A truly unsung hero of the nascent Asian American movement and how it found uncompromising expression at Oakland Senior High School in Oakland CA in 1969. I lost touch with Larry after we had developed different political routes in college. But I was honored when his daughter, the poet and teacher, Jade Cho, reached out about his passing.
As a high school senior at Oakland High, Larry wasn’t just my buddy with a car, but a stand-up fighter when he single-handedly brought speakers from the Third World Liberation Front at Berkeley to speak at Oakland High. He and his family were placed under tremendous political pressure to back down by the school administration, but Larry succeeded in having a successful panel discussion of TWLF activists speaking unhindered at our high school.
Yes, there was decent attendance by students and faculty!
In Memoriam: Larry Yee (OHS ’69)
Lawrence (Larry) Yee passed away October 14, 2021 after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. As one of his childhood friends, just a few words here are not enough to pay tribute and honor and remember Larry, but in respect to OHS, I’d like to remember his steadfast commitment and hard work at OHS in establishing and providing leadership to the first Asian Student Union (Asian Bloc) at Oakland High School in 1968-1969. Through the Asian Bloc, he strove to provide support and affirm the Asian immigrant students and also to reach out and work with the newly established Black Student Union and the Latino Student Union to promote and establish unity and harmony among all the OHS students. Many of his classmate friends remember him fondly from Asian Bloc. After OHS, he continued his commitment to social justice as a lawyer, and in a role as the Deputy and Acting General Counsel for the California State Bar.
One of his classmates, Don Tamaki (OHS ‘69), who was on the legal team which reopened the 1944 U.S. Supreme Court case of Fred Korematsu, overturning his criminal conviction for defying the removal of almost 120,000 Japanese Americans, had this to say about Larry: “Larry was one of a small circle of friends who influenced and shaped my thinking about civil rights issues, community, standing up for what is right. For that reason, we both went on to become lawyers. In more recent years, it was a privilege for me to work alongside him in representing the State Bar in a ground-breaking petition to the Cal Supreme Court resulting in undocumented immigrants being able to become lawyers in California. After that favorable ruling, a number of states followed the Cal Supreme Court’s decision, raising hopes for Dreamers with law degrees all over the country.”
Masaaki Yamato (OHS ‘69)