Michi Yasui was born in 1920 in Hood River, Oregon. She was a daughter of Japanese American businessman and orchardist Masuo Yasui (1886-1957). In 1938, Michi Yasui enrolled at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where she initially wanted to study education, but after being discouraged from doing so on account of her ethnicity, changed her major to English. She was a member of the International Relations Club and an officer in the campus Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). Yasui graduated in May 1942 but was prevented from attending the university's commencement ceremonies by an 8 p.m. curfew the U.S. government had imposed on Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the United States' entry into World War II. Requests for an exemption to allow Yasui to attend commencement were denied.

After graduating, Yasui followed her brother Shu Yasui to Denver, Colorado, to avoid the U.S. government's incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast, which included most members of the Yasui family. After moving to Denver, Michi Yasui married Toshido Ando (1920-2012). She died in 2006.

Sources: "Stubborn Twig," by Lauren Kessler (Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press), 2005; vital records via Ancestry.com.