On December 4, 1930, a baby boy was born in a taxi cab en route to the hospital in Ogden, Utah.
The baby’s parents, Osako and Clarence Uno, both originally from Japan, decided to name him Raymond Sonji Uno — first name in honor of the cab driver, Raymond Harris.
Three days after Raymond’s 11th birthday, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. Tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans were promptly rounded up and sent to internment camps for the remainder of WWII. (The Uno family was imprisoned at Heart Mountain in Wyoming.)
Despite this experience, Raymond Uno joined the U.S. Army and served in the Korean War. He attended both college and law school at the University of Utah. And, in 1976, he became the very first ethnic minority judge in the state of Utah.
P.S. Raymond and his wife Yoshiko had five sons: Tab (b. 1955), Kai, Mark, Sean, and Lance. Tab’s name may have been inspired by Tab Hunter, and Lance’s could have been influenced by the TV show Lancer.
Sources:
- Utah Judicial Giant Raymond Uno Has Died at 93 – Pacific Citizen
- Gehrke, Robert. “Utah Judge Raymond Uno, whose life took him from a Japanese concentration camp to the state bench, dies at 93.” Salt Lake Tribune 11 Mar. 2024.
- Semerad, Tony. “‘It’s kind of humbling’: Raymond Uno, longtime activist and Utah’s first minority judge, honored with new archive at University of Utah’s Marriott Library.” Salt Lake Tribune 27 Apr. 2018.
- Raymond Uno (Emeritus) – Utah Citizens’ Counsel
- Tab Uno – College of Social & Behavioral Science – The University of Utah
Image: Adapted from Cinema Shooting by Alex Proimos under CC BY 2.0.
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