(Reuters) - For most of Joan Haratani's childhood, her Japanese-American family never spoke of what happened during the war. How her mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles were held for nine months in a horse stall at the Santa Anita racetrack in Southern California before being sent to a prison camp in Wyoming, while her father was incarcerated at a camp in Colorado.

It was a silence born of degradation and shame, said the 63-year-old litigation partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. "It was like they got raped."

September 2 is the 75th anniversary of Japan's formal surrender, which marked the end of World War II. It's a milestone that reminds Haratani of the need to "give voice to the shadows of our history," she said. "I've made it a mission to make sure those stories aren't forgotten and that no one else feels like they have to suffer discrimination in silence."

In her 36 years practicing law, Haratani has been a passionate proponent of diversity, equality and inclusion. But her career didn't follow what (for me at least) would make a tidy narrative arc.

That is, she didn't become a civil rights lawyer, crusading against injustices like the one suffered by her family.

Instead, Haratani is a top civil litigator, defending clients in class actions, product liability litigation, complex licensing agreements and trade secret fights. It's work that she combines with pro bono advocacy, mentoring and efforts on behalf of Asian American organizations.

She had a practical reason for picking Big Law when she graduated from the University of California, Davis School of Law in 1984. She had a pile of student loans and needed to make enough money to pay them back.

But that's not all.

"I think I've been able to do more good taking the path I took," she said, blazing a trail as one of the first Asian women to be a Big Law litigation partner.

"I was able to be in a place when there weren't many of us, and that made me want to stay," said Haratani, who was accustomed to being the lone woman of color "in a room full of old white guys."

"When people said no to me — and they often do," she said, her response has always been the same: "No one tells me what I can't do."

Haratani has been a fighter her whole life — a trait she attributes in large part to her mother's emphasis on the family's samurai heritage and the Bushido code, or "the way of the warrior."

As a kid in the 1960s, Haratani stood up to schoolyard bullies in (then) predominately white Livermore, California, who called her "Jap" or "Ching Chong Chinaman."

"I know what it feels like to grow up feeling 'other'" she said, recalling "the racism and violence my sister and I grew up with in a world that was still decidedly anti-Japanese."

And yet, Haratani's parents never told her about what happened to them in the war until she was in 8th grade. That's when she saw a newspaper article about a show at the Oakland, California, art museum — photos by Dorothea Lange of the internment camps.

"I went to my folks and asked 'What is this? What happened?'" Haratani recalled. Initially, they were reluctant to tell her. But eventually, she and her father — a shy computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — went to local churches and high schools to teach people about the internment camps.

(Though Haratani finds the term "internment camp" too gentle. "It was incarceration," she said. "They were thrown in jail behind barbed wire with armed guards.")

Not everyone believed them. Some people, she recalled, "said 'You're lying' and 'It didn't happen.'"

Which sounds depressingly familiar.

Law school for her was a natural fit. She liked to argue and cared deeply about justice.

She started her career at Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May (which later merged with Reed Smith), where she made partner. She lateraled to Shook, Hardy & Bacon before moving to 2,000-lawyer Morgan, Lewis & Bockius as a partner in 2005, where she is based in the firm's San Francisco office.

She credits Morgan Lewis Chairwoman Jami McKeon for leading by example, teaching her "the importance of using your voice to advocate for others."

Haratani also counts Don Tamaki and Dale Minami at law firm Minami Tamaki as important mentors. The duo helped overturn the conviction of Fred Korematsu, the Japanese American whose unsuccessful case challenging the internment camps was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944.

Haratani sees troubling echoes in today's immigration conflict of what happened 75 years ago.

"The trauma those parents and kids have experienced and continue to experience is profound," Haratani said.

She added, "History does repeat — and I'm afraid of that."