Asian Pacific Islanders Month
Written by: HON. DEBORAH L. THORNE
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and it seems like an appropriate time to honor our colleagues – past and present. Each month as we examine our progress toward a diverse bench, we have rediscovered how appallingly slow progress has been. Asian Americans make up approximately 6.2% of the U.S. population or 20.6 million people according to the 2020 census, yet only approximately 2% of our bankruptcy judge colleagues are Asian American. According to the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), as of March 2024, only 62 Asian Americans are currently sitting as Article III judges out of 874. It was only in 1971 that Herbert Choy, was appointed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as the first Asian American federal judge by President Richard Nixon, and not until 1998, that the first Asian American woman, Susan Oki Mollway, was appointed to the District Court in Hawaii by President Bill Clinton. The bankruptcy bench has lagged far behind other federal benches in the appointment of AAPI judges.
Asian Americans comprised 10.4 percent of graduates of the top-30 law schools in 2015 but comprised only 6.5 percent of federal judicial law clerks. Clearly there is work to be done if the “Bamboo Ceiling” is to be broken. Although the number of Asian American bankruptcy judges is too small, each of our colleagues has a rich family story representing our country’s often unfortunate history of treatment of Asian Americans – whether it was as laborers on the transcontinental railroad, soldiers in World War II, or as U.S citizens interned in camps for the Japanese during World War II. Although we could not share the entirety of each story, we thank each of them for sharing their stories and hope this column will help in our understanding as an organization of our own history as a country and the need to continue the pursuit of increased diversity of our bench and bar.
Judge Jon Chinen (District of Hawaii)
Jon J. Chinen was the first Pacific Islander bankruptcy referee appointed in the country, serving in the District of Hawaii from 1976 to 2000. A World War II veteran, he earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan. He returned to Hawaii and became a Deputy Attorney General, then a Hawaii state judge. Although a bankruptcy expert, he was best known as the author of The Great Mahele: Hawaii’s Land Division of 1848, which remains an essential summary of Hawaii’s unique system of land ownership and title.
Judge Robert Kwan (Central District of California)
In 2007, Robert Kwan was the first Asian American of Chinese descent appointed to the bankruptcy bench. His family’s story illustrates so much of the history of California and the contributions of Chinese Americans to the state and the country. His great-great-grandfather was a laborer, working on the transcontinental railroad before it was completed in 1869. Later his grandfather, an accountant, brought his family over from China via Cuba. On his mother’s side, his grandfather worked for a tong, a benevolent association in Sacramento. He was charged with going to the San Francisco dock to meet a woman who was trafficked from China and bring her back to the tong. He did meet her and brought her to the Presbyterian Mission in San Francisco Chinatown, a shelter for Asian women who were victims of sex trafficking. It was a fortunate meeting as they fell in love and later married. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, they moved to Los Angeles and started a Chinese restaurant, lost during the Depression. Judge Kwan’s grandparents had 13 children, one of which is Judge Kwan’s mother. His father and uncles all were part of the World War II generation serving in the Pacific. After the war, they went to law school on the GI Bill.
Judge Kwan grew up in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley, was valedictorian of his high school class and received a B.A. from Yale College in 1975. He earned his J.D. from U.C. Hastings College of Law in 1979 and after law school, worked for DOJ in the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C. After receiving an LLM in taxation from Georgetown, he transferred to the Tax Division at DOJ and discovered bankruptcy. After several years, homesick for Southern California, he returned home, entered into private practiced, and was later an Assistant U.S. Attorney. In 2007, Judge Kwan was appointed to the bankruptcy bench in the Central District of California where he served until 2012 but continues to serve on recall.
Judge Brenda T. Rhoades (Eastern District of Texas)
Judge Rhoades was born in Seoul to a Korean woman and an American Army man. As a young child she moved from South Korea to Alaska and in several articles, she attributed her “reverence for civics” and “belief that lawyers are ‘champions of the people’” as she helped her mother study for her naturalization test. Although she studied math and science at Texas A&M, planning to pursue a career in either biochemical or aeronautical engineering, she decided to take the LSAT with a friend. Law school reignited her passion for civics, and she not only graduated magna cum laude, but received the Arizona State University’s Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Constitutional Law Award for excellence in constitution law. After graduation, Judge Rhoades was an associate at Akin Gump and later a partner at Baker Botts LLP. She self-described her strength as a lawyer as “predicting and road mapping the direction of her clients’ issues.” This ability to listen and to strategically analyze problems have played an important role in her career on the bench—allowing unrepresented litigants as well as those with lawyers, the opportunity to express themselves but as she rules, she makes sure that each litigant understands the procedure and the why of her rulings.
Judge Ashely Chan (Eastern District of Pennsylvania)
Judge Chan’s family is from Rangoon, Burma. Her father was the youngest child of her grandfather’s third wife. Once her grandmother was sold to him she never saw her family again. Her grandfather became wealthy by “inventing” a way to take spoiled rice and cleaning it to resell at market prices. Although he accumulated wealth, little or none of it went to her father, after his father died when he was very young.
During World War II the family fled Burma after the Japanese army invaded. They escaped to China and then to India. Judge Chan’s father attended college in Burma but wanted to get his master’s degree in the United States. The Burmese government only agreed to allow her father to go to the U.S. if he agreed to get his degree in nuclear engineering and then work in Burma for the rest of his career. Not wanting to accept this bargain, he borrowed $6,000 from an older brother and, on six weeks’ notice said goodbye to all his family and friends and immigrated to the U.S. He understood that he would never be permitted to go back to Burma. Her father attended the University of Virginia (UVA) and obtained a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Her father was extremely poor during his student days, only able to order the cheapest meal in the dining hall – generally hotdogs. After graduating as valedictorian at UVA, he worked at RCA which helped him become a U.S. citizen and where he met Ashely’s mother.
As many immigrants, her father was interested in assimilating into American life, but for many years sent one-half of his paycheck to his mother and eventually brought her to the U.S. He instilled in Ashely the need to work hard in school and suggested that with such an outgoing personality, she would be a good lawyer. Judge Chan followed his advice becoming a 1996 graduate of Rutgers School of Law – Camden where she received Tax Honors with Distinction and received the Rutgers Pro Bono Publico Award. Immediately after law school, Judge Chan clerked for Judge Gloria Burns of the Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. She later was an associate at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and partner at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller. She took the bench in 2014 and teaches corporate reorganization at Temple Law School. Judge Chan recently came out as a queer woman and is mentoring queer law students at local law schools.
Judge Michael Nakagawa (District of Nevada)
Judge Nakagawa sits in Las Vegas and has been on the bench since 2006. He teaches bankruptcy and remedies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. The story of his family is one more illustration of the history of our country. He shares the following:
Attached is a watercolor that my father painted during his stint in the desert internment camp in Amache, Colorado. My father and mother quickly married at the train station on the day their respective families were being taken from their homes in central California. Of course, they had no idea where they were being taken and for how long. If they had not married to avoid being separated my family would not exist. It is a common human experience to marry rather than end a relationship but not under those circumstances.
Judge Nakagawa and his siblings were raised on a farm in central California and his oldest brother, Cressey, also a lawyer, eventually served as national president of the Japanese American Citizens League from 1988 to 1992. His time in that office spanned the enactment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed by President Ronald Reagan and the legislative efforts to fund the reparation payments to surviving internees that were issued in 1990. The apology letter required by the Act was sent under the signature of President George H.W. Bush. Although his father was not alive at the time Judge Nakagowa was sworn in as a bankruptcy judge, his mother was able to participate in his judicial investiture ceremony.
Judge Scott Yun (Central District of California)
When I asked Judge Yun about his family’s story, I received the following email in which he tells his story:
I am a first-generation immigrant from Korea. I immigrated from Korea in 1980 when I was 10 years old and became a naturalized United States citizen when I turned 18 in 1989. I still vividly remember my naturalization ceremony at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Shortly after I became a bankruptcy judge, I presided over a naturalization ceremony at the same Los Angeles Convention Center in 2015.
My mother decided to immigrate to the United States because my father passed away while she was pregnant with me. In Korea back in the 1970s, a widow could not remarry and had to live at her husband’s household for the rest of her life. My mother, still in her 20s, faced the prospect of living with her mother-in-law for decades. She decided to take her chances by immigrating to the United States. At first, just my mother moved to the United States and my sister, and I lived in Korea with my grandmother. My mother worked various jobs in the United States, starting out working for a dry cleaner where she was paid $.1.00/shirt that she ironed. She remarried my stepfather and shortly afterwards, she was able to obtain visas so that my sister and I could begin the immigration process through the family reunification program.
My mother and stepfather, like most Korean immigrants, owned various small businesses. I recall they ran a diner near the Port of Los Angeles for many years and then a drive-through dairy store in Inglewood. In later years, they owned and operated a gas station and a convenience store. Unfortunately, during my senior year of high school, my stepfather was murdered at the family store during a robbery. After my stepfather passed away, my mother persevered and operated the store by herself. That same store was burned down during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Yet, my mother persevered, rebuilt the store, and continued to operate it until she retired a few years ago.
My sister and I spent our childhood and even as adults working and helping our mother run her small businesses. I suspect that my affinity for bankruptcy law had a lot to do with growing up running the family business. Although I ended up practicing bankruptcy law by accident, I had a knack for connecting with business owners and entrepreneurs, who would become my chapter 11 debtor clients. I understood their struggles and issues, and I did not judge them too harshly for corners that they cut sometimes in running their businesses. I connected with many clients in a way that most attorneys could not.
Judge Michele Kim (Southern District of Georgia)
Judge Kim shared her story as follows:
Prior to immigrating to the U.S., both of my parents served in the South Korean Army and were stationed in Vietnam alongside U.S. service members. While serving as an army nurse, my mother went on to be awarded the rank of Captain. After his military service ended, my father worked for Bechtel as driver and interpreter for Jim Addcox, who was in South Korea to oversee the building of a nuclear power plant and who would later be called “Poppa” by the Kim Family. Jim was so impressed by my parents that he talked them into following him around the world to work for Bechtel, which ultimately resulted in my parents and my older brother immigrating to the U.S. in 1975.
After becoming a citizen, my father worked as a pipefitter for Bechtel, moving the family from Minnesota to Michigan (where I was born) and finally to Georgia. Over time, my parents were able to save enough money to buy their own business, and in Georgia that dream finally became a reality. During the day, my mother would work at their convenience store, while my dad worked at the power plant. When his day was done at the power plant, my mother would go home and make sure the children were taken care of and my dad would take over working at their convenience store and close it at midnight, only to and start his day all over again the next morning at 4 a.m. This schedule went on for years, until my dad developed a fondness for golf. Wanting to take Sundays off to work on his golf game, he bought a failing dry cleaning business where he and my mom worked side-by-side six days a week and were able to quickly turn it into a profitable business.
Through their actions, my parents stressed the importance of hard work. But they were vocal about the importance of education. Year after year, they sacrificed to make sure that my brother and I received the best education and would only accept “A’s” from both. Then in 1995, my dad passed away unexpectedly, three weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. Despite this, my mother managed to keep the family businesses going, which she continues to operate. She was also able to send both her children to college and law school and is currently working on her fourth hole-in-one!
Judge Mina Nami Khorrami (Southern District of Ohio)
Judge Khorrami is Iranian/Persian and grew up in Iran until she was sixteen. She is youngest of three children born to a Jewish father and Muslim mother. Her father died when she was eight and her mother who was 30 years younger than her father was left with the three children in a country where women had very few rights. Her older brother emigrated earlier to the States, followed by her older sister, both attending college here. When Judge Khorrami was 16, her brother and sister brought her to St. Louis for the summer. Although Judge Khorrami expected to return to Iran to finish high school, her siblings “tricked” her and perhaps her mother as they understood the Iranian Revolution was coming. That summer her sister sold everything the family owned in Iran and moved to St. Louis.
Judge Khorrami learned that she was not going to return to Iran, but was going to get her GED in St. Louis. Because she had studied English as a second language in Iran, writing and reading were not too difficult, but spoken English presented a greater challenge. She overcame it and quickly entered college followed by law school – working different jobs throughout. Financial resources were small, but the family worked together to support each other. Judge Khorrami said that her experience growing up has provided her with an understanding of what it means to be the other – this was particularly emphasized during the Iran Hostage Crisis when her family felt the hostility of those who blamed them as Iranians for the crisis – of course not of their making.
Judge Grace Robson (Middle District of Florida)
Judge Robson’s father was born in North Korea and fled in 1950 when the Chinese Communists came to power. Only 15 years old, he fled by himself to South Korea and on to Vietnam, hiding in caves along the way. He did not finish high school before he left, most of his family stayed behind and he never saw them again. Eventually he found his way to New York where he found low-wage jobs such as washing dishes.
Judge Robson’s mother was born in South Korea and came into North America through Canada in the late 1960s. She was a nurse and found work in New York City. Her parents met in church and later married. Judge Robson grew up wanting to be “American” but was aware of being “different” with different foods, customs and parents who worked extremely hard, eventually owning a drycleaner business. They taught her the value of hard work, to pay your bills every month and the difficulties of having no health insurance. Through all of this, she developed empathy, especially for unrepresented people.
Judge Kesha Tanabe (District of Minnesota)
Judge Tanabe is the most recent Asian American to become a bankruptcy judge and the first Asian American on the Federal Bench in the Eighth Circuit.
Judge Tanabe’s great grandparents were born in Japan and came to California at the turn of the 20th century. Even though her grandparents were U.S. citizens, having been born in the U.S., they were referred to as “enemy aliens” and the children whose status was referred to as “non-alien”, were classified as “non-alien enemies” when they were rounded up for internment in the camps. Her grandmother and grandmother’s siblings were removed from their homes in California, their personal possessions reduced to what they could carry and sent to Tanforan Assembly Center, a racetrack, in San Francisco, where they lived in horse stalls. Later they were transferred to Topaz War Relocation Center to live in tar-paper shacks in the Utah desert.
Her grandfather, Nobu Tanabe enlisted in the U.S. Army and served with the Military Intelligence Service in Minnesota—providing translation and other services. General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief credited their work with shortening the war by two years—saving over one million American lives.
Many thanks to our colleagues who shared their stories. While discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continues as it does against many others in this country, we honor the hard work of their parents and grandparents. In their honor, we hope to support opening doors for others through employment of law clerks and externs as we support the pipeline to the bankruptcy bar and bench.