Asian American History
Monterey Park exhibition honors Asian American veterans during US 250th anniversary
A monthlong exhibition at Monterey Park’s Bruggemeyer Library is using America’s 250th anniversary to highlight Asian American military service across nearly two centuries of U.S. history. “Duty,…
Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s birthright citizenship order
The Supreme Court affirmed Tuesday that children born in the U.S. are automatically citizens, rejecting President Donald Trump’s order denying that right to kids of undocumented or temporary…
Vincent Chin honored 44 years after his death
Detroit marked the 44th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s murder over the weekend, with a ceremony honoring the civil rights movement his death helped ignite across Asian American communities nationwide.…
Santa Ana unveils memorial for Chinatown destroyed by city-ordered fire
The city of Santa Ana, California, dedicated a memorial monument Saturday to its historic Chinatown, a Chinese immigrant community that the city ordered burned down nearly 120 years earlier.…
Seattle sculpture honoring 1886 Chinese expulsion hits funding goal
A public art project more than two decades in the making cleared its final financial hurdle last week, paving the way for the fabrication of a bronze sculpture at the site where Seattle’s Chinese…
Wisconsin memorial seeks donations as it adds new names honoring Lao, Hmong and US Secret War veterans
The Lao, Hmong and American Veterans Memorial is seeking public donations as it prepares to dedicate 10 new picture panels and engrave eight additional names this year. The panels are part of an…
Larry Itliong’s son says Cesar Chavez took credit for union organizing led by Filipino farmworkers
Jonny Itliong said Cesar Chavez took credit for organizing work led by his father, United Farm Workers co-founder Larry Itliong, during the formation of the union. Sexual assault allegations against…
DOGE’s ChatGPT-driven grant cuts put Asian American history at risk
Court depositions have exposed how ChatGPT became the tool for gutting more than $100 million in National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants, including projects on Asian American history in…
Survey finds ‘perpetual foreigner’ stereotype persists for Asian Americans
Asian Americans born in the U.S. are more likely than any other racial group to have their loyalty and national belonging questioned, according to the 2025 State of Chinese Americans survey. The…
Japanese Americans mark 84 years since WWII incarceration order
Eighty-four years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the order that locked up 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps, the community marked the anniversary last week with…
Hundreds of rescued LA Chinatown film prints return to the silver screen
Nearly 600 original 35 mm Chinese-language film prints recovered from Los Angeles’ former Sing Lee Theatre are now returning to public exhibition through the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The…
Oregon marks decade of Minoru Yasui Day
Oregon will observe the 10th anniversary of Minoru Yasui Day on March 28 in recognition of the attorney who tested wartime discrimination laws and became, so far, the state’s only Presidential Medal…
Japanese American soldiers denied commissions in WWII are posthumously promoted
The U.S. Army posthumously promoted seven Japanese American World War II soldiers during a commissioning ceremony in Honolulu on Jan. 26, correcting a decision made more than eight decades earlier.…
Smithsonian exhibit documents Filipino American life under segregation
“How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories,” running at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., documents Filipino American life during a period when…
For Japanese American survivors, today’s immigration tactics feel painfully familiar
Decades after Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes during World War II, survivors and advocates say the same legal and racial logic is resurfacing in Trump’s immigration…
Despite Trump funding cuts, Japanese American National Museum continues DEI work
The Japanese American National Museum has lost more than $1 million in federal funding after declining to end its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs under a Trump administration executive…
Hirono, Tran honor 50 years of Southeast Asian diaspora in new resolution
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Derek Tran (D-Calif.) introduced a bicameral resolution on Dec. 11 commemorating the 50th anniversary of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement in the U.S. What it…
Christine Choy, filmmaker behind ‘Who Killed Vincent Chin?,’ dies at 73
Christine Choy, the Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker who helped force a national reckoning with anti-Asian violence, died Dec. 7 in New York City at 73. No cause of death was released. Her…
Trial begins for man accused in Vicha Ratanapakdee’s death
Nearly five years after the fatal attack on an 84-year-old Thai immigrant helped galvanize the Stop Asian Hate movement, his accused killer finally faced a jury this week in San Francisco. Catch up:…
She is Alabama’s first Asian American mayor
Ranae Bartlett, 58, is Alabama’s first Asian American mayor, winning more than 56% of the vote in the City of Madison’s mayoral race in August. Meet Bartlett: Born in Chuncheon, South Korea, to a…
Alice Wong, pioneering disability rights advocate and author, dies at 51
Alice Wong, the trailblazing disability rights activist and author who amplified underrepresented voices in American society, died Nov. 14 in San Francisco at age 51. Known for founding the…
Oregon unveils historical marker detailing service of Japanese American WWII soldiers
A historical marker unveiled on Veterans Day along Highway 35 in Hood River documents the World War II service of Oregon’s second-generation Japanese American soldiers. The installation presents…
Kaohly Her elected as St. Paul’s 1st Hmong and Asian American mayor
For the first time in the history of St. Paul, Minnesota, a Hmong and Asian American woman will lead the city. Kaohly Her’s election on Tuesday broke multiple barriers as she defeated incumbent…
Historian races to record fading memories of Japanese Americans at Topaz camp
As the number of surviving Japanese American World War II internees declines, oral historian Diana Tsuchida is intensifying her efforts to record the final first-hand accounts from families connected…
Des Moines to memorialize former governor and Southeast Asian refugees he welcomed
The Iowa Asian Alliance announced on Sept. 26 a landmark project in Des Moines to honor former Gov. Robert D. Ray and the Southeast Asian families who began resettling in the city 50 years ago. The…
Milwaukee honors its Chinese Laundry Era
Milwaukee is recognizing its Chinese Laundry Era with a new historical marker at the YWCA-Southeast Wisconsin building on North King Drive, where Fred Moy Laundry operated from the 1940s until 1976.…
Ken Mochizuki, pioneering voice in Asian American children’s literature, dies at 71
Ken Mochizuki, the Seattle author, journalist and educator who introduced Japanese American incarceration to generations of students through children’s literature, died Sept. 20 at his home in Maple…
Native Hawaiian group aims to buy back ancestral land
A Native Hawaiian community organization is working to acquire more than 55,000 acres of ancestral land from a Hong Kong-based billionaire investment firm for $260 million. A long history: The…
Wyoming city honors Chinese massacre victims 140 years later
Descendants of Chinese miners killed in an infamous massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885 joined archaeologists this summer to excavate a site where their ancestors once lived. Last week, their…
Koreans outnumbered Japanese Americans at Hawaii incarceration camp, research reveals
A University of Hawaii oral history initiative is spotlighting how Korean prisoners of war vastly outnumbered Japanese Americans at the Honouliuli Internment Camp during World War II — about 2,700…
WWII vet in Sacramento celebrates 100th birthday
Ken Mar, a World War II veteran, turned 100 on Thursday, celebrating with members of the Gung Ho American Legion in Sacramento. The event recognized his service as one of roughly 20,000 Chinese…
New memorial honors Japanese Americans imprisoned in North Dakota
A monument recognizing Japanese Americans held at a former incarceration site in Bismarck, North Dakota, will be dedicated at the local United Tribes Technical College on Friday. About the site: The…
Former Japanese American WWII camps fuel resistance to Trump’s historical censorship
Advocates and community members rallied at Manzanar and other locations nationwide in the past weeks, opposing Trump administration policies they say threaten to obscure difficult chapters of…
Former Japanese American WWII camp is now the country’s largest immigration detention center
The Trump administration has opened the country’s largest immigration detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, a former military base that served as a temporary incarceration camp for…
George Takei: Immigrant detentions like WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans
Japanese American activist George Takei, who was incarcerated as a child during World War II, has drawn parallels between the U.S. government’s wartime internment of Japanese Americans and the Trump…
Detroit names street for Vincent Chin on 43rd anniversary of his death
Detroit officials unveiled a street sign honoring Vincent Chin on Monday, commemorating the 43rd anniversary of the Chinese American draftsman’s murder. About the ceremony The naming ceremony, which…
