Dale Minami and Donald Tamaki Fight for a Legacy of Justice
By James Moreau | 18 Aug, 2025

Japanese American internment spurred Minami and Tamaki's half century crusade for personal rights.

Dale Minami and Donald Tamaki are co-founders of Minami Tamaki LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm founded in 1975.

The firm is best known for its role in helping overturn the conviction of Fred Korematsu who was convicted for refusing to obey the government’s order to be incarcerated along with nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.  The conviction had initially been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944.  Upon uncovering documents proving that government officials had knowingly used false evidence, Minami and Tamaki successfully petitioned the U.S. District Court in 1983 to vacate Korematsu’s conviction.

The case was personal as both Minami and Tamaki are the children of Nisei whose parents were victims of the WWII Japanese American internment.

In the 2017 case Trump v. Hawaii, which challenged the Trump administration’s travel ban, Tamaki was part of the legal team that filed an amicus brief filed on behalf of the children of three Japanese American men, including Korematsu, who famously defied the WWII-era incarceration orders.

Tamaki also took part in other litigation concerning the rights of Asian Americans, including a class action lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department citing unlawful arrests, a class-action employment lawsuit against California Blue Shield, and a case that resulted in the granting of tenure to a UCLA professor after an initial denial.

Minami Tamaki LLP has also secured multimillion-dollar settlements and recoveries for personal injury cases.  One is a $7 million settlement for the family of a woman killed by a bus.  Another is a $4.5 million trial verdict for a client who suffered a stroke after a performer’s stage dive.

Minami, 78, grew up in Gardena, California.  He earned a bachelor of arts in political science from USC in 1968 and a JD from UC Berkeley in 1971. Tamaki, 74, is an Oakland native who received both his bachelor of arts and law degrees from Cal in 1973 and 1976.