Franklin Odo 2.Qxd

growth of Asian American communities from less than 1 per- Gathering History for the Future cent of the U.S. population in 1970 to 4.2 percent in 2000. A Profile of Curator & Historian Franklin Odo Because of early immigration patterns, the majority of the By Terry Hong book’s documents before 1965 are primarily Chinese Ameri- can, Japanese American, Korean American, and Filipino or decades, Franklin Odo has been a professional ground- American, while “post-1965 is replete with huge numbers of breaker. He was the first from his Hawai’i high school to different kinds of documents to reflect the influx of significant Fget to Princeton University, and once there, he wasthe firs numbers of other Asian Pacific American [APA] immigrants,” t Asian American to break into The Ivy Club, the most pres- says Odo. He also admits that he tried to pay particular atten- tigious, lily-white eating establishment on campus. While still tion to what might be considered popular culture: “I didn’t a Ph.D. student back at Princeton (after a master’s stopover want to be too much of an old fogy,” he laughs. at Harvard), he coedited the first bona fide Asian American In addition to the obvious legislative documents, Odo breakout text, Roots: An Asian American Reader, with Amy scoured letters, political cartoons, lyrics, editorials, and Tachiki, Eddie Wong, and Buck speeches that illustrated important Wong. The Columbia Documentary trends or events. “Some of the Doctorate in hand, Odo wandered choices were just intuitive,” he says. the academic halls with professorial History “Others were chosen to reflect the gigs at Columbia, the University of of the Asian American Experience changes in APA history, to give a Hawai’i, and the University of Edited by FRANKLIN ODO sense of what was important that was California at Los Angeles. Then in Columbia University, $65.00 cloth, ISBN 0-231-11030-8 taking place in American history.” 1997, the venerable Smithsonian Many of Odo’s choices—some- Institution in Washington, D.C., times deceptively simple—are espe- plucked him to become the first-ever director of the newly cre- cially effective in capturing the climate of the times. For ated Asian Pacific American Program. Last year Odo became example, he includes an 1885 letter, published on the front the first Asian American to assume the title of curator at the page of a local San Francisco paper, from Chinese American National Museum of American History. And high time it was. Mary Tape. She berates the San Francisco school board for “Given our history in the United States, it’s a major step for the not allowing her American-born daughter, Mamie, to attend Smithsonian to finally acknowledge Asian Americans in this nonsegregated public schools. Odo includes another letter, arena,” he says. written almost 100 years later, from another Chinese mother With so many firsts under his belt, it comes as no surprise on behalf of her child. In 1983, the mother of Vincent Chin that Odo has written the very first book to bring together the addressed The Chinese Welfare Council of Detroit in an canon of documents that are of utmost importance to Asian attempt to solicit support for a legal appeal against two unem- American history. Released last year, The Columbia ployed auto workers who were set free after brutally murder- Documentary History of the Asian American Experience is a ing her son, having mistakenly assumed that he was Japanese six-year project. Together with Gary Okihiro’s The Columbia and therefore responsible for the loss of their jobs. Guide to Asian American History, published in 2001, the two Throughout the book’s almost 600 pages, some 155 docu- titles offer a comprehensive overview of the Asian American ments represent two-plus centuries of Asian American history. experience in the United States. Both texts bear witness to a In addition to the three most important events—the 1882 sense of entitlement that urges Asian Americans to claim an anti-immigration laws, the Japanese American internment, and important portion of American history as their own; indeed, the 1965 immigration reforms—Odo highlights a few other Asian Americans have long been vital participants in the notables that have shaped the arc of Asian American history. In making of American history, and continue to play a growing chronological order, he offers the 1898 Treaty of role in the future of this country. In addition to the Peace Between the United States and Spain, Over his decades of teaching, Odo noticed which officially made the United States an impe- that “we as historians often refer to a set canon obvious legislative rial power in the Pacific by taking over Guam and of very important documents.” So he began com- documents, Odo the Philippines from Spain; the 1924 National piling. He started with the obvious landmark scoured letters, politi- Origins Act, which essentially sealed the fate of pieces of legislation: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Asian American immigration to a quota of zero; Act, the first of a long series of racist laws that cal cartoons, lyrics, the 1927 Tokushige Supreme Court decision, effectively barred Asians from entering the editorials, which determined that efforts in the Northeast United States for more than 80 years; the intern- and Hawai’i to close down Japanese language ment documents that sent 120,000 Americans of and speeches that schools were unconstitutional (this decision Japanese descent to concentration camps with- illustrated showed that even ethnic groups considered unde- out just cause during World War II; and the 1965 important trends sirable have rights that have to be protected); and immigration reform laws that finally opened U.S. the 1998 Japanese American Redress, which borders to fair immigration practices and saw the or events. resulted in a formal apology by the U.S. govern-

Reprinted from The Bloomsbury Review®, Vol. 24, #5. © 2004, Terry Hong. All rights reserved. May not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted in any fashion without the written consent of Terry Hong; [email protected]. ment to interned Japanese American victims and their sur- Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Program. vivors. PHOTOGRAPHER: Hugh Talman ©2003 Odo adds one more significant event to the top of the Asian American history charts: Sa-I-Gu, literally NOTE: A shorter version of this profile appeared in the “four-two-nine” (or April 29) in Korean, refers to the riots March 2003 issue of KoreaAm Journal. that tore through Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. Odo says, “The media insisted [the riots] were caused by conflicts among people of color in inner cities—the Latinos, the African Americans, and the Koreans, but the media success- fully used these groups to basically misdirect people’s attention to surface events rather than the critical political, economic, and racial conditions that are endemic to that area, which keep people mired in poverty and at each other’s throats.” With such encyclopedic breadth contained in one volume, securing documents proved to be a challenge for Odo; while many were public domain, obtaining the most definitive ver- sions required tedious attention to detail. “My assistant, Noriko Sanefuji, was instrumental in compiling the documents,” Odo says. Sanefuji admits to the tedium, but she insists that “it was a very good experience for me.” With the finished product and an eye toward the next edi- tion, Odo looks to the future: “There are lots of things that are not in [the book] yet, particularly references to more recent immigrant groups that are now much larger,” he says. Odo notes that the experiences of the newest immigrants are vastly different from those of previous immigrants. In the new Internet society, today’s immigrants can have instant contact with their home countries. Older immigrants spent months attempting to communicate with each other. “So it’s really a different notion of coming here as an immigrant. Being an American today has international elements to it that have never existed before,” Odo explains. “I think this is a huge part of why older Americans, especially older white Americans, are very troubled by the notion of immigrants— because, in essence, new immigrants never really need to leave their old countries.” That means huge numbers of people are not playing by the same old rules. Understandably, Odo is troubled. “I think things are going to be as problematic or worse for the foreseeable future for APAs. I don’t see our society seriously grappling with all the emerging developments that are the result of growing numbers of immigrants.” The post-9/11 spike in racially motivated hate crimes is tragically telling of things to come. But there’s also hope on the horizon. Odo refers to the Hawai’ian word for refuge, kipuka [literally, an island sur- rounded by lava flows and covered with vegetation]: In spite of the devastation a volcano wreaks when it erupts, it also leaves behind tiny spaces in which new seeds can grow, becoming the shrubs that start the new forests. “We need more cultural kipuka in this lava-strewn terrain,” says Odo. Therein lies our collective American future. WRITER: Terry Hong is coauthor of Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture: From Astro Boy to Zen Buddhism. She is also project director of the Korean American Centennial Commemoration at the