SANTA ANA, Calif. – It's been said that precedent shapes the law.

As a Japanese American who had relatives who were imprisoned in internment camps, presiding Orange County Superior Court Judge Kirk Nakamura, had plenty of reason to not trust the government.

“There was a great mistrust in the Japanese American community  and in general of government, and when I made my decision to go into law it certainly weighed upon me as to whether I should be part of this system,” Nakamura says.

But Nakamura is seeing progress.

Orange County Superior Court’s West Justice Center in Westminster is going to be named after a man that Nakamura might not have his seat at the bench without - the first Asian-American Superior Court Justice in the county’s history - Justice Stephen K. Tamura.

“When you see the accomplishments of Stephen K. Tamura, you see the accomplishments of a trailblazer who basically showed the way in the legal profession as to how Asians ultimately could succeed,” Nakamura said.

Justice Tamura was a man of many firsts.

In addition to being the county’s first Asian American Superior Court Judge, he was the county’s first Asian American to preside and serve as County Counsel, the first Asian American justice on the appellate court in the continental U.S., and he set the precedent as Orange County’s first Asian-American attorney.

He blazed a trail filled with contributions to both the county and the Asian American community, but ironically that trail was filled with injustice.

Along with 120,000 Japanese-Americans, Judge Tamura and his wife were imprisoned during World War II, in an internment camp - incarcerated in Poston, Arizona.

Tamura was permitted by the War Relocation Authority to study at Harvard School of Law in 1943. 

Remarkably, he enlisted in the army in 1945 and he the 442nd Regimental Combat Team - comprised largely of Japanese Americans - decided to join the war. Going “for broke,” he fought in both WWII and the war on prejudice they faced in America.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated military unit for its size and length of service in U.S. history. Along with his comrades, Judge Tamura was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.

Tamura, like many of the Nissei - second generation Japanese immigrants - was described as having a "quiet strength." They were a generation that endured much and chose to persevere.

“They fought for a country that interned their families, they fought for a county that excluded their race," Nakamura said.

Justice Tamura’s continued faith in the very institution that imprisoned him - the government - ultimately led him to prevail.

He attended Pomona College and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Following the completion of his studies, the private practice he established in 1938 is located at 202 E. Fourth Street in Santa Ana still stands today. The law office building was listed as a historical structure by the Bowers Museum Japanese American Council's Historic Building Survey in 1986.

The precedent set by Justice Tamura is part of the reason Judge Nakamura sits on his bench and presides over the County today.

It's been less than 40 years since Fred Korematsu’s conviction was overturned from a 1944 ruling, in which race was recognized as a “suspect classification” in a time where accusations of espionage were used against Japanese people without proof.

Justice Tamura’s father, Hisamatsu, an Orange County Pioneer farmer, has an elementary school in Fountain Valley named after him, and their name symbolizes both the path to progress and the wheels of justice in the county and the country.

“He’s an American story. It’s a story in which he overcame this huge adversity to him and to all the people of his race, to ultimately triumph,” Nakamura says.