It is incredible to imagine that there had been a staggering 43 Japantowns throughout the nation at one point in time. However, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and Executive Order 9066 was signed, the once populous Japanese American communities began to disappear.
Living in the bleak barracks of a WWII concentration camp, the young Judge A. Wallace Tashima could sense “a dark atmosphere [in American society], that there was something sinister about being Japanese.”
Read Part 1 >>Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling Over the 17 years that he practiced as an attorney, both in the Public Defender’s Office and in private practice, he recalls being one of very few Japanese American criminal defense attorneys.
On January 7, 1951, Moto Hayami held her newborn grandson in her arms and prophetically said, “Fred is going to be the lawyer of the Fujioka family.”* Indeed, Judge Fred J. Fujioka of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County has fulfilled his grandmother’s expectations in becoming not only the “lawyer …
My name is Sakura Kato, and just Sakura Kato. I have no middle name or an English name or really anything to signify my identity as a Japanese-American. When growing up, I could never find my name on a pre-made mug or keychain like my friends named “Ashley” or “Christine,” …
At 8:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, I entered the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles for my first court visit. After passing through the metal screen detectors and making my way up to Department 87, I opened the courtroom doors plated “Judge Holly J. Fujie” and nervously checked …
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