March 2001

Takuji Yamashita 

by Steven Goldsmith

Takuji Yamashita is about to become a member of the Washington State Bar Association — 99 years after graduating from law school and passing the bar exam.

The Washington Supreme Court will induct Yamashita on March 1 as an honorary member of the Bar. This admission will be honorary because it is posthumous; Yamashita died four decades ago. Though the honoree cannot attend, a dozen of his very proud descendants from Japan will mingle at the Temple of Justice with Governor Gary Locke, Attorney General Christine Gregoire, several legislators, international news media, and numerous dignitaries from both sides of the Pacific. One by one, the Supreme Court justices will sign the order of admission.

Back in 1902, a different state attorney general and roster of Supreme Court justices rejected, in this very same court, Yamashita's application to practice law. This was despite his excellent academic record at the University of Washington School of Law. The grounds for rejection: he was born in Japan.

At the time, Washington required its attorneys to be U.S. citizens, and according to the prevailing interpretation of federal law, citizenship was available only to those of Caucasian or African decent —not Asians.

But Yamashita, a fresh law graduate from a rural Japanese town, boldly argued in Washington's highest court that this denial of citizenship was an affront to the values of "the most enlightened and liberty-loving nation of them all." The state's attorneys responded by mocking Yamashita's "worn out Star Spangled Banner orations." The state won.

So Yamashita went into business instead of law. He became a moderately successful hotelkeeper and strawberry farmer in Kitsap County. But even as a middle-aged businessman, he continued to press for equal rights. In 1922, Yamashita challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court the state's Alien Land Law, which barred "ineligible aliens" — again, in effect, Asians — from owning land. The U.S. ruling was much the same as the Olympia decision of 1902: Congress simply had not seen fit to specifically make Asians eligible for naturalization.

Yamashita's problem, say legal scholars, was in being so far ahead of his time. Not until 1952 could Japanese immigrants become U.S. citizens; not until 1965 did Congress put Asian immigrants on par with Europeans; not until 1966 did Washington voters (on the fourth try) repeal the Alien Land Law; and not until 1973 did the U.S. Supreme Court finally grant aliens the right to practice law in all states.

Though they failed to bring about immediate change, Yamashita's early 20th century challenges established a record of objection to racial exclusion. His cases are cited in a growing number of publications on naturalization and civil rights.

"In the act of challenging the positive law," said Walter Walsh, UW assistant professor of law, "Yamashita asked us to look for the more fundamental rights that lie underneath."

Walsh's legal-history students are among those who helped save Yamashita from remaining just a footnote in civil rights texts. Moving forward after his courtroom defeats, Yamashita had pursued a quiet and convivial family life in Kitsap County. Then, joining the 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, the Yamashitas lost their income and holdings and retreated into even quieter old age. In 1957, Yamashita went to live out what came to be his last two years in his Japanese hometown of Yawatahama, Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku Island.

There he rested until some of his descendants in the 1990s began to reconstruct his record of pioneering defiance. Tacoma historian Ronald Magden added more pieces to the story in researching a 1998 book on the early Puget Sound Japanese community.

As the 20th century ended, meanwhile, the UW School of Law was preparing to mark its own centennial. The two-year celebration will culminate this summer with the 100th anniversary of the first law school graduation. Yamashita's record fit perfectly with the spirit of the state's public law school, one offering boundless opportunity. Founding Dean John T. Condon welcomed women, Jews, and an immigrant from Barbados, but he did not recruit wallflowers. From Condon's first class, Walter Beals would one day preside over the Nuremburg trials in Germany, and Adella May Parker would make her name as a feminist journalist and legislator. Like Yamashita, they viewed the law as a means to improve the world.

Yamashita's contribution at the new law school — which met downtown until 1903 — was described in a year-end school wrap-up as "commendable." But Japanese faces still were exotic to many Americans. When UW law students were asked to pick a yearbook epigram, Yamashita wrote "Amicus Alienus" (Friendly Foreigner) one year, and "Stranger in a Strange Land" the next.

Four days before receiving his law degree, Yamashita picked up his naturalization papers from the Pierce County Superior Court. The following week, Yamashita rode the train to Olympia with eight classmates to take what was in those days an oral bar exam.

All of them passed. Only Yamashita was denied the chance to become a lawyer. The opportunity to symbolically reverse this injustice has given the University of Washington School of Law an especially meaningful way to celebrate its birthday, and the state an opportunity to look back on the progress it has made in a century.

"It's impossible to undo what happened to Mr. Yamashita," said current state Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. "But it's important for us to make a statement that these things were wrong. It's a step toward healing."

Officially, the court will induct Yamashita in response to a petition from the Asian Bar Association of Washington, the University of Washington School of Law, and the Washington State Bar Association.

Seattle Municipal Judge Ron Mamiya, representing the Asian Bar Association of Washington, said Yamashita's saga of immigrant obstacles mirrors that of his own family and of millions of others who had to contend with anti-Asian laws.

A review of state files from the 1920s shows that then-state Attorney General Lindsey L. Thompson sought to defend the anti-Asian Alien Land Act by networking with local and national exclusionist politicians who made their careers whipping up fears of a "Yellow Peril."

Current Attorney General Christine Gregoire will have a very different role at the March 1 event. She will describe the attorney general's role in the safeguarding of human rights.

The court hearing will begin in the Temple of Justice in Olympia starting at 4:00 p.m., with a live TV feed to the lobby for the anticipated audience overflow. The event is taking place the same day as an annual Olympia visit by Asian-Pacific Islander groups. A reception will be held in the lobby after the hearing.

The 21st century has finally caught up with Takuji Yamashita. The same forum in which the 20th century turned its back on him will honor his memory with the one thing he could not achieve during his lifetime — membership in the Washington State Bar Association.

Steven Goldsmith, a longtime reporter with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, now writes for the University of Washington Office of News and Information. He is researching a book on Takuji Yamashita.