Dale Minami's Speech Accepting the ABA Thurgood Marshall Award
(August 9, 2003)

Good evening everybody. I stand before you profoundly humbled and honored that my name can be associated with someone like Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was a hero to me, he was an intellectual warrior with indomitable courage, a commitment to an ideal, and he was an inspiration.

My father was born in 1911; he died in 1987. My mother was born in 1914, sixteen years after Thurgood Marshall was born. My parents grew up before television, before jet planes, before cell phones, the microwave, or aluminum foil. They were born at a time when by law their immigrant parents were ineligible to become citizens in their own land, where by law their relatives in Japan and Chinese living in China could not immigrate to this country because of the law. They lived when Jim Crow ruled the South, when Negroes were being lynched, when Latinos were a tiny minority in California, when Native Americans lived mostly on reservations, and most people never heard of someone who was either gay or lesbian.

Like 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, they were forced into prison camps during World War II - without charges, without notice of charges, without trial, without attorneys. Their crime - was being of Japanese ancestry. Several courageous men stood up to challenge those orders; we know of the one that I represented Fred Korematsu. I helped coordinate the cases with the legal team of two other people, Min Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi. They took their cases to Supreme Court, and they lost. The law had failed them [my parents] again.

My parents were born in the United States - we call them “Nisei” - second generation. They survived the depression. My father survived four wars and my mother is surviving through the fifth. Like other immigrants, my parents had a dream for us - to become educated, to survive, to give them grandchildren, to live with the dignity and equality all Americans should enjoy.

They lived to see their sons excel. Dr. Roland Minami, my oldest brother, a doctor and the kindest person I know. The man who taught me how to think, how to be curious. My middle brother who received a baseball scholarship, that’s Neil Minami, to UCSB (University of California at Santa Barbara). He had a baseball scholarship, he was the jock of the family, but he got a masters degree and became a teacher and became a coach. He kicked my ass regularly - okay “occasionally” - but he taught me how to be tough, mentally and physically.

Both of my older brothers married and dutifully had children. Each had a boy and a girl. The third son, of course, was not so dutiful. He argued alot with everybody, ran away from home several times, usually just around the corner, got lost on trips, he broke a lot of stuff, he really ticked off the whole family on several occasions. And he moved away to Bezerkley to go to law school, and he embraced the emerging civil rights movement, the counterculture movement, and the anti-Vietnam War movement. And irony of ironies, he became a lawyer.

I look back now and with the wisdom of age I realize that all those little acts of rebellion and disobedience were really not my fault. I was genetically and environmentally predisposed to act the way I act. It’s that table’s fault right there. My family is here tonight – my brother who taught me how to think, my brother who taught me how to fight. My nieces, Krista and Lanie, are here. My nephew Brian and his significant other, Mikki, are here. Diane from Torrance is here. And my mother (89 years old) who raised us, who loved us, who taught us values, who taught us character. She’s here. Would you please recognize them for they are part of my spirit.

My parents both lived to celebrate my passing the bar and the beginning of a law career. Only it was not quite the career my dad had hoped for. He wanted me to come back to Los Angeles to work for the government, to have a secure job and a regular paycheck. Get married, have a boy and a girl. Instead, I fell in with the wrong crowd; wild-eyed, crazy law students [like Mike Lee], lawyers -- Ken Kawaichi who is a judge, just retired -- was one of those, who wanted to use the law to live up to the rhetoric of the Constitution of equal justice for all. So we all formed a non-profit, community-interest law corporation to provide services to low-income Asian Pacific Americans; that was the Asian Law Caucus, it survives today.

I eventually moved into private practice to my father’s profound relief, but the transition, as he didn't know, was from a non-profit community interest law firm to a non-profit private practice. But somehow we survived, and sometimes just barely. Over the years, some partners and attorneys in our firm came and went. And as you practicing attorneys know, you simply cannot devote time to pro bono activities, to civil rights activities, to community or political activities, without associates and partners who support you. They never questioned the time I took away to give speeches, to do work in the public interest. They never questioned the time in one month I made a total of $129.62. And I would like to thank them now for they are part of my and our accomplishments. They are - Garrick Lew, Don Tamaki, Brad Yamauchi, Minette Kwok, Roy Ikeda, Jack Lee, William Kwong and Lisa Duarte, would you please stand up. And the associates at our table, would you please stand up. And my assistant who has saved me many times, Brenda Jackson, please stand up.

I saw my mother cry openly just once. It was during the Redress movement led by Japanese Americans who were seeking an apology and reparations for what happened during World War II. I remember talking to her and she was talking about getting sent to the Santa Anita racetracks where they were housed temporarily. My family went there, they had to live in horse stalls. And when my mother got there, what she saw was horse manure on the walls; she saw hay and dirt on the ground. She cried remembering such a humiliating and dismal experience. As Fred Korematsu once told the court at our [coram nobis hearing before Judge Marilyn Hall Patel]: "The horse stalls were made for horses, not for people."

But she, like many Japanese Americans, were deeply shamed for her exile. She was branded as a traitor like other Japanese Americans, and herded into these prison camps. But she lived to see the day when Japanese Americans started that journey for Redress - a journey inspired by African Americans, and every Asian American owes a debt to those African Americans and Latinos who led the civil rights movement. They ignited our passion, they gave us the courage to go forward and ask for something that we should have asked for a long time ago. And during that inspired journey, the Redress Movement enlisted people of all colors on this road to redemption.

We started the Fred Korematsu case at about the same time the Redress Movement began. We had the most cohesive and talented group of attorneys I’ve ever worked with; some of them here today but I would like to name some of them who are not here as well: Lori Bannai, Ed Chen is here, Debbie Ching is here, Karen Kai is here, Dennis Hayashi, Bob Rusky, Don Tamaki, Eric Yamamoto, Leigh-Ann Miyasato, and a surprise guest, Peter Irons, who found all the evidence is also here. So please stand and give them applause. They are certainly a part of Thurgood Marshall’s legacy.

My mom read about our case (Korematsu v. United States) in the papers when Judge Marilyn Hall Patel overturned Fred Korematsu’s [40 year-old] conviction. It was the first court decision to reject the United States Supreme Court findings in 1943 and 1944. She found that no military necessity existed to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. She found that government lawyers deliberately lied to the United States Supreme Court [in 1944 when considering the issue of the exclusion and detention that the government had suppressed, altered and destroyed critical evidence when the Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui cases were being heard] and that racism was a factor in the decision. It is a case that I am most proud of, a case my mother is very proud of, and it is a case that Justice Thurgood Marshall would have loved.

My mother experienced the massive racial profiling of a minority group, the silence of those who should have spoken out, the utter disregard for civil rights at a time of crisis in our nation - an intentional subversion of democracy. And I today I see a repeat of those events - the racial profiling of racial, ethnic, and religious groups - Arab and Muslim Americans who are now the Japanese Americans of the year 2001-2003. I see a war on dissent and an insidious assault on our civil liberties. The Patriot Act I and II, which may be introduced soon, eviscerates the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution, those same portions of the Bill of Rights that were denied to Japanese Americans during World War II.

While I recognize that terrorism is a terrible scourge on this country, the loss of civil rights is certainly no less a drain on our nation’s soul. We're not so naive to believe that we don't need national security, we know we need national security in these uncertain times, but it should not be balanced on the back of ethnic, religious and racial minorities. We gain nothing by winning a war abroad only to lose our civil rights at home. Thomas Jefferson many, many years ago said it very simply and very cogently, Thomas Jefferson said: “A society which would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither.” And through the lens of our unique, perhaps historical, perspective, we know that claims of military necessity can be an outright lie. We must demand concrete, real justification for any rationale to go to war, any rationale for “national security.” We must dissent when our consciences demand we dissent; we must stand up for other people's civil rights, for the precedent that is established now becomes a loss for us in the future and for our entire nation. We MUST not let history repeat itself.

My mother lived during a time when racism ruled America but she also lived through the progress this country has made in accepting diversity. She lived to see the victory of Redress, the reclaiming by Japanese Americans of their political birthright and their emotional redemption. She received an apology and $20,000 from the President [for her incarceration during World War II]. She also saw the civil rights movement, Title VII, Brown vs. Board of Education, the rise and fall and half rise of affirmative action. She is here tonight in a dinner sponsored by an organization that once refused to admit African Americans, and which now has a brilliant African American President, Dennis Archer, and an Asian American keynote speaker who happens to be a justice of the California Supreme Court, Joyce Kennard. We have not yet reached the mountain top Dr. Martin Luther King dreamed about, but we’re climbing. Look around for a second, and if you look at just the diversity of the people in this room, this has to inspire us to keep climbing.

You don’t get awards by nominating yourself although the trend of referring to one’s self in the third person may someday allow people to do so. Dale Minami knows this. And Dale Minami knows you do not achieve without a community of friends, many who have traveled great distances to be here: all those with the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association - Diane Yu who nominated me, Paul Lee who helped out, Ruthe Ashley (NAPABA President), Eva Paterson (Equal Justice Society), Justice Joyce Kennard, my old friend Professor Gerald Lopez, who is not here, but I want to thank you all as well.

Finally, I want to thank the ABA (American Bar Association), the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and the Thurgood Marshall Award Committee. I thank you for creating an award for a human rights giant, Thurgood Marshall, an African American and the grandson of a slave. And I thank you for bestowing that honor on an Asian and an American, the grandson of a farmer. I thank you all for coming out tonight, not to honor me, but to reaffirm the dream of a Martin Luther King Jr., a Thurgood Marshall, our dream of diversity, equality and social justice. And I want to thank you mom for surviving to live to see this day. Thank you very much.


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Dale Minami in 1983.

Dale Minami in 2003.

Visit the "Dale Minami Roast" page for hilarious photos, jokes and the special Minami Roast Video by Cold Tofu featuring Brook Lee, Tamlyn Tomita and others.