Moderator: Hideyasu Kurose is Oregon Law’s 2023-24 Minoru Yasui Fellow. He is an immigrant from Japan, former sushi chef, nontraditional student-parent, first-generation college graduate, trilingual, and son of a truck driver. Hideyasu attended community college and overcame many obstacles to graduate from UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature with Osher Re-Entry Scholarship. Previously, Hideyasu also worked as a paralegal at Catholic Charities Unaccompanied Children Program in Houston, Texas.  

Reid Kajikawa is the Director of Training at Public Defender Services of Lane County and serves as the supervising attorney of the University of Oregon School of Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic. Reid has been involved with Public Defense since 2005 and moved to Eugene in 2020. Reid is active in the Public Defense community, including serving on the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association committees on Education as well as on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Reid is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. 

Thomas Hiura is the WOW Hall board vice-chair, a City of Eugene Human Rights commissioner and a musician. Born in Japan and raised in north Eugene, Thomas has fought for reproductive rights, climate readiness and student welfare funding in governments and schools. A Eugene Future First Citizen award recipient, Thomas is passionate about education’s and entrepreneurship’s intersections with the arts, hip-hop/youth culture and grassroots journalism. In 2023, they co-led the Springfield History Museum’s ILLUMINATION project on unheard Asian-American stories. They hold a B.A. from Carleton College in American Studies, and certificates in music and modern journalism from New York University.