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Maggie Gee of Berkeley, California talks about her experiences as a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot in WWII.
Maggie was one of two Chinese American pilots in the WASP program. A children’s picture book called Sky High has been published about her life.
In 2010, all living WASPs received the Congressional Gold Medal.
U.S. Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka is America’s first Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry, and the only Chinese American member of the United States Senate.Like many of his generation, Senator Akaka’s youth was interrupted by World War II. Upon graduation from high school, he served as a civilian worker in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1945 and then in active duty in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1947.
Following the war, Senator Akaka returned to school enrolling in the University of Hawaii. A strong believer in the power of education, he made it his career, as a teacher and principal in the State of Hawaii Department of Education.
First elected to the U.S. House in 1976, Congressman Akaka was appointed to the Senate when Senator Spark Matsunaga passed away, subsequently winning election to the office in 1990, and re-election in 1994, 2000, and 2006.
Senator Akaka is Chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommitteeon Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia.Senator Akaka also serves on the Armed Services, Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs Committees.
Raised in a deeply religious family, Senator Akaka is a member of the historic Kawaiaha`o Church where he served as choir director for 17 years. He and his wife Millie are the parents of four sons and a daughter who have blessed them with 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
(Source)
Dr. Henri Ford, Pediatric Surgeon Extraordinaire
It was quite a leap for Haitian-born Henri Ford who knew no English to attend John Jay High School in Brooklyn—where he was called “Frenchie”—and then go on for his B.A. at Princeton, not to mention moving from there in record time to Harvard Medical School, but for this Vice President and Chief of Surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine (USC), affiliated with Children’s Hospital, “leaps” are “challenges.” In fact, he laughs, recalling a saying of a classmate years ago, “excellence will silence all your critics.” Considering Dr. Ford’s considerable reputation as a surgeon and as a heavily funded and much published researcher in pediatric surgery, his specialty, it must be pretty quiet out there.
Read more here.
Canon EOS REBEL T2i
10 Facts You May Not Know About Asian-American History
by Jenn Fang
It’s almost the end of May. Do you know your Asian-American history?
Most of America isn’t aware that May is Asian-American Heritage Month. It’s a celebration that started in 1978, when Congress urged President Jimmy Carter to declare the week of May 4th ”Asian-American Heritage Week.” (That date was chosen to coincide with the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants on May 7, 1843, and with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad — built largely by Chinese laborers — on May 10, 1869.) More recently in 1990, following another vote by Congress, President George H.W. Bush expanded Asian-American Heritage Week to encompass the entire month of May.
Sadly, Asian-American history and heritage is rarely taught in U.S. public schools. So for those of you who’ve missed such curriculum, here’s a list of 10 factoids you may not have known about the history of Asian-Americans in this country:
1). The first Asians whose arrival in America was documented were Filipinos who escaped a Spanish galleon in 1763. They formed the first Asian-American settlement in U.S. history, in the swamps surrounding modern-day New Orleans.
2). In the years between 1917 and 1965, Uncle Sam explicitly outlawed immigration to the U.S. of all Asian people. Immigration from China, for example, was banned as early as 1882, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. It wasn’t until the Immigration Act of 1965— which abolished national origins as a basis for immigration decisions — that nearly 50 years of race-based discrimination against Asian immigrants ended.
3). Because of their race, Asians immigrants were denied the right to naturalize as U.S. citizens until the 1943 Magnuson Act was passed. Consequently, for nearly a century of U.S. history, Asians were barred from owning land and testifying in court by laws that specifically targeted “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” Even after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, American-born children of Chinese immigrants were not regarded as American citizens until the landmark 1898 Supreme Court case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established that the Fourteen Amendment also applied to people of Asian descent.
4). Among the earliest Asian immigrants, virtually all ethnicities worked together as physical laborers, particularly on Hawaii’s sugar cane plantations. On these plantations, a unique hybrid language — pidgin — developed that contained elements of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean and English. Today, pidgin is one of the official languages of Hawaii, a state that is itself 40% Asian.
5). Despite the Alien Land Law, which specifically prevented Asians from owning their own land, Japanese farmers were highly successful in the West Coast where they put into practice their knowledge of cultivating nutrient-poor soil to yield profitable harvests. By the 1920s, Japanese farmers (working their own land, or land held by white landowners that they managed) were the chief agricultural producers of many West Coast crops. In fact, the success of Japanese farmers is often cited as one of the reasons white landowners in California lobbied to support Japanese-American internment following the declaration of World War II.
6). Many of the early Asian immigrants who worked as laborers on plantations and in factories were instrumental in the formation of the American labour movement, helping to organize some of the first strikes and unions throughout the country. Japanese plantation workers, for example, engaged in the first organized strike in Hawaii in 1904.
7). Anti-miscegenation laws that denied marriage licenses between interracial couples specifically prohibited intermarriage between whites and Asians. For example, the 1922 Cable Act revoked the citizenship of any female U.S. citizen who married an “alien ineligible to citizenship,” a phrase repeatedly used in legal documents to refer to Asians.
8). Unlike Irish immigrants, who predominantly entered the United States via the Ellis Island immigration center, most Asian immigrants entered America by way of Angel Island Immigration Station. Unlike at Ellis Island, where immigrants might spend between two and five hours waiting to be processed, the Angel Island facility’s unspoken goal was to limit the flow of Asian immigrants into the country. Between 1910 and 1940, many prospective Asian immigrants were detained for as long as two years at Angel Island, stymied by U.S. immigration officials hoping to find reasons to deport them. Some of the detainees wrote poems in Chinese on the walls of the Angel Island detention facility; these poems have since been translated and collected into anthologies.
9). During World War II, Japanese American internees — including both Japanese immigrants and their American children — were forcibly relocated from their homes in the West Coast to remote relocation camps. Even still, several young Japanese-American men went on to successfully lobby the American government to be allowed to volunteer as soldiers in World War II, often to prove their loyalty to the United States. The 442nd infantry regiment, a segregated Asian-American unit composed almost entirely of Japanese-Americans, fought in Italy, France and Germany and is still the most highly decorated regiment in United States Armed Forces history.
10). In 1982, a young Chinese-American man named Vincent Chin was brutally clubbed to death by two white men in Detroit, Michigan. The crime was motivated, in part, by anti-Asian sentiment stemming from widespread loss of auto manufacturing jobs to Japanese competitors; Ronald Ebens, one of the attackers, was heard saying “it’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work” to Chin moments before the attack. Despite pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Chin’s killers did not serve any jail time for Chin’s murder, and were only fined $3,000. Vincent Chin’s death served as a flashpoint that ignited the modern Asian-American political movement.
Blast from the Past: James Wong Howe, Oscar-Winning Cinematographer
James Wong Howe by Phil Stern:
One of the best Hollywood cinematogrpahers ever, “Low Key” Howe—as in “low key lighting” which lent atmosphere and mood to scenes—was a cousin of screen goddess, Anna May Wong. Nominated for 10 Oscars, Howe won twice: 1956 for The Rose Tattoo (dir. Daniel Mann) and 1964 forHud (dir. Martin Ritt).
But this edition of Blast from the Past will take a tiny glimpse at Howe’s life through the lens of federal records rather than a movie camera.
However, keep in mind that this won’t be a typical AsAm hero profile. For Asian Americans growing up under the infuriating shadow of immigration acts and anti-miscegenation laws, getting into a profession you loved or wanting to marry someone of a different race required a certain kind of quiet courage and rebelliousness than it does for Asian Americans today.
This is something I found interesting when I was doing a school project.
Fiorello LaGuardia chose not to wear his Jewish heritage on his sleeve. In fact, he allowed the public to identify him as Italian, not Jewish, even under the most tempting of political circumstances. When issues of Jewish interest came up in New York or national politics, however, the “Little Flower” was an ardent advocate for Jewish rights. As mayor of New York, he was one of Hitler’s most outspoken opponents.
Read more LaGuardia here.
SAMURAI AMONG PANTHERS: RICHARD AOKI ON RACE, RESISTENCE AND A PARADOXICAL LIFE
Title: Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life
Author: Diane C. Fujino
Publisher: Critical American Studies, University of Minnesota PressBook Review By Abayomi Azikiwe
Libya 360°This is a combined autobiography and biographical account of the life and times of Richard Aoki, a Japanese-American, who along with his parents spent time in an internment camp in the United States during World War II. The book covers an important time period in history when the civil rights, left and black power movements had a tremendous impact on the political structures of the country.
Born on November 20, 1938, Aoki was three and a half years old when his family was relocated to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California, just twelve miles south of San Francisco. They were later transferred to the Topaz, Utah concentration camp.
This fact of U.S. history which is often deliberately overlooked as a key component of the war mobilization against Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941, lays bare the false notions of American democracy and the myth of non-discrimination against the “ideal Asian-American community.” The strain of the internment camps led to the separation of Akoi’s parents which had a tremendous impact on his life as a youth in the aftermath of the war.
Aoki and his brother would live with his father in Utah and later in Oakland. However, another traumatic occurrence took place when his father left town when he was a teenager leading him back to living with his mother and reestablishing a relationship with her.
His mother was a working class woman who raised her sons on a salary of less than two dollars an hour during the 1950s. He grew up in the predominantly African American community in West Oakland but had strong interaction and mentorship from other males in his family including a grandfather and uncles.
He would join the military prior to finishing high school and later the reserves. He read voraciously but admits to harboring a false consciousness. When he voted for the first time in the 1960 elections it was for Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for president.
Akoi described himself at the time as anti-communist and even read the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Soon afterwards he would pick up a book by Eugene Victor Debs, the socialist organizer and candidate for president during the early 20th century.
He found the writings of Debs inspiring and would then go on to study the history of the labor movement involving the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He landed a job in a factory during this period and participated in a strike.
However, it was during the Watts Rebellion of August 1965 that he learned a lesson in both race and class politics in the United States. Akoi recounted that “I remember when Watts busted loose in 1965. I was working in this one factory where 90 percent of the three hundred people working the line were White southerners. Half of them didn’t show up for work the day after the Watts riots.” (p. 86)
Akoi goes on to say “I asked the forman, ‘We got to get the show on the road. Where the hell is everybody?’ He said, ‘Man they’re at home in Richmond or wherever in the tract homes, and they got their front doors barricaded and their guns out for that invasion coming in from Watts.’ I said, ‘There ain’t going to be no invasion coming from Watts.’”
He therefore concluded that “on the one hand, these coworkers of mine were strong union people, you know proletarian-oriented, class-conscious workers. But when it came to race, half the workers, being White southerners, were freaked out over Watts. I was stunned.”
The first organizational contact he made with the left was through the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) and their youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). Fujino through FBI documents dates his involvement with the YSA to as early as 1961 when the U.S. hostility towards Cuba was intensifying.
When he entered the University of California at Berkeley after attending Merritt Junior College, where both Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale had studied, Akoi became involved with the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC) and the Tri-continental Movement. His emphasis was on the emergent Black revolutionary movement and Third World radicalism.
Akoi had known Huey P. Newton on another level through their involvement in street activities. In September 1966, Akoi would attend a Black Nationalist conference in San Francisco which brought together a number of militant organizations.
The following month the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was formed in Oakland with Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale as the co-founders. Akoi assisted in distributing the Panther ten-point program and soon he was appointed as a captain for the establishment of a branch in Berkeley, with him being the only member.
He recounts how a group of Asian Americans came to Bobby Seale and David Hilliard requesting to join the Panthers. At the time membership was restricted to Africans.
They soon came up with the idea of forming a Panther-like organization called the Red Guards in San Francisco. The organization was a close ally of the Panther Party.
Akoi was also a leading member of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) which focused on issues from a revolutionary perspective. His activities with the Panthers, the Red Guard and the AAPA would soon cause him problems with the SWP/YSA.
After delivering a report on the Black Nationalist conference to the SWP, the party wanted to reassign him to work on other issues unrelated to the national question. He rejected this suggestion and would later resign from the SWP after they expressed concerns that his activities with the African and Asian revolutionary organizations may cause difficulty for the party.
Although Akoi left the SWP with no resentments, he felt that his linking up with the Panthers was “the greatest political opportunity of my life.” In regard to the decimation of the Panthers he attributed this to the heavy repression by the FBI and police agencies, the forcing into exile and imprisonment of its key leadership, the assassinations of officials within the organization and the turn toward reformism and electoral politics by 1973.
Nonetheless, Akoi notes that “Even with these problems, I stand behind my conviction that the formation of the BPP was one of the greatest things to happen to twentieth-century America as far as the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality is concerned. It may not have been the perfect organization, but I’m amazed at its importance not only in the world but in my personal life.” (p. 160)
In 1969 his attention would be focused on the Third World Liberation Front that led the student strike at Berkeley. Out of this struggle ethnic studies, encompassing Black, Latino/as and Asian curriculums were developed.
The battle for ethnic studies was nationwide. At San Francisco State College during 1968-69, students went on strike also with the Panthers as well as other revolutionary organizations playing a pivotal role in the winning of Black Studies and other alternative curriculums within the higher education system.
Toward Asian American Studies and Youth Mentorship
Akoi would finish his graduate work and become a counselor and administrator within the California university system. He would continue to acknowledge his role in both the Black Liberation and Asian Liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 1990s he advocated for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners. He would also oppose the repeal of affirmative action programs by the State of California because these gains were won through the protracted struggles of students and the African American, Latino/as and Asian American communities.
Akoi died in 2009 and this book makes a significant contribution to the literature on this important period.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire , an international electronic press service designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world. The press agency was founded in January of 1998 and has published thousands of articles and dispatches in newspapers, magazines, journals, research reports, blogs and websites throughout the world. The PANW represents the only daily international news source on pan-african and global affairs. To contact him, click on this link » Email
Sorry guys, I’ve been falling behind on this blog. There will be new posts on Saturday.
