoru (Min) Yasui. Narrated by George Takei, it examines Yasui’s challenge of military orders that led to the forced removal from the West Coast of over 120,000 Japanese Americans 75 years ago and his ongoing fight for justice.

Min Yasui was born and raised in a farming community in Oregon by Japanese immigrant parents and became the first Japanese American attorney in the state. During World War II, Yasui initiated a legal test case by deliberately violating military orders that lead to the incarceration of over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in U.S. War Relocation Authority concentration camps.

He spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him. After the war, he moved to Denver and continued to defend the human and civil rights not only of Japanese Americans but for all Americans including Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, religious minorities, children and youth, elderly, low income and more.

In the 1970s and 80s, Yasui spearheaded the redress movement to win reparations and a formal apology from the government for the injustices against Japanese Americans during World War II. He also reopened his wartime case, and it was in appeal when he died in 1986.

Coincidentally, the screening at Southwestern happens to fall on the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was the predicate cause for the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII that gave rise to Min Yasui’s fight for justice.

We hope you will join us for this important and memorable evening.

SU Event Details

Thursday, December 7th, 2017
6:30 p.m.
Olin Building, Room 105
Free and open to the public

A Q&A session with Holly Yasui, daughter of Minoru Yasui and Peggy Nagae, lead attorney on the law suit, will follow the screening.

Visit http://www.minoruyasuifilm.org/  for more information about the film and Minoru Yasui’s life and legacy.