Because the Asian/Pacific Bar Association of Sacramento (ABAS) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the editors asked its founding president to share its history. This is the result.

Asian American parents traditionally have steered their children toward medicine, dentistry or engineering, and away from the uncertainties of the law. Better, the thinking went, that a livelihood be more dependent on objective measures of performance or on customers within the Asian community, and less on subjective judgments by a hostile and mistrusted legal system.

So-called Mongolians were long denied the privilege of practicing law. Asian immigrants, being ineligible for United States citizenship, were statutorily ineligible to practice law in California under In re Chang, 84 Cal. 163 (1890) (canceling a Chinese-immigrant New York attorney’s naturalization and denying him admission to the State Bar of California because of his “Mongolian nativity”); cf. In re Yamashita, 30 Wash. 234 (1902) (denaturalizing and rejecting the Washington bar admission application of a Japanese immigrant as a member of the “Mongolian race”). It took 80 years for California to hold unconstitutional the statutes that barred non-citizens from practicing law. Raffaelli v. Committee of Bar Examiners, 7 Cal. 3d 288 (1972). Not surprisingly, only a few Asians, all American-born, practiced law in Sacramento before the 1970s.

1982 ABAS installation keynote speaker Dale Minami, leader of the litigation team in the 1984 Korematsu case; his client Fred Korematsu; and Korematsu’s attorney in his 1944 case, Northern California ACLU member Ernest Besig. Photo courtesy of Shirley Nakao.

Fred Korematsu wearing his Presidential Medal of Freedom. Photo courtesy of Shirley Nakao.

The civil rights and antiwar activism of the 1960s, however, led a number of Asian American youth to go to law school to press for social justice. Around 1975, Asian Americans began graduating from law schools in unprecedented numbers: twenty in my class alone. By 1981, our informal survey identified about 130 Asian American lawyers in Sacramento.

In 1981 the roles of Asian American lawyers, and the Sacramento we practiced in, were much different from today. Because of the legal restrictions and the parental steering, most of us were the first members of our families to study law; a number were the first in our families to go to college. Asian lawyers were largely invisible, toiling at the entry level in state and local governments, small practices and public-interest law offices. Almost none were hired by the big law firms; none were partners; and none held political appointments in state government. In the eyes of many judges and opposing counsel, Asian lawyers were on the professions’ margins, and we had few supporters and mentors within the legal community.

But there were organizational stirrings statewide. Asian American lawyers and law students had served in the Asian Law Caucus representing underserved Asians in Oakland, the Asian Law Alliance in San Jose, and Asian Legal Services Outreach (ALSO) in Sacramento. In 1981 a dozen Asian American bars from throughout California, including the fledgling Sacramento group, reached out to each other to form a statewide coalition. That coalition became the only statewide California bar organization whose mission is to represent Asian Americans: the Asian/Pacific Bar of California or ABC. Dale Minami was its first president.

Some of us -- including Albert Balingit, Steve Koyasako, Kelvin Gong, Joyce Hee and Jeff Ogata -- met at my house in 1981 to form a local Asian bar. A number of us knew each other through ALSO and wanted to serve the Asian community’s needs.

Besides contacting Asian lawyers of long standing like Geoff Wong, Henry Tai and the late Henry Taketa and Bob Matsui, we scoured yellow pages and alumni lists for Asian-sounding names. At least one such name belonged to a non-Asian (DAG Mike Lee). For our first annual meeting we gathered everyone we could find into the upstairs room at Frank Fat’s for food and fellowship on January 28, 1982. Over 60 attended. We decided on the name Asian Bar Association of Sacramento (now Asian/Pacific Bar Association of Sacramento), or ABAS, preferring it to SABA, which means “mackerel” in Japanese.

 By April 1982 ABAS had 51 dues-paid members. These included the late banker-lawyer Dean Itano, the late Public Defender Ken Wells, the late Senator Alfred Song, Chuck Kobayashi, Jeri Paik, then-Judge Barry Loncke, Jerry Chong, Jessie Morris, Floyd Shimomura, and Gus Lee, writer of China Boy.

For our first installation dinner that June, I invited Dale Minami as our keynote speaker. Besides being the founding president of ABC, Minami was a founder of the Asian Law Caucus and a spokesman on issues of equality for Asian Americans. Minami led the legal team who later gained a writ of error coram nobis vacating Fred Korematsu’s casebook conviction for violating the World War II exclusion orders. Korematsu v. United States, 584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984); see Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). Our 50 people were too few to fill Hoi Sing (now Holiday Villa), so the restaurant divided the room with a screen. In the other part of the room, a Chinese wedding with music blaring and loud voices cheering made it difficult to hear Dale’s keynote speech. We learned a lesson that evening about what to ask when choosing a banquet venue.

From 1985 on, ABAS matured under the gifted leadership of solo practitioner Jerry Chong, a Marine Vietnam war veteran. Chong set out an ambitious program to develop the organization into a powerful advocate on issues concerning Asian lawyers and the Asian community. Chong called on members to raise ABAS’s profile via community service, public appointments, social events, a membership drive and publications.

In the membership area, Curt Namba set the goal of enrolling every Asian lawyer in Sacramento as a member. In the social events area, Tosh Yamamoto made every ABAS event significant, enjoyable, and well-attended. In community service and advocacy, Donna Komure did public education on, among other issues, the judicial and legislative efforts for redress for the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

To keep members apprised of events, people and issues, your writer took over the ABAS newsletter, gave it the unlikely new name of Nota Bene - Notes to Asian Lawyers, and desktop-published it monthly. In a subsequent related effort, we raised the organization’s profile further by publishing the first ABAS Membership Directory, a book that listed ABAS members’ contact information, legal specialties and language skills.

Perhaps the most ambitious goal Chong set was to see an Asian Judge appointed in Sacramento. At the time, the judicial selection process was a mystery to us and most of our peers throughout the state. Chong studied the process and became acquainted with Governor Deukmejian’s appointments secretary (now Supreme Court Justice) Marvin Baxter. Chong could have held the information close and made himself a gatekeeper. Instead, he shared his knowledge and connections through ABC, making the judicial appointment process transparent for Asian judicial applicants and their supporting associations statewide.

Chong enlisted La Raza Lawyers and Wiley Manuel Bar Association, both of which had members on the bench already, to advocate on the lack of an Asian Judge. The alliance of minority attorneys put on Unity ‘87 as the first of what became annual Unity gatherings. At that seminal event, Wiley Manuel president (now Judge) Renard Shepard put the need for an Asian Judge as a matter of elemental fairness. Chief Deputy Appointments Secretary Terry Flanigan came to Unity and listened attentively. Also represented at Unity ‘87 were ABC, its member associations, and even the District of Columbia Asian Pacific American bar. Others in the Asian community joined in the request for an Asian Judge; and the larger community took notice when stories on the lack of an Asian Judge ran in the Daily Recorder and the Bee.

Finally, in 1988 Governor Deukmejian responded, appointing Chuck Kobayashi. Judge Kobayashi became known for his improvements in the Family Law court; he retired this year. Other appointments followed his, and now three other Asian Americans are Superior Court Judges, one is a Commissioner, and one is a Justice on the DCA.

Another milestone for the maturing organization was when its members and friends, led by Minami’s law partner Don Tamaki, successfully opposed confirmation of Dan Lungren for State Treasurer in 1987. The Washington Post reported that event as the “quiet” Asians’ emergence as a political force in California.

As a Congressman on the commission investigating the World War II incarceration, Lungren had heard Japanese Americans’ stories of anguish. Despite that knowledge, Lungren tried to kill H.R. 442, the redress bill, by pushing an amendment to delete monetary relief. His opposition on this fundamental fairness issue galvanized members of ABAS and the statewide ABC network to battle his bid for statewide office. Lungren’s record yielded positions offensive to minorities, environmentalists, the elderly, labor, gays and women; all mobilized against him. Although Lungren’s confirmation by the legislature had been viewed as a slam-dunk, Asian lawyers’ coalition-building, tactical planning and lobbying defeated it in the State Senate.

ABAS has consistently sent its leaders, including Jerry Chong, Nancy Lee, Julie Weng-Gutierrez, Mark Morodomi and your writer, to keep up statewide ties through ABC. Each year, the ABAS representative to ABC arranges an ABC meeting in the Capitol. There, presidents of Asian bars meet with legislators, political mentors like Georgette Imura or Maeley Tom, the Attorney General and representatives of the Governor to discuss questions of interest to Asian lawyers. Asian bar leaders’ experience in ABC led to the next step in the 1980s: a multi­year drive to organize a national Asian bar.

This drive culminated in the formation of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) at a 1988 Chicago meeting of the country’s Asian bars. As ABC president, Jerry Chong was a founding NAPABA member and traveled throughout the country on NAPABA organizing trips. The main obstacle to NAPABA’s formation was deciding how it would represent all regions of the country when the majority of Asian American lawyers were in California. Finally, all of the bars settled on a division into regions that gave California four of nine delegate votes. NAPABA held its first annual convention, with Hoyt Zia as its founding president, in San Francisco in 1989. NAPABA now is Asian Pacific American lawyers’ full-time advocate in Washington D.C.

Nancy Lee became NAPABA’s president-elect in 1994; with that position came the duty of hosting the Sixth NAPABA Convention in Sacramento. A committee co-chaired by Jerry Chong and Cindy Kagiwada put on the November convention at the Capitol and the Hyatt Regency and showed off Sacramento to Asian lawyers throughout the country. Later, Ruthe Ashley became ABAS’s second NAPABA president.

NAPABA convention funding requirements led to the creation of the ABAS Law Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose purpose is to administer and raise funds for law-related educational and charitable projects in the Asian Pacific Islander community. The Foundation gives scholarships every year to Sacramento-area law students. The criteria for Foundation scholarships, unlike the more common academic merit awards, are the student’s potential for leadership and community service and financial need as well as scholarship. The Foundation’s scholarship program aims to recognize and encourage future lawyers who will give of themselves to serve the API community.

The Foundation has also helped fund summer internships at ALSO and has supported Thomas Tang Moot Court competitors. With a grant from the ABA, the Foundation has put on immigration, labor law and voting workshops and obtained translations of Sacramento County voting materials into API languages. The annual Wine Tasting and Silent Auction in the spring, and the ABAS Golf Tournament in the fall, provide funds for the Foundation’s activities. This spring, with the aid of generous donors, the Foundation awarded nine law students a total of $13,000.

A scant 34 years after Rafaelli overturned the discriminatory bar to aliens’ practice of law, some signs indicate that ABAS has been successful: several Sacramento API judicial appointments, a number of API partners in large firms, and API political appointments in state executive departments. One might wonder whether an Asian/Pacific Bar Association of Sacramento is still needed.

The answer is an emphatic “Yes!” Hmong and Pacific Islander Americans’ communities have un-served and underserved legal needs. No API has sat on Sacramento’s federal bench. And multi-talented San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s new documentary, The Slanted Screen, explores our culture’s stubborn negative stereotypes of Asian American men. Much work remains to be done.

July / August 2006