Minoru Yasui (1917-1987) was a lawyer who fought for the civil rights of Japanese Americans during World War II, most notably he argued about the unconstitutionality of the internment camps.

During the early 1900s, many Japanese people moved to the United States because of better opportunity for advancement. Due to historical racism against Asians, however, they often found only backbreaking labor open to them. Many of the Japanese labored in the lumber mills and fruit orchards. Employers doubted that these slender laborers could endure hard work, and so the Japanese worked twice as hard to prove their abilities. For example, logging companies cut down thousands of acres of forest, leaving only stumps and brush behind. Up to 600 Japanese laborers were hired each season to clear the stumps with hoes and dynamite. There might be as many as 100 stumps per acre, and often it took several days to clear...