Yamashita graduated with a law degree from the University of Washington in 1902 and passed the state bar exam with distinction.
[1] The Washington State Supreme Court, in processing his bar application, issued an order expressing "doubt whether a native of Japan is entitled under naturalization laws to admission to citizenship."
Despite Yamashita's 28-page brief having been described as being of "solid professional quality" and containing legal strategies that are "quite original," the Supreme Court's unanimous decision was that he was not eligible to be an American, and therefore could not practice law.
[2][3] In 1922, Yamashita again entered legal waters when he appealed an alien land law prohibiting Asians from owning property.
[4] Washington's attorney general maintained that in order for Japanese people to fit in, their "marked physical characteristics" would have to be destroyed, that "the Negro, the Indian and the Chinaman" had already demonstrated assimilation was not possible for them.
Later life During World War Two, after the signing of Executive Order 9066, Yamashita and his family were forcibly moved to concentration camps.
They wrote, “Classifications based on alienage, being inherently suspect, are subject to close judicial scrutiny, and here the State through appellee bar committee has not met its burden of showing the classification to have been necessary to vindicate the State's undoubted interest in maintaining high professional standards”.