Annual Minoru Yasui Student Contest

Theme: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences

• Identify an immigrant or refugee individual, group/community, or event from the past or present in your community, state, or the nation in general.​​​

  • An individual from the past or present (eg., a family member, Minoru Yasui's father, Albert Einstein)

  • An historic or contemporary group or community (eg., Nikkei in Hood River, Latinx in Woodburn, Cuban refugees in Miami)

  • Associated with a specific event (eg., construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, Vietnam War, Executive Order 13769)

• What challenges did your subject face? How did they respond to these challenges and what support did they receive from those outside their immediate communities?

• What are some of the cultural, economic, political, and social impacts that this subject has made to your world?

• Minoru Yasui built bridges within and across communities to create change. In the spirit of Yasui’s life’s work, how would you build bridges to help newcomers to this country face the challenges presented to them?

Eligibility:

The Minoru Yasui Essay Contest is open to students in the United States and territories attending public, private, parochial, or home school. Members of the Minoru Yasui Legacy Project and their families are not eligible to participate. Past first place winners of the contest are not eligible to participate in the division they won.

Junior Division

The Junior division of the contest is open to all students in Grade 8 or below as of October 2020

Senior Division

The Senior division of the contest is open to all students in Grade 9 through 12 as of October 2020.

Requirements:

• Submission deadline is March 12th, 2021 at 11:59 PM (PST).

• Essays must not exceed the maximum word limit:

  • Junior division: 1000 words

  • Senior division: 1500 words

• Essays must be written in Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced

• Must be formatted in MLA with parenthetical in-text citations (not included in word count)

• Essays must include a bibliography with a minimum of 5 sources (not included in word count).

  • At least two sources must be primary sources.

• All work must be the original work of the participant

• All essays must be submitted through the submission portal and all information requested on the submission form must be filled out by contestant