About the place:
Photos taken on 12 March 2022. The current building was recently rededicated as the Stephen K. Tamura Justice Center. It's a one story courthouse with several courtrooms serving central and northwestern Orange County at the state level.
About the person:
Taken from the website, "Judge Tamura grew up in Orange County and attended Huntington Beach High School.
He received a BA degree from Pomona College and an LLB degree from Boalt Law School, University of California, Berkeley.
Tamura was a founding board member of the Orange County JACL chapter in 1935, which held its first meeting in the Wintersburg Japanese Church.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1937, Tamura began his law practice in Santa Ana, Calif.
Mere months before the onset of World War II, Tamura married Kay Kazuko Nozawa; a year later, the couple was detained in Arizona’s Poston Relocation Center, where he provided legal services while incarcerated. They were later transferred to the Amache Relocation Center in Colorado.
In 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Tamura was appointed in 1961 by California Gov. Edmund “Pat” Brown to the Orange County Superior Court, the first Japanese American to hold this position. He was elevated to the Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Division Two in 1966.
In 1972, Tamura was named the recipient of the Orange County Bar Assn.’s Franklin G. West Award, the “highest honor presented to outstanding attorneys and judges whose lifetime achievements have advanced justice and the law.”
Between 1979 and 1981, Tamura filled an appointment to the State Judicial Council. He also served as a justice pro tem on the California Supreme Court.
In 1981, he co-chaired with Henry Kanegae a committee to oversee the Orange County Japanese American Council’s stated commitment to “promoting an understanding and appreciation of Japanese American culture and heritage on the contributions of Japanese Americans to the history and development of Orange County.” Upon his death the following year, the council’s history committee determined that, to commemorate Judge Tamura’s history and legacy, the series of oral histories it was compiling with longtime residents of the county’s Japanese American community be designated as the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project."
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