Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The National Archives holds a wealth of material documenting the Asian and Pacific Islander experience, and it highlights these resources online, in programs, and through traditional and social media.

The theme for 2020 is Unite Our Nation by Empowering Equality. 

Prologue Articles

Broken Blossoms (Spring 2016)

Attachments: Faces and Stories from America's Gates (Summer 2012)

“How an eagle feels when his wings are clipped and caged”: Relocation Center Newspapers Describe Japanese American Internment in World War II (Winter 2009)

When the "Enemy" Landed at Angel Island (Summer 2009)

Return to Sender:  U.S. Censorship of Enemy Alien Mail in World War II (Spring 2001)

An Alleged Wife: One Immigrant in the Chinese Exclusion Era (Spring 2004)

Race, Nationality, and Reality: INS Administration of Racial Provisions in U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law Since 1898 (Summer 2002)

The Past Recaptured? The Photographic Record of the Internment of Japanese-Americans (Summer 1980)

Prologue “Genealogy Notes” on Immigration and Naturalization

 

Slideshow

The “Broken Blossoms” trials of the 1930s revealed the workings of brokers who lured young Chinese women with promises of work in the United States and then sold them into prostitution in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Immigrants used “coaching books,” like this one from 1923 to learn about their false families in order to pass the intense interrogations awaiting them at their American ports of entry. 

The Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay.

Photograph included with Chun Jan Yut's immigration file.

Immigrants arriving at Angel Island, 1931

A political cartoon in the Minidoka Irrigator, one of several newspapers started by Japanese American internees during World War II. (Records of the War Relocation Authority, RG 210)

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Flickr images

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month photos and documents from the National Archives.

Videos

Author Erika Lee discusses her book The Making of Asian America, October 2, 2015

A Conversation with George Takei: George Takei in Hyde Park, February 19, 2017

Japanese American Internment Teachable Moment video from the FDR Library

Oh, the Stories They Tell: Chinese Exclusion Acts Case Files at the National Archives