Bruce Yamashita

From dKosopedia

Category: People

Bruce Yamashita, while at Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia in 1989, was the target of repeated racist taunts. Despite the racial harassment, Yamashita appeared to be passing all academic and physical tests required of prospective officers in the ten week training. Two days before graduation, he and three other minority candidates were dropped from the program. Among the reasons given for his disenrollment, the Marines cited Yamashita's low scores in a subjective leadership evaluation.

Yamashita appealed on the grounds that he had been singled out because of his race. In 1992, his legal team won the right to review OCS records and was able to find a pattern of discrimination against minority candidates. The case was settled in 1993, and Yamashita received a commission as a second lieutenant a year later.

The case became the catalyst for statutory and procedural reform to prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination in the Marine Corps and in all the branches of the military service.

In May of 2005, a documentary film entitled A Most Unlikely Hero chronicled Yamashita's experience at OCS and the subsequent discrimination case. It was released to public television stations nationwide by American Public Television.

Yamashita, a third-generation Japanese-American, was born on island of O'ahu. The youngest of five children, Yamashita was raised in a section of Honolulu called St. Louis Heights. Yamashita's mother was an associate professor at the University of Hawaii's College of Education and his father is a retired bridge engineer for the state of Hawaii.

External Links

• A Matter of Honor: The Bruce Yamashita Story (An article originally published by the San Francisco Examiner on April 4, 1993, but can be viewed on the ModelMinority.com website)
• Journey to justice -- A Japanese American details struggles with racism in the Marines (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 9-21-03)
• A Most Unlikely Hero (UnlikelyHero.org)