Holland & Knight's Diversity Council and Asian/Pacific Islander (API) Affinity Group are proud to celebrate Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month and pay tribute to the generations of Asians and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America's history and continue to play a role in its future success. This year, we took time to reflect on how we could better support our API colleagues, sitting down with attorneys and staff to have important conversations about racial justice and allyship. Throughout the coming weeks, we will be See more +
Holland & Knight's Diversity Council and Asian/Pacific Islander (API) Affinity Group are proud to celebrate Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month and pay tribute to the generations of Asians and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America's history and continue to play a role in its future success. This year, we took time to reflect on how we could better support our API colleagues, sitting down with attorneys and staff to have important conversations about racial justice and allyship. Throughout the coming weeks, we will be presenting a video series showcasing some of these conversations. We hope that the stories conveyed in these videos help advance dialogue around API Heritage Month as well as lead to further discussions of how we can be better allies to our API friends, family and colleagues.
In the third episode of this series, Portland Partner Kristin Asai describes her family's experience in the U.S. Japanese internment camps during World War II. Kristin's great grandparents immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and settled in the Hood River Valley in Oregon, an area with a large Japanese community of farmers and orchardists. During World War II, the family was forced to move to an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Kristin recalls her grandmother's stories about the three years in internment as well as the discrimination they faced after returning to Hood River. She says listening to these stories growing up inspired her to become a lawyer and advocate for underrepresented communities so that their voices are heard. See less -
