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Asian Pacific Islander Month

© Melissa Sztuczko-Payk

Asian/Pacific Americans represent an amazing breadth of diversity. The term "Asian/Pacific American" includes people from at least 29 different countries: Japan, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, American Samoa and the Philippines, to name a few. This community represents more than 75 different languages and literally hundreds of different ethnic groups. From the first traders who reached North America in the 16th century to the Chinese laborers who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad on the mainland to the Japanese, Korean and Filipinos who came to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations, Asian/Pacific Americans have enhanced our national character and continue to play a vital role as we approach the 21st century. Rear Admiral William G. Sutton,Commander, Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, 1998

I find it a little ironic, this quote from a military official in Pearl Harbor. Just 57 years have passed since the Japanese bombed that base; only 54 years ago, 120,000 Japanese-Americans were being kept in US "internment camps" to ensure they would not consort with the enemy (never mind that 33,000 Japanese-Americans were also enlisted in US military forces.) While the United States still faces an upward battle when it comes to discrimination, there is some solace to be found in the fact that such changes in mindset can happen in such a short time, comparatively speaking.

Famous Asian Americans

Chinese: IM Pei (architect), Michelle Kwan (gymnast), Connie Chung (television journalist), Bruce Lee (martial arts master, actor), Amy Tan (author), David Ho (AIDS researcher, 1996 Time Magazine Man of the Year).

Japanese: Eugenie Clark (icthyologist), Gyo Obata (architect), Robert Murase (landscape architect).

Related Links

1999 Presidential Proclamation

Where are you (really) from? is an essay about the often-made mistake of assuming persons of Asian ancestry are foreigners.

Japanese Americans Internment in Concentration Camps

Instructions to All Japanese Living on Bainbridge Island is actually the evacuation order for all persons of Japanese ancestry. Also check out Bainbridge Island for photos, excerpts from editorials, and other perspectives on that evacuation.

Maps of Japanese American Internment Camps

Celebrating Asian-Pacific Heritage Month

Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West, where an estimated one million immigrants entered the US during its 30 years in operation.

Approaches to Heritage:Hawaiian and Pacific Perspectives on Preservation has a wealth of links looking at the age-old dilemma of uniting a country while maintaining individual cultural history.

Asian American is a political term provides a fairly exhaustive list of what ethnicities are included in the overly-broad label of "Asian American".

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