Justice Failed Japanese Immigrant

When Takuji Yamashita left Japan in 1893 to seek his fortune in America, he promised his parents he would “walk the path of honor.”

He kept his word--even when America failed him.

A brilliant scholar, Yamashita graduated from the University of Washington Law School in 1902. But the state Supreme Court blocked Yamashita from joining the bar because of his race.

Now, nearly a century later, the Washington Supreme Court did justice by Yamashita--admitting him to the bar posthumously in a ceremony attended Thursday by several of his descendants and scores of other supporters.

“He believed in the American dream, maybe more than a lot of Americans did at the time,” says Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. “He is a pioneer of civil rights.”

Yamashita lost court battles over the issue. He eventually lost everything he owned during World War II. But to modern scholars, his stubborn faith in American justice makes him a hero.

“Even if some rulers do not act like good rulers, I shall act as a faithful servant,” the 18-year-old Yamashita wrote before leaving for America.

Yamashita learned English quickly and sailed through Tacoma High School in two years. He worked 10-hour days in a restaurant while studying law, and passed the oral bar exam with a performance the Seattle Times called “highly creditable.”

But he couldn’t escape racist attitudes of the time.

Cities and towns ringing Puget Sound shared an ambivalent attitude toward Asians. Ports that fueled the economy depended on trade with Asia. But it was easy to stir up hysteria about “waves” of Japanese and Chinese immigrants taking jobs and land from white workers.

State law said only citizens could become lawyers, and in 1902 only black and white residents could be citizens.

Yamashita fought back the best way he knew--in court. Yamashita, then 27, argued before the state Supreme Court that denying citizenship based on race was unworthy of a nation “founded on the fundamental principles of freedom and equality.”

State Atty. Gen. W.D. Stratton maintained Yamashita could never be a citizen because “in no classification of the human race is a native of Japan treated as belonging to any branch of the white or whitish race.”

The Supreme Court ruled against Yamashita, citing precedents excluding Asians from citizenship. Such legal decisions, the court wrote, “express a settled national will.”

Denied his chance to practice law, Yamashita became a successful businessman in the busy port city of Bremerton, across Puget Sound from Seattle. He married, and the couple had the first of five children.

“He just closed the chapter; he didn’t brood over it at all,” says Ron Magden, a Tacoma historian who researched Yamashita’s life.

Yamashita did not lose faith in the law. When Washington state in 1921 barred Asians from owning or leasing land, the 47-year-old Yamashita seized his second chance to challenge racism in court.

“He was told by his teachers that the law was rational, just and fair, and he believed it. That persistence and faith in the law--he must have been a remarkable lawyer,” says Jack Chin, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati who is writing about Yamashita.

This time Yamashita fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed with Washington, again denying Japanese-born residents a chance to become American citizens. As precedent, the court cited the 1902 decision blocking Yamashita from becoming a lawyer.

Some got around the Alien Land Law with help from sympathetic whites, who would technically own the land or businesses and employ the Japanese as “managers.”

Yamashita and his family settled on a 20-acre farm in Silverdale at the end of a quiet lane, leased through a front corporation, where they farmed strawberries, cultivated oysters and soon won the admiration and affection of their white neighbors.

Children who grew up in Silverdale in the 1930s best remember their daughter Martha, a friendly woman who trucked oysters and strawberries into town every week. She could always be counted on to give a lift to local kids walking along the road.

Carrie Somers LaPoint remembers how she and her sister loved to slurp Mrs. Yamashita’s special soup made with one long noodle.

“Martha’s mom would have the biggest kick out of watching those kids eat the noodle out of that soup,” she recalls.

If Takuji Yamashita was bitter or angry, none of the neighbors saw it. Most people never knew he had been trained as a lawyer.

“He was always smiling and busy, busy as a bee all the time,” LaPoint says.

Yamashita had finally found his place in America.

Then on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and imprisoned in desolate camps or deported. The Yamashitas were given a few days to report to camp with one duffel bag each.

The Yamashitas went from house to house in Silverdale, giving away whatever they couldn’t carry.

LaPoint was about 13 at the time. “My mother and dad were incensed to think they would do this to these nice people and not intern the Germans.”

Like many other Japanese American families, the Yamashitas lost everything. Because they couldn’t make payments on taxes or debts while in camp, they lost the house, their businesses and their farm.

When they were released from camp, the Yamashitas lived with Martha in Seattle. Takuji Yamashita, the brilliant legal scholar, was reduced to working as a housekeeper. Martha died in 1957, and they returned to Japan, where Yamashita died two years later.

He left one surviving daughter and seven scrapbooks chronicling happy times in America--pictures of the beaming family assembled outside the storefront, at picnics, with his first car.

The only other visible reminder of his life in America was something he had saved for nearly 60 years, carrying it carefully through the camps and finally home to Japan, where it hung proudly on the wall: his law degree from the University of Washington.

Yamashita’s family knew little about his accomplishments until his great-grandson immigrated to this country in 1993. Curious about the ancestor who made the same journey 100 years ago, Naoto Kobayashi learned his great-grandfather’s story.

Kobayashi, 46, lives in Manchester, Maine, and teaches Japanese in public schools. He named his youngest son after Takuji.

“I’m feeling so proud,” says Kobayashi, who believes his great-grandfather would be pleasantly surprised by all the fuss over the Washington Supreme Court’s action.

“He’s very, very happy,” says Kobayashi, imagining Yamashita’s reaction. “I can see he’s smiling big now. This is a big important thing for everyone now, not only the Japanese American, but everyone.”