Chiyoko Sakamoto (1912–1994) was California's first Japanese American female lawyer.[1]
Sakamoto was born on June 30, 1912, in Los Angeles, California, to Hisamatsu and Kume Sakamoto.[2][3] In 1938, she was admitted to practice law shortly after graduating from the American University Washington College of Law in Los Angeles, California.[4] Sakamoto worked as a secretary during the four years of her legal studies.[5] She became a legal assistant for a Japanese-American community leader after searching in vain for a law firm position.[6][7]
During World War II, following the signing of Executive Order 9066, Sakamoto was imprisoned in the Granada Internment Camp in Prowers County, Colorado.[8] Upon being released in 1947, she struggled yet again with finding employment.[9] Through her struggles, she met Harvard University-educated African-American attorney Hugh E. Macbeth Sr., who was a staunch defender of Japanese-Americans. He hired Sakamoto as an associate at his Los Angeles-based law firm. Sakamoto's coworkers included Eva M. Mack, a lawyer who worked with Macbeth Sr. on the California Supreme Court case Davis vs. Carter that pertained to a housing discrimination suit filed by jazz musician Benny Carter.[10][11][12] At the time, Sakamoto was unique in working for a non-Nisei law firm.
She eventually opened her own law firm in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles and was one of the founders of the Japanese-American Bar Association and the California Women's Bar.[4] Sakamoto's husband, Tohru Takahashi,[13] was a farmer in New Mexico, and they owned various farms in California (she even managed some of them while simultaneously taking on cases).[14]
