His race blocked his path to practicing law. A century later, obstacles remain for Asian American lawyers

Weston Koyama, a public defender in Multnomah County, graduated from the University of Oregon’s law school five years ago. Being a fourth-generation Oregonian and one of the few Asian American students in his class, he felt a deep sense of pride in his family’s legacy and the potential for Asian Americans to impact the legal field.

“I believe that we have so much to contribute to the legal profession in terms of understanding our culture, understanding the cultural background of the clients that we serve, particularly Asian American clients, and being able to navigate that for people who are Asian American — translating a legal culture, which comes to us from medieval England and is very Eurocentric, to something that blends some of our Asian elements,” Koyama said.

In his view, Asian American legal professionals include not only currently active judges, prosecutors or defense attorneys, but also individuals like a paralegal who studied law but was denied admission to the bar because of institutional anti-Asian racism in the early 20th century.

Meet Daiichi “Charles” Takeoka. At the age of 30, he earned his Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Oregon, alongside four other Asian students in a predominantly white class. The law school’s commencement ceremony, held in Portland on May 21, 1912, marked a significant milestone — it was the first official graduation ceremony since the school’s founding in 1884, as reported by The Oregon Sunday Journal.

As an immigrant from Japan, Takeoka was considered ineligible for American citizenship under the prevailing naturalization law that worked against Asians and other people of color. As a result, he couldn’t obtain a license to practice law and had to resort to working as a salesperson, peddling packaged meats and fertilizers to make ends meet for his family. But this obstacle didn’t deter him from collaborating with white lawyers to offer legal aid to the Japanese community through the Japanese Association of Oregon, where he once served as president.

From migrant laborer to civil rights advocate

Takeoka arrived in Portland from his hometown of Hiroshima at the age of 18 in 1900. Starting with limited education and minimal English proficiency, he worked a variety of odd jobs across the Pacific Northwest. These included construction with the now-defunct Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, logging for various timber companies, and serving as a bellhop at the Portland Hotel, which occupied the site of the present-day Pioneer Courthouse Square until its demolition in 1951. Along the way, he decided to pursue a degree in law.

Cynthia Basye, a board member of the Japanese American Museum of Oregon, initially delved into Takeoka’s legacy several years ago. Her interest was sparked by a photo she stumbled upon while researching businesses in old downtown Portland. The photo, accompanied by a written note indicating Takeoka’s graduation from UO’s law school, intrigued her so she dug deeper.

Before moving to the Eugene campus in 1916, the UO law school conducted classes in rented offices at the intersection of Second Avenue and Yamhill Street in Portland. Basye suggests this close proximity might have enabled Takeoka to conduct his studies while working at the nearby Portland Hotel.

Despite not discovering any written accounts from Takeoka about his law school experience, Basye imagines it must have been a remarkable achievement to complete a law degree after only a decade of learning English.

“He would’ve had to become fluent in English, understand not only English, but (also) the terminology of law, which includes a little bit of Latin, some of the cases or terms or processes,” she continued. “And he did that. He was successful.”

Basye further notes that Takeoka — utilizing his fluency in English, analytical skills honed in law school and agricultural expertise gained through selling to farmers — penned a detailed letter to The Oregonian in 1913. In this letter, he argued against Oregon adopting an alien land law similar to the one enacted in California, which aimed to prohibit Japanese people from owning land by linking land ownership to eligibility for U.S. citizenship. Takeoka cited the economic benefits Western states had derived from trade with Japan and the contributions of Japanese migrant labor as reasons against such legislation.

The Oregon legislature didn’t accept Takeoka’s argument and went on to pass the Alien Land Law in 1923. However, this setback didn’t dampen his resolve to utilize his legal expertise for the betterment of the Japanese community.

Following the 1925 Toledo Incident, during which a mob forcibly expelled Japanese sawmill workers from the Oregon Coast town, Takeoka assumed a crucial role. He spearheaded the filing of civil lawsuits against the mob leaders and prepared signed legal affidavits for some of the Japanese workers to establish their legal status in Oregon, facilitating the initiation of trials. In some cases, the federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding damages to the workers.

Takeoka’s achievements in advocating for Japanese civil rights garnered him a reputation as a prominent community leader, but this also made him one of the FBI’s initial targets following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, during World War II.

Takeoka, alongside first-generation Japanese American leaders like Hood River merchant Masuo Yasui and Portland dentist Keizaburo Koyama, was arrested by the agency as a potentially dangerous “enemy alien.” They were subsequently transferred to the Department of Justice detention facility in Fort Missoula, Montana.

Inspiration for a public defender

The injustices inflicted on Japanese Americans during wartime deeply affected their descendants who aspired to become lawyers.

Through years of researching his family’s history, Weston Koyama discovered that his great-grandfather, Keizaburo Koyama, was coerced by the FBI into revealing information about people he knew. Eventually, Keizaburo was sent to the Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho along with thousands of other Japanese Americans. Meanwhile, Takeoka was held at the Santa Fe concentration camp in New Mexico.

Upon Keizaburo’s return to Portland’s Old Town in 1945, he discovered that his dental office had been looted. Despite this setback, he managed to restart his practice. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1952, thanks to the new Immigration Act, which abolished race as a basis for citizenship. Similarly, Takeoka was naturalized in 1954, and he passed away in the same year.

Koyama admits that initially, he wasn’t keen on becoming a lawyer. It was only after some encouragement from his undergraduate friends that he applied to law schools. But after learning about the traumatic experiences endured by his family and thousands of other Japanese Americans during wartime, he realized his true calling.

“Having studied what the government has done and continues to do in the name of public safety that is to trample on due process rights and to ignore due process of law really inspires me to hold the government and the state accountable,” he said, “and to make sure that people’s basic civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights are respected to the best extent possible.”

Koyama was accepted by several nationally renowned law schools, but he ultimately decided to attend the University of Oregon’s law school in 2016 so that he could practice in his home state.

He also received the school’s inaugural Minoru Yasui Fellowship, which pays tribute to the legacy of the school’s 1939 alumnus. Minoru Yasui, the son of Masuo Yasui, was the first Japanese American admitted to the Oregon State Bar. He played a pivotal role in the Japanese American redress movement during the 1970s and 80s, advocating for government reparations for those forcibly displaced and incarcerated during World War II.

Asian representation in UO law school

In 2019, Koyama was among the six Asian graduates from the UO law school who earned a Juris Doctor degree. Similar to a Bachelor of Law, the Juris Doctor is a professional degree necessary for attorney licensure in Oregon and other states.

Data from the American Bar Association indicates that in 2019, Asians comprised 6% of the UO law school’s graduating class of 96 students. In comparison, Takeoka and his Asian classmates represented over 10% of the UO’s 1912 LL.B. class, which consisted of 43 graduates, as reported by The Oregon Daily Journal.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of Asian Americans in Oregon has consistently remained the lowest among the three contiguous states on the U.S. West Coast. Census data shows that people identified as Asians alone accounted for 3.7% of Oregon’s population in 2010 and increased to 4.6% in 2020. In comparison, during the same period, the percentage ranged from 7.2% to 9.5% in Washington and from 13% to 15.4% in California.

These demographics are reflected in the lower Asian enrollment and graduation rates at the UO compared to public universities’ law schools in Washington and California. Based on available data from the ABA spanning from 2011 to 2023, the average Asian American enrollment and graduation rates at the UO law school over the years were 4.41% and 4.66%, respectively. Although the school consistently maintained an annual Asian enrollment rate of at least 2% during that period, records indicate that its Asian graduation rate dropped to 0.81% in 2015 and even reached zero in 2020.

These statistics don’t come as a surprise to Koyama. He points out that public universities often charge lower tuition for in-state students, which tends to attract a pool of applicants more reflective of the state’s demographics.

Despite the lower diversity at the UO compared to other West Coast law schools, Koyama expresses appreciation for the close-knit relationship he enjoyed with his Asian American classmates. As both the Yasui Fellow and co-director of UO’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Koyama notes that his non-Asian classmates were receptive to his sharing of Asian American experiences.

However, Koyama acknowledges the challenges faced by Asian American law students nationally due to their race: “Asians do tend to be perceived more as foreigners than, say, an African American, and I think that unique challenge of navigating the legal world as someone who’s perceived as more foreign than someone who’s not Asian is something that we could all relate to as Asian American law students.”

‘People do look at you differently’

Matthew Lee, a current UO law student, echoes this sentiment. Raised in an immigrant family with a Taiwanese mother and a Malaysian father in Los Angeles, he developed an interest in law during high school. He studied for an undergraduate degree in accounting at the University of California, Riverside, to fulfill his family’s wishes for him to pursue a math-related degree and career. After working for four years as an accountant in San Francisco, with his parents’ consent, he decided to go to law school.

Lee said the UO law school is generally welcoming to students from diverse cultural backgrounds. However, as an out-of-state student coming from a neighborhood with a significant Asian presence, Lee admits to experiencing a bit of culture shock during his first year, studying with a predominantly white class.

“In our first and second years, we tried to attend a lot more networking events, bar-associated and -sponsored events, and there’s no surprise there — it is predominantly white,” he said. “When you go there, people do look at you differently, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously — there is a discomfort.”

Lee adds that he’s actively working to build confidence in reaching out to people from diverse backgrounds, aiming to set a positive example for his Asian classmates. As a co-director of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, he organizes social events to foster a comfortable and inclusive environment for Asian students.

After graduating next year and passing the bar, Lee aspires to practice business law in the Pacific Northwest. Like Koyama and all Asian American law students nowadays, he doesn’t have to worry about the institutional racism that barred people like Takeoka from becoming licensed attorneys due to their race.

However, despite progress, barriers to career advancement persist for Asian Americans in the legal profession.

Microaggressions and mental health challenges

According to a 2022 report by the ABA and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Asian Americans have been less likely than any other racial group to be promoted from associate to partner at law firms over the past 20 years. The two organizations also conducted a national survey on Asian American lawyers in 2022, which revealed that respectively 41% and 64% of them had experienced overt and implicit racial discrimination in the workplace.

Koyama acknowledges that while many people around him have made efforts to be culturally sensitive and respectful, he has encountered microaggressions in the workplace due to his ethnicity from time to time.

He recalls a conversation with a judge shortly after a fellow public defender, who was also Japanese American and worked in the same office, had relocated to Deschutes County for a new job.

“He kind of gave me a strange look, and he was like, ‘Well, what are you doing here? He’s like, ‘I thought you went to Bend,’” Koyama said. “It’s like we all must look the same because we’re Asian. I don’t think this judge thinks that, but somewhere there is this association that it’s easier to remember us as that Asian one, or that Black one or that Latino one, rather than remembering us as people.” The judge later apologized to Koyama for the faux pas.

The ABA and NAPABA’s report also highlights that the majority of respondents in their 2022 survey had experienced mental health issues during law school, including anxiety and panic attacks.

Koyama emphasizes that all law schools should do more to offer culturally-informed mental health support for Asian American students. He says many of them grapple with feelings of shame due to the cultural expectation that they must excel academically to uphold family pride.

He recalls a Japanese American friend who faced challenges graduating from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland and has not yet taken the bar exam: “Law school crushed her confidence even though she graduated. It crushed her confidence to such an extent that she doesn’t feel she knows if she can be a lawyer or not.”

Reducing barriers with mentorship

The ABA and NAPABA’s report suggests that support systems such as mentorship could reduce barriers to Asian Americans’ career advancement in the legal profession, a view shared by both Koyama and Matthew Lee. Both men have benefited from the guidance of Asian American lawyers during their studies.

Lee stresses the significance of Asian American mentors, highlighting that they, like him, are often the first in their families to pursue careers in law.

“A lot of my classmates aren’t first-generation lawyers — they’ve had family members who are lawyers and they’ve been provided tips and tricks and steps to take,” he said. “Being able to have an Asian American mentor that has gone through a similar process has been super helpful for me.”

In a written statement to OPB, UO School of Law Dean Marcilynn Burke affirms that the school is committed to expanding its Asian American mentorship program in collaboration with the Oregon Asian Pacific Bar Association and the Lane and Multnomah County Bar Associations.

“The University of Oregon School of Law ‘s mission is to advance law and justice by encouraging and supporting diverse, talented individuals to study and practice law,” Burke said.

Back at JAMO, Cynthia Basye emphasizes that the accomplishments of 1912 law school alum Daiichi Takeoka — including his efforts in challenging Oregon’s alien land law resulting in its repeal in 1949 — align with the school’s mission.

She believes that the inclusion of Asian American students greatly benefits the school: “It also helps the fellow students and the community in building a broader knowledge, broader understanding of people.”

“You’re not going to get that if your school population is very narrow in its ethnicity.”

Learn more about the rich history and unjust treatment of Oregon’s Japanese Americans by watching OPB’s one-hour documentary “Oregon’s Japanese Americans.”