Minami Tamaki LLP Senior Counsel Dale Minami was the featured guest of the “Live Your Dream” podcast hosted by Celina Lee.
On the podcast, Dale shared with Celina his thought on a wide range of topics.
On how the Japanese American incarceration: “My parents and older brother were put in the concentration camps. First in the horse stalls in race tracks which was Santa Anita Racetrack, which was converted into a temporary – they called it a euphemism – ‘assembly center.’ It was a prison. And then they were transported to Arkansas where they spent various amounts of time, I think it was about two years.
On the impact of the incarceration on Japanese Americans: “There have been studies [about] how even though the children of these incarcerees didn’t know much about their parents’ experience, the effects go down generations and generations – psychological issues. And for our family, and I think a lot of Japanese American families, we were pushed to be 100 percent American, which meant we barely learned much Japanese. … We didn’t know much about our culture. We were protected, so to speak by our parents so that we would never stand out as a racial minority again. In that way we would be hopefully assimilated and that the experience of being incarcerated because of your race would never happen to us again.”
On how Dale might have been Dr. Dale: “I was interested in social psychology as well. So the choice was law school, social psychology. My father thought law would be more practice. … I think deep down, the law did not protect our parents. [Many] second-generation [Japanese Americans] have issues with the law and racism. They felt that they could obtain some knowledge of law essentially to protect their families.”
In addition to hosting the podcast, Celina is a career coach and lawyer. She started her career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch and worked as a corporate lawyer at Ropes & Gray LLP. She is the General Counsel and Business Development Director of AKA Study, a startup that develops artificial intelligence engine to create innovative educational services and software.
Celina is also the author of an award-wining book in Korea, “꿈을 이뤄드립니다” (“Live Your Dream”), a collection of life stories of people who overcame failures to achieve success in diverse industries.