Never Give Up!: Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice (film)

Documentary film on the life of Minoru Yasui (1916–86) made by his daughter, Holly Yasui.

Never Give Up! covers Yasui's life in a straightforward chronological fashion beginning with his early life in Hood River, Oregon, law school and involvement with the Japanese American Citizens League , his and his family's wartime incarceration, his legal challenge of the curfew orders aimed at Japanese Americans and his subsequent imprisonment, his postwar legal practice and human relations work in Denver, Colorado, his involvement in the Redress Movement , his coram nobis case , and his posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. Much of the story is told in Yasui's own words, excerpted from archival interviews and speeches. The filmmakers also interview two of his siblings, Yuka Yasui Fujikura and Homer Yasui, along with friends and colleagues from Denver.

An educator and activist who had lived in Guanajuato, Mexico, since 1991, Holly Yasui (1953–2021) began production on the film in 2013 with the aim of completing it by 2016 for the 100th anniversary of Min's birth. With attorney Peggy Nagae, she also co-founded the Minoru Yasui Tribute Committee, whose efforts led to Yasui being posthumously being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and the establishment of Minoru Yasui Day in the state of Oregon in 2016. Originally intending to make a fifteen to thirty-minute film, Holly and co-director Will Doolittle decided to make it an hour after collecting archival footage—including from Holly's cousin Lise Yasui's Family Gathering and Steven Okazaki's Unfinished Business —and conducting twenty interviews in 2014. The film premiered on Minoru Yasui Day in Salem, Oregon, March 28, 2017. A planned part 2 of the film was to focus on his postwar life. ^[1]

Might also like Family Gathering (1988); Unfinished Business (1985); Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (2000)