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Home , Americans in Japan, Asian Peruvians, Chinese Canadians, South Asian Canadians, The Chinese in Mexico

Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Americas 4/18/12

Chapter Fourteen Asians in the Americas as Twenty-first Century Model Minorities, Transnational Migrants, and Diasporic Citizens

Contemporary Asians in the Americas are creating new, multilayered diasporic identities. Like earlier Asian immigrants, today’s new arrivals do so in a variety of ways.

They are simultaneously ethnic and immigrant minorities within nations, transnational migrants who engage in two homelands, and diasporic citizens making connections across borders. These varied identities offer Asians flexibility in defining what “Chinese

American,” “Japanese Brazilian,” “South Asian Canadian,” etc. mean and under what contexts. At the same time, the status of Asian immigrants in the Americas continue to be influenced by changing global politics and relations between and the Americas as well as domestic race, class, and gender relations. History, too, including deliberate acts of remembering, preserving, and commemorating the roles and contributions of

Asians in the Americas, has become a central part of defining what it means to be Asian in the Americas today.

Immigrant Minorities

Contemporary Asian immigrants in the Americas are first immigrant and ethnic minorities within specific nation states. New Chinese immigrants in the , for example, have helped to revive older in big urban centers like New York

City. At the same time, they have also formed new ethnic enclaves in the suburbs, complete with Chinese-owned banks, restaurants, malls, Chinese-language newspapers.

Monterey Park in southern California, where Chinese make up more than one-third of

1 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 the city’s population, has been nicknamed “the first suburban .” Just like in the earlier Chinese communities established throughout the Americas beginning in the late nineteenth century, the high concentration of Chinese immigrant-serving businesses and services in these new ethnic enclaves ease the transition into the United

States while fostering close community and homeland ties.1

Chinese in the Americas have also successfully integrated into local and national communities. In the United States, the number of elected officials of Asian Pacific

American descent almost tripled from 1978 to 1000.2 In 2012, both the mayors of

Oakland, CA and San Francisco, California are Chinese , as is the U.S.

Ambassador to . Ambassador Gary Locke also previously served as U.S. Secretary for Commerce and was a two-term Governor in the state of Washington.

In , the arrival of new immigrants from Asia after 1967 coincided with the country’s adoption of multiculturalism as an official policy that encouraged the preservation of ethnic and cultural identities to assist in resettlement and adjustment in

Canada.3 In , for example, recent Chinese immigrants maintain their strong

1 On the revitalization of older urban Chinatowns, see , Chinese in America, 337; Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic, Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community (New York: New Press, 2005) 343-8. On Monterey Park, CA, see Timothy Fong, The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 2 Lai and Arguelles, “Politics and Civil Rights,” The New Face of Asian America, 210. 3 Canadian multiculturalism is based on equality, an emphasis on being comprised of ethno-cultural pluralism, choice, and the protection of civil and human rights. According to many Canadian scholars, Canadian discourses of multiculturalism have been problematic. Renisa Mawani has argued that Canadian multiculturalism erases the role of colonialism, , and in Canada’s past and present. See Renisa Mawani, “’Cleansing the Conscience of the People’: Reading Head Tax Redress in Multicultural Canada,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 19:2 (2004)

2 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12

Hong Kong identities by participating in voluntary, sports, religious, cultural, and social organizations. In , a large number of vibrant Vietnamese ethnic associations range from political organizations to students clubs and professional and religious associations. 4

These activities do not prevent new Asian immigrants from adapting to and integrating into Canada. Chinese have high rates of naturalization and view themselves as Canadian citizens, and like , they have rapidly integrated into Canadian politics. A high number of immigrants have been elected to local office in recent years.5 In the United States and Canada, Americans and

Canadians of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South and Southeast Asian descent have also joined together in pan-ethnic and interracial alliances to advocate for civil rights and national inclusion.

In , local Chinese refer to themselves as tusan, a word derived from the Chinese tusheng (local-born). Following the end of World War Two, Japanese

Brazilians and Japanese used many different strategies to retain and express

127-151, pgs. 127-130; Sherene H. Razack, “Introduction: When Place Becomes Race,” in Sherene H. Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002) 1-14. 4 On Hong Kong immigrants’ participation in Toronto, see Valerie Preston, Audrey Kobayashi, and Myer Siemiatycki, “Transnational Urbanism: Toronto at a Crossroads,” in Vic Satzewich and Lloyd Wong, Transnational Identities and Practices in Canada (: University of Press, 2006) 91-110, p. 100-101. On Vietnamese in Canada, see Louis-Jacques Dorais, “From Refugees to Transmigrants: The Vietnamese in Canada,” in Robert G. Lee and Wanni W. Anderson, eds., Displacements and Disaporas: Asians in the Americas (, NJ: 2005) 170-193, 176-177, 179-184; Linda Trinh Võ, “Vietnamese American Trajectories: Dimensions of Diaspora,” Amerasia Journal 29:1 (2003) ix-xviii, x. 5 Preston, Kobayashi, and Siemiatycki, “Transnational Urbanism,” 91-110, p. 100-101.

3 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 their ethnic heritage while they sought to be included in mainstream society. Japanese

Brazilians, for example, chose from hyphenated Japanese-Brazilian identities, ultra-

Japanese nationalism, and brasilidade, an assimilated Brazilian identity. Many Japanese

Peruvians viewed the election of as ’s president in 1990 as a sign that had finally been accepted in the country.6

Transnational Migrants

Just as new Asian immigrants are adapting to and integrating into their new homes, many also remain transnational migrants simultaneously connected to and at the intersections of both their old and new homelands. For example, Chinese in Mexico like Eduardo Auyón Gerardo, who was born in , China of a Chinese father and a Mexican mother, now seek to build commercial and cultural ties between the two countries. As president of the Chinese Association of Mexicali, Auyón Gerardo leads

Mexican businesspeople to China several times a year to organize bilateral trade opportunities.7

6 On “tusan,” see Pan, Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, 258-259. Jeffrey Lesser explains the various forms of Japanese-Brazilian identities in “In Search of the Hyphen: Nikkei and the Struggle over Brazilian National Identity,” 50-52 (37-58) and “Japanese, Brazilians, Nikkei: A Short History of Identity Building and Homemaking,” in Jeffrey Lesser, Searching for Home Abroad, 11-13. On Fujimori, see Raul Araki, “An Approach to the Formation of Nikkei Idnetity in Peru: and Nisei,” (76-89) in Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura-Yano, and James A. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 7 Adrian H. Hearn, Alan Smart, and Roberto Hernández Hernández, “China and Mexico: Trade, Migration, and Guanxi,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) 139- 159, pgs. 147-148.

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Some Hong Kong and Taiwanese families are literally spread across the Pacific

Ocean between North America and Asia. Choosing to split up the family unit in order to pursue business opportunities in Asia and educational opportunities in the United States and Canada, “astronaut” Chinese fathers shuttle across the Pacific for business while their wives and children live and attend school in North America. Similarly, Taiwanese

“parachute” kids have been left in the United States alone or with caretakers and relatives to go to school and better their chances of gaining admission to a prestigious

United States university.8

These transnational “split-family households” are similar to the trans-Pacific families that working-class Chinese immigrants formed during the Chinese exclusion era from the late nineteenth century through World War Two. But unlike these earlier sojourners who often never saw their families again, today’s elite Chinese immigrants are able to travel back and forth much more frequently. New communications technology such as email, international phone service, fax, and internet communications make transnational connections much more frequent, intense, and direct.

A number of Asian immigrants practice flexible and selective forms of citizenship.

Globe-trotting Chinese elites with multiple homes and passports exemplify what anthropologist Aihwa Ong describes as “flexible citizens” who enjoy privileged access to multiple nations.9 Other Chinese migrants, especially an increasing number of middle-

8 Min Zhou, Contemporary Chinese America: , Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 202-220; Chang, Chinese in America, 338-346. 9 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

5 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 class professionals returning to China in the early twentieth century, strategically choose

U.S. citizenship while retaining a “flexible nationality” that is strongly Chinese. U.S. citizenship offers, among other things, more international mobility, an advantage in the global labor market with higher salaries often paid to U.S. citizens, and protection from political uncertainties in . But these Chinese migrants detach their individual and cultural identities from state-designated nationality and loyalty. As scholar Lisong Liu aptly explains, “it’s the land, the culture…not the paper,” that matters for them.10

In addition to forming flexibile forms of citizenship, contemporary Asian immigrants also practice “diasporic philanthropy” by sending remittances to their families and native villages. They also contribute to political causes in their homelands on a regular basis. These practices keep them connected to their homelands and help shape their identities and connections within larger diasporas. For example, Filipino balikbayan, permanent residents of the United States, have long been championed as national Filipino heroes for the remittances that they send to the . In 2009, the Philippine Daily inquirer reported that Filipino Americans remitted $8 billion to the

Philippines.11

10 Lisong Liu, “Return Migration and Selective Citizenship: A Study of Returning Chinese Professional Migrants from the United States,” Journal of Asian American Studies 15:1 (February, 2012) 35-68. 11 Verne A. Dusenberry and Darshan S. Tatla define diaspora philanthropy in “Introduction,” in Verne A. Dusenberry and Darshan S. Tatla, eds., Philanthropy in : Global Giving for Local Good (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009) 3-29, p. 5-6. Figure for Filipino American remittances in 2008 is from Jose Ma. Montelibano, ―Glimpses: The $8 billion Fil-Am Remittance, Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 20, 2010, as cited in L. Joyce Zapanta Mariano, “Homeland

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More recently, Filipinos’ transnational philanthropy has become more organized and direct. There are now thousands of transnational hometown, regional, and national associations, as well as profesisonal and alumni organizations link Filipino Americans to the Philippines. Since the 1980s, Filipino Americans have developed new organizations and foundations explicitly focused on direct transnational investment and partnership with communities in the Philippines. Led by Filipino immigrant professionals, these groups range widely in their purpose and focus. There are medical missions led by

Filipino American doctors and nurses as well as volunteer abroad programs for Filipino

American youth. Together, the diasporic giving of Filipinos abroad contributes to charity and social development efforts in the Philippines on a massive scale. In doing so,

Filipinos reaffirm their status as heroic balikbayan and maintain connections with the

Philippines for the American-born generation.12

Similar conditions exist among Vietnamese communities in North America. In

1986, the Vietnamese government adopted a dôi mói policy to invite foreign capital, including remittances from the Vietnamese in the disapora, known as Viêt Kiêu

(temporary sojourners). During the 1990s, Vietnamese abroad sent an estimated United

States $600 to $700 million a year back to families in Vietnam.13

Developments: Filipino America and the Politics of Diaspora Giving,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2011) 109. On balikbayan as heroes, see ibid., 102-103. 12 At the same time, Filipino diasporic giving help construct and sustain the privileged position of Filipino Americans within the larger Filipino diaspora, which includes overseas Filipino workers in over 190 countries worldwide – many of them in unskilled labor and domestic service – and the Philippines as well. Mariano, “Homeland Developments,” 3-4, 48-53, 102-126. 13 Louis-Jacques Dorais, “From Refugees to Transmigrants: The Vietnamese in Canada,” in Robert G. Lee and Wanni W. Anderson, eds., Displacements and Disaporas: Asians in

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Canadians and Americans of Indian descent also maintain strong transnational homeland ties, often with the assistance of the Indian government. Beginning in the

1970s, Indians in the United States began to form ethnic organizations and newspapers as part of new community building efforts. As newcomers to the United States who did not fit easily into existing racial categories of “white,” “black,” or “Asian,” they actively claimed an “Indian” identity that was formed at the intersection of and the United

States. Indeed, just like the earlier generation of Indian immigrants, connecting to India has become tied to efforts to define themselves in the United States and in the diaspora.14

These efforts follow in the path of earlier philanthropic efforts originally established by Punjabi pioneers in North America. Today, they have been nurtured by both Indians in North America and the Indian government. Gopal Raju, an Indian immigrant living in New York, started the newspaper India Abroad in 1970 with the intention to reach “all Indians outside India, including the United States, Canada, and

Britain.” The newspaper routinely featured thinly-veiled pleas for investment in India.

The Indian government participated in some of these efforts by sponsoring investment planning sessions in new Indian industries. In 1999, India began to issue special immigration documents, known as “Persons of Indian Origin Card” that allow “non- the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: 2005) 170-193, 176-177, 179-184; Linda Trinh Võ, “Vietnamese American Trajectories: Dimensions of Diaspora,” Amerasia Journal 29:1 (2003) ix-xviii, x. 14 According to Sandhya Shukla, Indian identity in the U.S. was shaped concurrently by the experiences of being an ethnic immigrant minority in the U.S. and a transnational Indian identity shaped by intense Indian nationalism. Sandhya Shukla, “New Immigrants, New Forms of Transnational Community: Post-1965 Indian Migrations,” Amerasia Journal 25:3 (1999/2000) 19-36, 23-25, 27.

8 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 resident Indians” to visit India without a visa, own property, buy government bonds, and apply to universities in India. By granting non-nationals the rights of nationals, the

Indian government has sought to encourage financial investments and long-term transnational ties between Indians in the diaspora and India. In 2000, the Indian government strengthened ties to non-resident Indians by creating the High Commission on the Indian Diaspora to strengthen and facilitate contributions from overseas Indians for “development and philanthropic projects.” In 2005 alone, India received $27billion in remittances. As Verne A. Dusenberry and Darshan S. Tatla observe, “NRIs are the new

VIPs.”15

Indian immigrants are highly mobilie and travel to India frequently. Those in

Canada crowd onto flights from Vancouver to Delhi in the winter months. British

Columbian Sikhs maintain strong connections to their families, villages, and colleges in the Punjab and readily give to causes relating to education, health, culture, sports, and state infrastructure. A new college in Chabbewal in the Punjab region was made possible because of contributions from Skihs in Vancouver and in California. Many

Indians in North America hope to return to their home communities and contribute to

India’s development. One immigrant told an interviewer that it was his hope to “go back when my children are settled here…I want to open a library and a research centre, and

15 Sandhya Shukla, “New Immigrants,” 19, 23-26; Verne A. Dusenberry and Darshan S. Tatla, “Introduction,” in Dusenberry and Tatla, eds., Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab, 3-29, p. 3-4, 7-8. On earlier philanthropic efforts of Punjabi immigrants, see Hugh Johnston, “The Sikhs of British Columbia and their Philanthropy in Punjab,” in Dusenbery and Tatla, eds., Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab, 169-183, pgs. 173-174.

9 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 have it accessible to everybody, those who never been able to access those things…[I want to] change the educational system that exists back in India.”16

Model Minorities and Asian Scapegoats

At the same time that Asians in the Americas have maintained transnational linkages to Asia, they have been received in conflicting and contradictory ways in their adopted homelands. New immigration has made them an increasingly visible presence.

Sometimes they are praised as examples of successful immigrants and ethnic minorities.

However, just as early twentieth-century anti-Asian campaigns in the Americas were tied to “” fears of an expanding Asia, the growing political and economic influence of Asia – and especially Japan and China – today has also affected Asians in the

Americas. As a result, they have become resented and feared and have been alternatively praised and resented as Asian “model minorities” or treated as scapegoats associated with a rising and dangerous Asia.

During the 1950s, the rise of Communist China and Cold War politics placed

Chinese in the Americas in vulnerable positions. In 1949, Chinese communist leader

Mao Zedong emerged victorious over nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in China’s long civil war. During its Cold War “red scare,” the U.S. government became preoccupied with the alleged threat of Communism at home and abroad. In 1950, when China intervened in the Korean War, Chinese Americans came under scrutiny. An anti-

16 Walton-Roberts, “Transnational Geographies: Indian ,” Canadian Geographer 47:3 (2003) 248; Hugh Johnston, “The Sikhs of British Columbia,” p. 170.

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Communist campaign led by U.S. government officials sought to expose Chinese who were allegedly Communist spies in the United States. U.S. authorities began investigating Chinese American communities for Communist ties and scrutinized those who had entered the country with fraudulent documentation during the exclusion era.

The so-called “Confession Program” was created to encourage Chinese Americans to come forward and confess their misuse of immigration documents and expose any relative and friend who had also committed an immigration-related crime. The confessions created a domino effect that caused havoc in the community. Immigrants who were in a position to legalize their status could negatively affect their paper relatives or even real relatives who were reluctant to confess or who were in the process of sponsoring in family on the basis of their fraudulent admission. Chinese described the Confession Program as a “no win situation.” Altogether, some 30,530

Chinese immigrants confessed. In return, they were granted legal status to remain in the

United States as long as they were not involved in any Communist or “subversive” activities. Canada instituted a similar “Chinese Adjustment Statement Program” in various forms from 1960 to 1970 to address exclusion-era illegal immigration. A total of

11,569 Chinese adjusted their status under the auspices of the program.17

As the Chinese American community in the U.S. has become more diverse in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Chinese Americans have been received

17 “No win situation,” from Arthur Lem to author, Jan. 13, 1996. Statistics on the U.S. program from U.S. Dept. of Justice, U.S. INS, Annual Reports, 1959-1965, cited in H. Chen, “Chinese Immigration,” 177. On Canada’s program, see Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: Press, 1998) 361.

11 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 in conflicting ways. Caricatures of Chinese as inassimilable coolie laborers faded into the background during the 1960s as the image of the “model minority” came to represent

Chinese and . Economically and academically successful, “model minorities” supposedly achieved American success the old-fashioned way through hard work and perseverance. They did not protest in the streets calling for civil rights and equality like . The “quiet” success of , the news media claimed, provided evidence that the American Dream was still available to all those who worked to achieve it.

By the 1980s, these “positive” portrayals of Chinese and other Asian Americans took a darker turn as some complained that Asian Americans were taking the place of deserving whites at the nation’s best institutions of higher education. Some made tongue-in-cheek references to schools being allegedly overrun with Asians. MIT was nicknamed “Made in ” while UCLA was supposedly the “University of Caucasians

Lost Among Asians.”18 In Canada, similar anti-Chinese sentiment was expressed. The large numbers of Chinese students at the University of British Columbia caused some to refer to the university as the “University of a Billion Chinese.” In 1979, a Canadian program reported a sensationalist story that foreign Chinese were unfairly crowding out Canadians in higher education.19

More overt anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States was documented numerous times throughout the country during the 1990s as U.S. anxiety with Asia

18 Chang, Chinese in America, 329; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 479 19 Kenneth M. Holland, “A History of Chinese Immigration in the United States and Canada,” American Review of Canadian Studies 37 (2007) 150-160, p. 156.

12 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 increased. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989, China slowly began to emerge as a military and economic power that might some day rival the United States. At the same time, the United States de-industrialized and sank into a recession in the 1980s and again in the early twenty-first century. The People’s Republic of China is now seen as both an important business partner and a dangerous rival.20 Sensationalist bestsellers with titles such as When China Rules the World and Death by China claim that China’s rise to power will topple European and American hegemony and reshape global trade and politics. Some even go so far as to describe China’s ascent as an all out assault on

America from both inside and outside.21

Changing U.S.-China relations and the general atmosphere of suspicion, rivalry, and insecurity with China have led to increased scrutiny of the role of Chinese and

Chinese Americans in American life. As in the past, they have found that their loyalty to the United States has been questioned. They have been treated as dangerous foreigners, rather than full-fledged Americans. This has happened in countless everyday interactions as well as in high profile acts of hate crimes, violence, and discriminatory by government agencies.

20 By 2003, the United States had a trade deficit of $489.4 billion, with $129 billion of that due to a shortfall in trading with China. Kwong and Miscevic, Chinese America, 428. 21 Steven W. Mosher, Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World (Encounter Books, 2001); Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Penguin, 2009). See also James Kynge, China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – and the Challenge for America (Mariner Books, 2007). Peter W. Navarro and Greg Autry argue that China is strategically attacking China from within and without in Death by China: Confronting the Dragon - A Global Call to Action (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011).

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For example, there have been a number of cases in which Chinese American scientists have been accused of spying for China. Aerospace engineers, computer scientists, and others were targeted by officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and unjustifiably accused of passing information to the People’s Republic of China. The most egregious case involved Wen Ho Lee, Taiwanese-born Chinese American physicist who was wrongly accused of being a spy for Communist China. A research scientist at

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Lee came under investigation in 1999 when the New York Times raised suspicions that the Los Alamos lab had been involved in giving China nuclear warhead technology. Intelligence officers in the U.S. government became convinced that this assistance had come from a Chinese spy in the United

States. They quickly focused on Wen Ho Lee due to his ethnic heritage and his access to the weapon information. Lee was thrown in jail, put in shackles, and placed in solitary confinement for more than two hundred days. After five years of harsh investigation, the U.S. government could find no evidence of espionage activity by Lee, and the U.S.

District Court judge in New Mexico in charge of Lee’s case issued a formal apology.”22

Similar patterns have emerged for the Chinese and Japanese in Latin America.

The positive status of Brazilian nikkeijin in the postwar era was tied in part to Japan’s economic strength, hi-tech economy, and respected position as a First World nation by the 1980s and 1990s. For some Brazilians, the Japanese in Brazil became synonymous with the Japanese in Japan. As one older Japanese Brazilian explained, “Japan’s great

22 Kwong and Miscevic, Chinese America, 423-426; Chang, Chinese in America, 359-369; Wen Ho Lee and Helen Zia, My Country versus Me: The First-hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy (New York: Hyperion 2001).

14 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 success has always reflected well on us and as a result, our standing in Brazil has improved dramatically. Indeed, some act as if we actually participated in Japan’s economic miracle.”23

Some Japanese Latin Americans have tried to use the positive associations with

Japan to their advantage. During the 1980s and 1990s, politicians, including Peruvian

President Alberto Fujimori drew upon stereotypes of Japanese as hard-working, frugal, honor-bound, and honest in order to compare themselves to non-Japanese candidates who were stereotyped as corrupt and lazy. In doing so, they made direct connections to the struggles and success of early twentieth century Japanese immigrants as well as to

Japan’s hi-tech economy and strong economic standing in the world. Some Japanese

Brazilian politicians went so far as to use rising sun symbols and faux Japanese lettering as reminders of their Japanese connections and to suggest that their Japanese ethnicity mad them better Brazilians and better candidates.24

However, praise and admiration for Japan as a superpower and economic engine and for Japanese Latin Americans’ socioeconomic success often turned to envy and resentment. Like the model minority stereotype of Asian Americans and Asian

Canadians, this positive portrayal of Japanese in Brazil represented a veiled threat.

Among the elite in Brazil’s São Paulo, the saying “Guarantee your place at the University of São Paulo tomorrow – kill a Jap today” was widely circulated. Similarly, as Japan

23 Tsuda, Searching for Home Abroad, 67-70. 24 On the comparison between Peru and Japan and Peruvians and Japanese, see Tsuda, Searching for Home Abroad, 67-70 and Lesser, “In Search of the Hyphen,” 37-58. On politicians’ use of Japanese symbols, see Araki, “An Approach to the Formation of Nikkei Identity in Peru,” 76-89.

15 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 reemerged as a global economic powerhouse in the 1960s, Japanese in Brazil were both praised and resented for their “biological success” that allowed them to succeed in business and in higher education.25

In Peru, Alberto Fujimori’s challengers often launched intense attacks against him that focused on his ethnicity. Vargas Llosa’s supporters, for example, emphasized that their candidate was “Peruvian through and through” in contrast to Fujimori, whose native language was Japanese. These race-based attacks were so vitriolic and wide- spread that Peruvians of Chinese and Japanese descent found themselves the targets of hate speech and physical threats during election time. One Japanese Peruvian explained

“They reject Fujimori because of his ancestry, they say that he isn’t Peruvian or that he’s second generation, and so they consider him a foreigner and think that he’s not capable of running the government. They talk about him in a racist way.” Another Japanese

Peruvian recounted how he was heckled on the street during the height of this negative campaign against Fujimori. More than once, strangers called him “Fujimori.” And said,

“you Chinese, go back to Japan!” For his part, Fujimori often used these ethnic attacks to shore up support from and indigenous voters. He often repeated the slogan

“Little white ones on one side, and Chinitos and Cholitos [Chinese and Indians] on the other.”26

25 “Kill a Jap,” cited in Tsuda, Searching for Home Abroad, 66. The statement about “biological success” is from Lesser, “In Search of the Hyphen, 37-58. 26 On examples of how anti-Fujimori sentiment affected , see Amelia Morimoto, “Peruvian Nikkei: A Sociological Portrait,” in L. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives, 141-158, fn 10, 155. On Fujimori’s response, see Araki, “An Approach to the Formation of Nikkei Identity.

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Similar expressions of anxiety over China’s growing role in Latin America have affected Chinese communities there. Beginning in the 1990s, China has increased its diplomatic, cultural, security, and economic reach in Latin America as a way of raising its international stature and increasing its access to Latin American natural resources.

Chinese customs statistics record a dramatic increase in total trade with Latin America in the early twenty-first century. Total trade grew from $50 billion in 2005 to $141.9 billion in 2008.27

China has also become a central player in the international relations of the region, especially as the United States – traditionally the major power broker in Latin

America – shifted its attention to the Middle East after the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001. This growing presence of the PRC in the region is looked upon with distrust within Latin America and by the United States. Similar to when Japan increased its trade with Latin America during the 1930s, a growing number of contemporary analysts of the China-Latin America relationship have offered alarmist statements. Many

U.S. officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, have publicly stated that

China’s growing influence in Latin America is a threat to U.S. interests in the region.28

27 David Shambaugh, “Forward,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) ix-xviii, pgs. ix, xiv-xv. In Surinam, Paul B. Tjon Sie Fat observes that “the PRC increasingly presents itself as a model of development and an alternative source of funding for the cash-strapped Surinamese state.” Paul B. Tjon Sie Fat, “Old Migrants, New Immigration, and Anti-Chinese Discourse in Suriname,” in Walton Look Lai, The Chinese in Latin America, 185-209, p. 198. 28 Daniel P. Erikson, “Conflicting U.S. Perceptions of China’s Inroads in Latin America,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) 117-135, p. 119.

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In Mexico, increasing anti-Chinese sentiment reflects both the growing presence of new Chinese immigrants as well as lingering prejudice from the early twentieth century. When the Chinese Mexican drug trafficker Zhanli Ye Gon was arrested in 2007,

Mexican historian Jorge Gómez Izquierdo observed that the mass-media “lynching” of

Ye Gon was based on prejudice from “a past era, in which the Chinese community in

Mexico was the object of resentment, jealousy, and violent assault carried out by nationalistic groups backed by a range of state institutions.” Indeed, recent harassment of Chinese businesses in Tijuana sound strikingly familiar to the rash of anti-Chinese activity in Sonora in the early twentieth century. Chinese immigrant Willy Liu Ke Wei told an interviewer in 2008 that all of the Chinese businesses in Tijuana had been robbed or assaulted, sometimes multiple times, over the previous five years. The glass door of a travel agency was smashed in by a brick. A Chinese supermarket was vandalized and robbed. The front window of a local department store specializing in imported Chinese home appliances was spray-painted with the words Pinche Chinos

(Damn Chinese). Editorials in the local newspaper complained of Chinese “invasions.”

Willy Liu Ke Wei lamented the current state of affairs: “Criminals target us because they know the police won’t investigate Chinese problems…We’re suffering, and we’re running out of hope.”29

In Surinam, which has experienced a growth in recent Chinese immigration, many Surinamese view the People’s Republic of China as another colonial master simply

29 Adrian H. Hearn, Alan Smart, and Roberto Hernández Hernández, “China and Mexico: Trade, Migration, and Guanxi,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) 139- 159, pgs. 150-151.

18 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 replacing the Dutch. General anti-immigrant sentiment has focused on the Chinese as posing economic threats to non-Chinese workers because they are “more productive and cheaper than local laborers.” As China has increased its investment in the country, anxieties in Suriname echo those found in other countries. Surinamese assume that

Chinese immigrants are pawns of the Communist government. Some even fear that the

Chinese – both the PRC and the Chinese immigrants in Suriname – are collaborating with the weak local government to “ruin the country.”30

For South Asians in North America, the terrorist attacks on the United States on

September 11, 2001 ushered in a new wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, racial profiling, heightened government scrutiny, hate crimes, and deportations. In the search for the perpetrators, entire Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim immigrant communities were vulnerable to blanket racializations as “terrorists,” “potential terrorists,” or terrorist accomplices and sympathizers. Although this form of racism was not new, it intensified in the months and years following 9/11, with dire consequences for all immigrant groups.

Within days of the attacks, law enforcement officials had arrested more than

1,200 people, only a handful of whom were proven to have any links to terrorism.

Almost forty percent of the detainees are believed to be Pakistani nationals. Similar to the ways in which Japanese immigrant male leaders were taken into custody after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Muslim men began to “disappear” from their families and

30 Paul B. Tjon Sie Fat, “Old Migrants, New Immigration, and Anti-Chinese Discourse in Suriname,” in Walton Look Lai, The Chinese in Latin America, (185-209) 199, 188, 201.

19 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 communities. Mass deportations have also occurred, often with little or no public awareness.31

Despite U.S. government appeals to prevent racial scapegoating, hate crimes directed against Middle-Eastern and rose throughout the nation, resulting in murders, property damage, physical violence, and harrasment. Practicing

Sikh men wearing distinctive were easy targets and made up more than half of the incidents involving South Asians. On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona was murdered by a self-proclaimed American

“patriot” who blamed him for the terrorist attacks in New York City. A Pakistani-born grocer was killed in Texas as was an Egyptian-born merchant in Los Angeles. were attacked and businesses vandalized. Racialized as the latest immigrant menace,

South Asians found themselves scrutinized and under siege. Rishi Reddi describes how the backlash following 9/11 made it feel as if South Asians had become “the most despised race” in America. But newspapers reported on a “broad consensus” among both supporters of immigration and restrictionists on the need for additional immigration restriction as a matter of national security.32

31 Sunaina Maira, Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire After 9/11 (Duke University Press, 2009) 220. 32 There were almost 650 “bias incidents” reported by media organizations from Sept. 11 to Sept. 17, 2011 alone. South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, “American Backlash: Terrorists Bring Home War in More Ways than One,” (Washington, DC: 2001) 6; Rishi Reddi, “On Being South Asian Post 9/11,” Asian American Literary Review (Special Issue: Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of Sept. 11) 2:1.5 (Fall, 2011) 43- 48; See also documentary by Valerie Kaur, “Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath” (2008).

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In an effort to manage the new terrorist threat, drastic changes in immigration policy took effect in the few short months immediately following the attack. No formal legislation restricting the immigration from countries suspected of being breeding grounds for terrorists was passed, but other important controls on immigration, and especially, immigrants already within the United States, were instituted as part of other laws. Immigration policies were amended to track, control, and detain immigrants suspected of terrorist activity or those deemed a potential threat to national security.

In June, 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed new Justice Department regulations that would require Muslim men to be fingerprinted, photographed, and registered with the INS. Such a measure – so similar to the U.S.’s Geary Act of 1892, which required Chinese laborers to register with the federal government – was to provide a "vital line of defense" against terrorists, in the words of the Attorney General.

Critics claimed that the program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration

System, institutionalized racial profiling and suspended immigrants’ civil liberties. U.S. government officials themselves publicly questioned the merit of the program. Of the more than 83,000 immigrants considered suspect for ties to terrorism, only six were further investigated by the Department of Homeland Security. Nearly 13,000 were found to be in the country without proper immigration documentation.33

South Asians in the United States have responded in various ways. Some have left the country. By March 2003, over 2,100 from the United States had

33 E. Lee, “A Nation of Immigrants / A Gatekeeping Nation: American Immigration Law and Policy, 1875-Present,” A Companion to American Immigration History, Reed Ueda, ed., (Blackwell Publishers, 2006) 5-35, pgs. 26-28.

21 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 applied for political asylum in Canada. More than 15,000 undocumented Pakistanis reportedly left the United States for Canada, Europe and .34 Others have organized social welfare, political, educational, and creative organizations to provide mutual assistance and legal aid, as well as a forum to advocate for civil rights for the

South Asian community.35

Asian Diasporas

During this time of increasing globalization, mass migration, and renewed , Asians in the Americas are forging new diasporic identities that connect them to their Asian homelands and to other Asians within the Americas.36 These are not contemporary phenomena, but rather tied to centuries of linkages that define the histories of Asians in the Americas. Just as the Chinese in the Americas formed transnational commercial and cultural linkages in the early twentieth century, today’s

Chinese communities have formed connections across national borders as well. The

Chinese in Central America, for example, have created organizations that link separate

Chinese communities together in the region. In 1965, presidents of the six national

Chinese associations in Central America formed the Convention of Chinese Associations

34 Maira, Missing, 220. 35 On the experiences of South Asian, Arab, and Muslim Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, see “Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of Sept. 11,” Asian American Literary Review, 2:1.5 (Fall 2011). 36 Relationships between and amongst Asians in the Americas are often “triadic,” in that they involve interactive relations between the home nation, Asian homelands, and diasporic communities. L. Hirabyashi, Kikumura-Yano, and J. Hirabayashi, “Retrospect and Prospects,” in L. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and J. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives, 333-348.

22 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 of Central America and Panama to discuss economic and political issues and to provide resources and support for Chinese communities throughout Central America. The

Republic of China (Taiwan) was an early supporter of the organization and its involvement helps to also maintain strong socioeconomic and political ties with the country. Annual conventions and beauty pageants serve as diasporic gathering places and sites where both national and diasporic identities are affirmed and performed.37

Similar to the ways in which South Asians in the United States and Canada forged political and support networks across the U.S.-Canadian border in the early twentieth century, today’s South Asian immigrants maintain active transnational family networks that often span several countries on different continents. South engage in transnational political activities and keep up to date on events and trends back home.

Cable television, newspapers, radio, and movies connect them to India and Pakistan as well as to other South Asian diasporic communities. Jigna Desai has shown how South

Asians in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States have formed and “Brown

Atlatic” identities that link them to each other and to . South Asian Muslims,

Hindus, and Sikhs have also formed religious diasporas encompassing Britain, Canada, and the United States. Muslims, for example, have formed “America-wide” organizations that serve members in the United States and Canada.38

37 As Lok Siu points out, diasporic Chinese are often pulled between changing relationships around the “two Chinas” of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Lok Siu, Memories of a Future Home, 126-129, 164-194. 38 On transnational political and cultural bonds connecting South Asians in the United States, Canada, and South Asia, see Dhiru Patel, “The Maple-Neem Nexus: Transnational Links of ,” in Vic Satzewich and Lloyd Wong, Transnational Identities and Practices in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,

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The encompasses Koreans in China, Japan, the former Soviet

Union, , and the United States formed out of necessity during and after

Japanese colonialism and the Korean War. An estimated 5.7 million Koreans live in 160 different countries. Ji-yeon Yuh has focused on this Korean “refuge migration” of military brides, adoptees, labor migrants, political exiles, and international students turned immigrants seeking peace of mind. She finds that Koreans abroad are increasingly developing a diasporic consciousness that “takes the diaspora, not the homeland, as the point of reference.” They seek to create international communities of

Koreans outside of Korea that are connected to the Korean diaspora, host countries, and the Korean homeland.39

Vietnamese in the United States and Canada have family scattered across the

U.S.-Canadian border, in France, and in Vietnam. One sixty-five year old Vietnamese living in Montreal told an interviewer that while his wife and children were all in

Quebec, his siblings lived in the United States and Paris. Cities like Los Angeles, New

York, Houston, New Orleans, Montreal, and Vancouver are home to vibrant Vietnamese shops, restaurants, and drugstores that sell food products from Vietnam, books,

2006) 150-163, p. 155-156. See Jigna Desai, Beyond : The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (Routledge, 2003). On transnational religious organizations, see John R. Hinnells, “South Asian in Migration: A Comparative Study of the British, Canadian, and U.S. Experiences,” in Harold Coward, John R. Hinnels, and Raymond Brady Williams, The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000) 1-12, p. 8. 39 The Korean diaspora is the fourth largest diaspora in the world, ranking after the Chinese, Jewish, and Italian diasporas. Statistic from Edward Taehan Chang, “What Does it Mean to Be Korean Today? One Hundred Years of Koreans in America and More,” Amerasia Journal, 29:3 (2003-2004) xix-xxvi, xxiii. Ji-yeon Yuh, “Moved By War: Migration, Diaspora, and the Korean War, Journal of Asian American Studies 8:3 (October, 2005) 287.

24 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 newspapers, CDs, and food items produced by Vietnamese living in the United States,

Canada, Australia, and France, and Asian remedies and foodstuff from Thailand, Hong

Kong, and China. 40

Globalization has also intensified diasporic and transnational Nikkei identities, communities, and activism. Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese in the Americas began to form connections with other Japanese descended people outside of their own local communities, states, and nations. By the mid-1990s, there were 620,370 people of

Japanese descent in Brazil, 760,370 in the United States, 55,472 in Peru, 55,111 in

Canada, 29,262 in Argentina, 14,725 in Mexico, 6,054 in Paraguay. In Japan, there were an estimated 250,000 Japanese Brazilians, over 40,000 Japanese Peruvians, and over

3,000 each from Bolivia and Argetina, and 1,400 from Paraguay working as temporary laborers in Japan.41

In 1981, Carlos Kasuga, a Mexican-born Nisei, organized the Pan American Nikkei

Association in order to establish links between the Nikkei community of the western hemisphere. Since that year, the Panamerican Nikkei movement has grown. The

International Nikkei Research Project was established to increase and share knowledge about Nikkei on a global basis in order to “foster greater understanding between peoples, communities, and nations in the Americas, Japan, and other countries throughout the world.” It has resulted in an astounding collection of oral histories,

40 Louis-Jacques Dorais, “From Refugees to Transmigrants: The Vietnamese in Canada,” in Robert G. Lee and Wanni W. Anderson, eds., Displacements and Disaporas: Asians in the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: 2005) 170-193, 176-177, 184. 41 Statistics of peoples of Japanese descent in the Americas from L. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and J. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives, xvii. Statistics of Japanese Latin Americans in Japan from Masterson, Japanese in Latin America, 240-241.

25 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 collaborative research and organizational efforts, and digital collections.42

Representatives of the Japanese of nearly every nation in the Americas have met at international Panamerican Nikkei conventions in both North and South America. The

2011 convention goal was to provide “a space developed to gather all America’s Nikkei community’s representatives to exchange experiences and learn from each other creating bonds uniting countries.”43

Identity is an even ore complicated process for Japanese Latin Americans working and living in Japan. They have created new ties with the homeland of their immigrant ancestors at the same time that they have clarified what it means to be

Brazilian, Argentinian, Peruvian, etc., but the process has been far from easy. While

Nikkei workers from Brazil, for example, refer to themselves as “Japônes” and identified strongly with Japan as their ethnic homeland, Japanese generally reject them as

Japanese and consider them to be gaikokujin, or foreigners. Having lived in Latin

America for two and sometimes three generations, few nikkeijin can fully assimilate into

Japanese society. As one Japanese Brazilian living in Japan told an interviewer, “I’ve got it bad, because I’m not considered either a Brazilian or a Japanese…The Brazilians say

I’m not Japanese, the Japanese say I’m not Brazilian.” Another Japanese Brazilian in

42 On Carlos Kasuga, see Yuji Ichioka, “Nikkei in the Western Hemisphere,” Amerasia 15:2 (1989) 175-177. On the Nikkei movement, see L. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and J. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives, xiv-xv. On recent activities, see “The XVI Panamerican Nikkei Convention 2011,” Discover Nikkei website, < http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/events/2011/09/01/3236/> (accessed December 19, 2011). 43 Yuji Ichioka, “Nikkei in the Western Hemisphere,” Amerasia 15:2 (1989) 175-177; “The XVI Panamerican Nikkei Convention 2011,” Discover Nikkei website, < http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/events/2011/09/01/3236/> (accessed December 19, 2011); Masterson, 276-277. Note the Encyclopedia of Japanese

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Japan complained, “We think we are Japanese in Brazil, but in Japan, we find out that we were wrong. If you act differently and don’t speak Japanese fluently, the Japanese say you are Brazilian. To be considered Japanese, it is not sufficient to have a Japanese face and be a Japanese descendent. You must think, act, and speak just like the

Japanese.”44

Japanese Latin Americans in Japan often feel “homeland-less,” as Takeyuki Tsuda explains. Neither Brazil nor Japan feels like home. Under these conditions, they have actively redefined what it means to be Japanese Brazilian. They have formed strong ethnic Japanese Brazilian ethnic communities and matar a saudade do Brazil (“kill” their homesickness for Brazil) by sharing information and news from home, buying and eating

Brazilian food, watching Brazilian telenovelas, organizing Brazilian festivals and Nikkeijin soccer leagues, and expressing their “Brazilian” identities through music, clothing, and behavior. Nikkeijin who had never danced the samba in Brazil now perform it in festivals in Japan.45

44 On being labeled as foreigners, see Marcela Higa, “The Emigration of Argentines of Japanese Descent in Japan,” in L. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and J. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives, 276, 310. “I’ve got it bad,” interview quoted in Daniel T. Linger, “Do Japanese Brazilians Exist?” in Jeffrey Lesser, Searching for Home Abroad, 205. “We think we are Japanese” interview quoted in Takeyuki Tsuda, Searching for Home Abroad, 158. 45 Tsuda explains that the transnational interactions between nikkeijin and Japanese affirm each group’s distinctive national and cultural identity rather than foster mutual bonds. In this way, globalization has stimulated a reassertion of local/national consciousness. Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda, “Homeland-less Abroad: Transnational Liminality, Social Alienation, and Personal Malaise,” in Jeffrey Lesser, ed., Searching for Home Abroad, 122-126, 133, 150-151. See also W. Lawrence Neuman, “The Nikkeijin : Returning Ethnic Japanese from Latin America,” Critical Asian Studies 36:2 (2004) 303- 311, p. 304. On Brazilian cultural practices of Japanese , see Tsuda,

27 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12

Asian Latinos

Just as new global patterns of Asian migration to the Americas and “back” to Asia have helped create new forms of ethnic and diasporic identities, Asian remigration within the Americas has also helped to create other types of communities and identities.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Asian Latin Americans have remigrated to the

United States. In 1995, there were an estimated 12,000 Asian Latinos in Los Angeles alone. Chinese from Cuba, Peru, Panama, Argentina, and Brazil, Japanese from Peru,

Brazil, or Argentina, and Koreans from Brazil or Argentina have come to the United

States as students, to join family already in the country, and to take advantage of economic opportunities. Heavy concentrations of both Asian and Latino immigrants in

Los Angeles, as well as a high concentration of multilingual services, make the area a magnet for Asian Latinos. In the United States, they form Asian Latino communities and identities. They express their Latinidad, or “Latinness” as they try to honor and express both their Asian and Latino heritages and adapt to the United States at the same time.

In Los Angeles, Japanese Peruvian restaurants, Korean Brazilian associations, Chinese

Brazilian churches draw community members together. In New York City, Chinese

Latino, or “Chino Cubano” restaurants have served Chinese migrants from Cuba since the 1970s. Serving both Cuban and Chinese American cuisine to a diverse clientele, these restaurants bring both Chinese, Latino, and American cultures together. Koreans who grew up in Brazil and then remigrated to the United States use both Spanish and

Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) 276-282, 283-289.

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Korean in their work with Asian and Latino immigrants in the United States.

Reconstructing their identities as Korean, Latino, and American, these immigrants

“float” back and forth between nations and communities, creating new diasporic cultures and redefining racial and ethnic identities at the same time.46

Beliza Li, a Chinese-Brazilian immigrant in the United States, is an example of how Asian Latinos form such flexible, hybrid identities. Born in 1986 to Chinese immigrant parents in Brazil, Li grew up speaking fluent Portuguese and broken

Cantonese. She attended school in a Japanese Brazilian neighborhood, ate Chinese food at home, Brazilian food at the family’s pastelaria, and American hamburgers from

McDonald’s on special occasions. “A typical childhood, if you ask me,” she explains. “I am complicated to classify, but who isn’t, right?” she asks. “To me, being Chinese-

Brazilian in America means a history of living in three opposite cultures, and sometimes feeling that I did not belong in neither, a constant struggle that immigrants, and national citizens, face when their appearance is foreign to natives in the country. Jokingly, I say that I am Asian in America, Brazilian in China, and a “gringa” in Brazil.”47

In addition to new migrations of Asians from Latin America, increasing rates of intermarriage amongst Asians and Latinos in the United States have also created a

46 Steven Masami Ropp, “Secondary Migration and the Politics of Identity for Asian Latinos in Los Angeles,” Journal of Asian American Studies 3:2 (June, 2000) 219-229. On Chinese Cuban restaurants, see Lok Siu, “In Search of Chino Latinos in Diaspora,” in Andrea O’Reilly Hervera, ed., Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced (SUNY Press, 2007) 123- 131. On Korean Brazilains, see Kyeyoung Park, “’I’m Floating in the Air’: Creation of a Korean Transnational Space among Korean-Latino-American Re-Migrants,” Positions: Cultures Critique 7:3 (667-95), 681, 684, 690-692. 47 Beleza Li, “On the Meaning of Being Chinese,” Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation “Immigrant Voices Project,” < http://aiisf.org/stories-by-author/590-li- beleza> (accessed March 8, 2012).

29 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 growing community of mixed-race Asian Latinos. According to the 2000 census, there are more than 300,000 individuals of Asian-Latino ancestry living in the United States.

These “Chino-Chicanos,” as Robert Chao Romero has explained, are in the midst of forging their own unique identities drawing from their Chinese, Latin American, and U.S.

American experiences.48

Remembering and Preserving the Histories of Asians in the Americas

Another element shaping what it means to be Asian in the Americas today explicitly draws on the long history of Asian migration to the region. Collective efforts to preserve diverse community histories serve several purposes. They help build a strong and cohesive community identity and regenerate interest in groups’ ethnic heritage. As important reminders of the long roots that Asians have had in the Americas, these histories also promote national inclusion. At the same time, they serve the interests of nation states as well. Commemorative events marking the long histories of Asians in the

Americas become an important part of twenty-first century international relations between specific countries in Asia and the Americas. And when national governments have offered apologies and reparations for historical injustices, they have used these occassions as opportunities to atone for past and to perform acts of racial progress and reconcilation.

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, pan-Asian American movements in the United

States encouraged coalitions and activism amongst diverse Asian ethnic groups to lobby

48 Romero, , 196.

30 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 for political and civil rights and begin researching and writing the histories of Asian

Americans in the United States. Out of these grass-roots, community-driven efforts, ethnic history societies emerged in North America. In 1963, Chinese American community members in San Francisco formed the Chinese Historical Society to document and share the history and legacy of Chinese Americans. Community historians and descendants of Chinese immigrants who had been detained at the Angel Island

Immigration Station in San Francisco also worked together to save the historic immigration barracks from destruction in the 1970s after a California State Parks ranger discovered Chinese poems carved into and written on the walls. Their decades-long efforts led to the immigration station site being named a National Historic Landmark in

1998 and the opening of a new immigration museum in 2009.49

Similar efforts to preserve the histories of Asian immigrants in the United States and Canada have resulted in the creation of vibrant historical societies like the Filipino

American National History Society, the Korean American Historical Society, and various

Chinese American and Chinese Canadian historical societies. Some are loosely organized, others operate museums and produce a steady stream of public programming. They vary in their specific missions, but they all share goals of highlighting the contributions of their specific ethnic groups to mainstream audiences and promoting interethnic and interracial understanding. They also seek to build and enrich

49 Lee and Yung, Angel Island, 299-314.

31 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 the collective memory amongst diverse community members through the preservation, documentation, and dissemination of their history.50

In Cuba, the estimated 100,000 chinos naturales (native Chinese) and descendientes (descendants) have embarked on a major historical project centering on

Chinese Cuban heritage. The Havana-based Casino Chung Wah, the oldest Chinese

Cuban institution in Latin America, opened up membership to second and third generation Chinese Cubans as a way of regenerating interest in Chinese Cuban’s ethnic heritage. Beginning in the 1990s, Chinese Cubans have rallied around the restoration and revitalization of Havana’s Barrio Chino, once one of the largest Chinatowns in all of the Americas. With state support, a new center for Chinese arts, language schools, martial arts club, and traditional Chinese medicine clinics were established. An annual festival commemorates the arrival of the first shipload of Chinese coolies to Cuba in the nineteenth century and honors the history of Chinese in the making of the Cuban nation. Chinese Cubanos have been active in recounting their central role in the Cuban

Revolution, and Cubans of all backgrounds have discovered or rediscovered Chinese roots and redefined both “Cuban” and “Chinese” identities. At the same time, Chinese

Cubanos continue to play important roles as bridges between the People’s Republic of

50 See for example, the mission statements of the Korean American History Society, the Filipino American National Historical Society, and the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia. "Goals of Korean American Historical Society," The Journal of Korean American Historical Society, Vol. 1, 1985, 40-41; “About KAHS,” Korean American Historical Society (Seattle, WA), http://www.kahs.org/about.html (accessed February 25, 2012); “ABOUT FANHS AND FANHS-L.A.,” Filipino American National Historical Society, Los Angeles, http://www.fanhsla.org/about.html (accessed February 25, 2012); “Abous Us,” Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia, http://www.cchsbc.ca/about-us/ (accessed February 25, 2012).

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China and Cuba.51 And in Latin America more generally, from Brazil to Panama and Peru to Argentina, revived Chinatowns have become renewed hubs of trans-Pacific communication, commerce, and cooperation.52

The Japanese in Brazil mark the anniversary of the first Japanese to arrive in the country as ways of reminding Brazilians of their long roots in the country and to reinforce the triangular relationship between Japan, Japanese Brazilians, and Brazil. On the 70th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil in 1978, President Ernesto Geisel,

Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito, and Princess Michiko attended the celebration to promote friendship between the two nations. At the time, the 750,000 Nipo-Barsileiros (Japanese

Brazilians) constituted the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.53

The 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil received even more pomp and circumstance. In January, 2008, the Japan Times announced that both the

Japanese and Brazilian governments were launching a “series of commemorative events throughout the year…to celebrate the strong ties between their nations.” Bossa Nova and taiko drumming festivals marked the anniversary during the year. In June, Crown

51 On Chinese in Cuba, see Kathleen López, “The Revitalization of Havana’s Chinatown: Invoking Chinese Cuban History,” in Walton Look Lai, ed., The Chinese in Latin America (211-236) 224-234; Mao Xianglin, Carlos Alzugaray Treto, Liu Weiguang, and Adrian H. Hearn, “China and Cuba: Past, Present, and Future,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) 201, pgs. 195-197. On the role of Chinese in Cuba’s revolution, see: Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moises Sio Wong, Our History if Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 2005). 52 Adrian H. Hearn, Alan Smart, and Roberto Hernández Hernández, “China and Mexico: Trade, Migration, and Guanxi,” in Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez, China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011) 139- 159, p. 154. 53 Tsuchida, “The Japanese in Brazil,” 1.

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Prince Naruhito traveled to Brazil to attend a centennial ceremony hosted by Brazilian

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brasilia. The Crown Prince’s speech framed the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil around hardship, endurance, success, and integration into local societies with the assistance of the benevolent Brazilian government and people. The “initial Japanese settlers had to overcome differences in lifestyle, culture and language," the Crown Prince recounted. "I cannot imagine how hard it was for them to engage in farming under such circumstances…But the settlers gradually adapted to local communities and gained local trust as they continued efforts without giving up dreams and hopes. Behind their success was generous hospitality by the Brazilian government and society.” The speech affirmed the positive good that had come out of Japanese immigration to Brazil for both the Japanese immigrants and

Brazil.54

In Japan, Japanese Brazilians living and working in the country also organized and participated in a series of events commemorating the centennial. In Hamamatsu, which claimed to have the largest Brazilian population (20,000) in Japan, Japanese Brazilians organized a “Arigatō Nippon (Thank you Japan)” karaoke context, an evening of samba dancing, and an exhibition of Brazilian musical instruments. The Hamamatsu City’s

English-language newsletter from 2008 retold the success stories of the early Japanese

54 “Japan, Brazil Mark a Century of Settlement, Family Ties,” The Japan Times, January 15, 2008 < http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20080115i1.html> (accessed February 19, 2012); “Crown Prince attends Brazil Fetes,” Japan Times, June 20, 2008 < http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20080620a1.html> (accessed February 19, 2012). See also “Brazil Ties Celebrated with Song,” Japan Times, Oct. 21, 2011 < http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fq20111021a1.html> (accessed February 19, 2012); “Viva Matsuri!” Japan Times, June 8, 2008 < http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20080608x1.html> (accessed February 19, 2012).

34 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 immigrants to Brazil, proudly showcased its status as “Little Brazil” in Japan and highlighted the ways in which the growing Japanese Brazilian population was playing a central role in supporting the local economy and “endowing the city with a rich and diverse culture” at the same time.55

Redress and Reparations: Seeking to Right Historical Injustices

Acts of historical memory and commemoration promote and celebrate the inclusion of Asians into their specific local and national communities and offer opportunities to maintain transnational and international relationships between Asia and the Americas. But the act of preserving the histories of Asians in the Americas has also served other strategic purposes. Beginning in the 1980s, a number of Asian communities in the Americas organized mass campaigns to recognize past historical injustices committed against them, including the forced relocation and removal of

Japanese Americans, Canadians, and Latin Americans, discrimination under the U.S.’s

Chinese exclusion laws and Canada’s Chinese head taxes, and damage resulting from anti-Asian riots in North America and other anti-Asian laws and events. Their efforts have culminated in official government apologies, redress and reparations, and attempts at racial reconciliation. They have also helped communities to redefine themselves through both historical and contemporary lenses as both members of the

55 “Little Brazil: Hamamatsu and the Japan-Brazil Year of Exchange 2008,” Hamamatsu City Newsletter, Issue 5 (2008), < http://www.city.hamamatsu.shizuoka.jp/foreign/english/newsletter/no5.htm> (accessed February 19, 2012).

35 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 specific nation states in which they reside, but also as part of larger Asian diasporas in the Americas.

Japanese Americans, , and Japanese Latin Americans were the first to organize. They formed redress campaigns dealing with the internment of

Japanese peoples in North and South America during World War Two. In the United

States, the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans was largely ignored until the

1960s. As the civil rights, Black power, and Asian American movements called into question systemic inequalities and the enduring consequences of racial discrimination,

Japanese American community activists and college students began to collect the histories of former internees. In 1969, Japanese Americans began annual pilgrimages to the ruins of the Manzanar internment camp in southern California. Popular memoirs like

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar (1976) struck a chord with

Americans.56

A number of different Japanese American organizations began organizing a campaign to seek an official apology and restitution from the U.S. government for incarceration during World War Two. Deep divisions existed within the community over political strategies and the meaning of internment, but the groups eventually found common ground in their efforts for redress and reparations. After years of tireless advocacy, the movement began to gain traction. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially declared the wartime removal and relocation of Japanese Americans a “tragedy.” In a statement, the President acknowledged that “We now know what we should have

56 Robinson, Tragedy of Democracy, 291-293.

36 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 known then – not only that evacuation was wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans.”57

The U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was created in 1980. Over the next year, congressional hearings were held throughout the country. More than five hundred Japanese Americans testified. It was the first time that many of them had ever spoken publicly about their internment experiences. In 1983, the commission recommended the passage of a joint Congressional resolution officially apologizing for the removal and relocation of Japanese Americans during World War

Two, the establishment of an educational and humanitarian fund, and reparations paid to each survivor. In 1985, the Manzanar internment camp in Southern California was designated a National Historic Landmark.58 At the same time, legal efforts proceeded to overturn the three wartime Supreme Court cases (Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu) that had sanctioned the government’s wartime actions. By 1987, the verdicts in all three of these cases were overturned after lengthy legal battles.59 In 1988, the Civil Rights

Restoration Act was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald

57 On the divisions within the Japanese American community, see Alice Yang Murray, Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008) 2-4; Robinson, Tragedy of Democracy, 291- 293. 58 Robinson, Tragedy of Democracy, 297. On Manzanar becoming a landmark, see Janice L. Dubel, “Remembering a Japanese-American Concentration Camp at Manzanar National Historic Site,” in Paul A. Shackel, Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape (Gainseville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001) 85-102. 59 JACL lawyers used the write of coram nobis to overturn the verdicts. This writ argues that fundamental error or manifest injustice contributed to the unjust verdict. The Korematsu case was granted the coram nobis petition in 1983. The conviction in the Yasui case was overturned in 1984, and a coram nobis petition was granted in the Hirabayashi case in 1987. Robinson, Tragedy of Democracy, 298-99.

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Reagan in 1988. The act authorized a national apology for internment, the payment of

$20,000 to each Japanese American affected by Executive Order 9066, and the establishment of educational and other programs.60

Japanese Canadians followed a similar path towards redress as their Japanese

American counterparts. As in the United States, there was a pronounced silence on the wartime mistreatment of Japanese Canadians in Canada. By the 1970s, Canada’s new immigration and multiculturalism policies helped change attitudes about internment and launched new efforts to preserve Japanese Canadian history. Groups like the

National Association of Japanese Canadians organized to lobby for redress, but met with resistance until Brian Mulroney was elected prime minister in 1984. By that time, the

U.S. was moving closer towards issuing an official apology and paying reparations to

Japanese Americans. An agreement on a redress package for Japanese Canadians was brokered just six weeks after the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act.

The Canadian settlement closely mirrored the U.S.’s official apology and redress payment. In what historian Greg Robinson describes as a “small act of Canadian one- upmanship,” provided a slightly higher redress payment of $21,000 to Japanese

Canadians who had been relocated during the war.61

Redress for Japanese who had been removed from the Pacific Coast of Mexico and from Latin America during World War Two have failed. Both Peru and Mexico have refused to issue official apologies for wartime actions against Japanese residents or to

60 Robinson, Tragedy of Democracy, 300. 61 Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy, 300-301; Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992).

38 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 grant any compensation to those who lost property. In the United States, redress efforts on behalf of the 2,264 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry from thirteen

Latin American countries who were forcibly interned in the United States have had limited success. The U.S.-based Campaign for Justice was formed in 1996 to help former internees secure redress and to educate the public about the wartime experiences of

Japanese Latin Americans. But because the U.S. Civil Liberties Act of 1988 did not include Japanese Latin Americans, they did not receive redress under this law. In the

1990s, the Campaign for Justice filed five lawsuits on behalf of former Japanese Latin

American internees. One case, Mochizuki, et al. v. USA, resulted in a settlement agreement that included an official U.S. apology and compensation of $5,000 per internee. Some Japanese Latin Americans accepted the settlement, but others, including the Campaign for Justice, rejected it.

Finding no success within the U.S. legal or political systems, Japanese Peruvian internees took their campaign to the Western Hemisphere’s regional organization, the

Organization of American States. In 2003, it filed a petition with the Inter-American

Commission on Human Rights and asked for “equitable redress” from the U.S. government for “war crimes against humanity.”62 The Campaign for Justice continues to advocate for U.S. legislation that would provide compensation equal to the amount paid to Japanese Americans.

For former Japanese Latin American internee like Seiichi Higashide, who had been forcibly taken from their homes in Peru and interned in the United States, the lack

62 Yang Murray, Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress, 441.

39 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 of redress has remained an unresolved injustice. Higashide had become a naturalized

American citizen and claimed the United States as his “third motherland,” but the U.S.’s refusal to apologize instilled a bitter resentment. “It is imperative that the U.S. proceed to complete the repair by extending redress to all Latin American deportees whose rights, wealth, homes and reputation were taken away,” he wrote in his autobiography.

“It is my fervent prayer and request of this my third and final motherland.” Higashide died before any redress for Latin Americans was extended, and the dwindling population of Japanese Latin Americans continue to wait.63

The collective redress efforts of Japanese Americans, Japanese Canadians, and

Japanese Latin Americans evolved from grassroots activism into high-profile legal cases, political advocacy, and extensive historical and educational research and outreach. They have had an enormous impact on preserving and disseminating the histories of

Japanese descended peoples in North and South America. The political success of the redress movements also served as important precedents and reference points for other groups seeking reparations for past injustices. In Canada, ’ redress efforts for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1923 began in

1983. That year, Chinese Canadian Dak Leon Mark walked into the office of his local

Member of Parliament in Vancouver with the head tax receipt for the five hundred dollars he had paid the Canadian government when he entered the country in 1922.

Arguing that the Chinese head tax system had been discriminatory, Mark asked the

63 Campaign for Justice, “History,” < http://www.campaignforjusticejla.org/history/index.html> and “What We Do,” < http://www.campaignforjusticejla.org/whatwedo/index.html > (accessed March 2, 2012).

40 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12

Canadian government to repay his five hundred dollars, plus interest. Mark’s request was denied, but his actions were part of a concerted effort by Chinese Canadian head tax payers and their families to advocate for an official government apology and appropriate redress to the Chinese Canadian community.64

Thousands of Chinese Canadians registered as head tax-payers and organized into different organizations and coalitions. One of the most prominent was the Chinese

Canadian National Council, which lobbied the governments of several prime ministers on behalf of the redress campaign beginning in the late 1980s. After several failed attempts to convince the government to take action, a class action lawsuit was filed in

2000 based on the premise that the had been unjustly enriched by the Chinese Head Tax in violation of international human rights that existed at the time. They also argued that Canada’s head tax system had long-term, disastrous effects on the Chinese Canadian family. The undue financial burdens imposed on Chinese immigrants to Canada required them to take out large loans, work in hazardous and racially hostile conditions, and prevented Chinese women and children to enter the country. Advocates argued that the gendered effects of the head tax and the later exclusion system effectively devastated families, and that the effects Canada’s restrictive immigration regime were still being felt by contemporary Chinese Canadian

64 Renisa Mawani has suggested that the redress campaign drew from dominant “liberal national-racial” Canadian mythologies that promoted the idea that Canada was “settled” (as opposed to colonized) by immigrants who “chose” to come to Canada and that Chinese Canadians have been upheld as “model minorities.” The end result is that the message that the “immigrant dream” is indeed possible in multicultural Canada” has been sustained. Mawani, “’Cleansing the Conscience of the People,’” 127-130.

41 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 families. The court action was unsuccessful, but it paved the way for an official government apology. 65

In 2006, Prime Minister issued a full apology to the Chinese

Canadian community in the House of Commons for both the head taxes and the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants from 1923 until 1947. "For over six decades, these malicious measures, aimed solely at the Chinese, were implemented with deliberation by the Canadian state," the Prime Minister declared. "This was a grave injustice, and one we are morally obligated to acknowledge." The Government also promised to offer symbolic individual payments of $20,000 to living Chinese Head Tax payers and living spouses of deceased payers. $34 million dollars were also pledged to fund “community historical recognition programs” as well as a national historical recognition program addressing the history of wartime measures and immigration restrictions. 66

Chinese Canadians expressed both relief and redemption following the announcement. “June 22, 2006 is a day we will all remember,” the Chinese Canadian

65 Other efforts included eighty-year-old Gim Wong’s cross-country motorcycle ride to call attention to the issue and personal testimonials aired on Youtube. See “Head Tax Redress Campaign,” Chinese Canadian National Council, < http://www.ccnc.ca/sectionEntry.php?entryID=10&type=Advocacy> (accessed February 25, 2012); “Our Own Words 1: Chinese Head Tax Stories #1 of 5” (Youtube) (accessed February 25, 2012); Mawani, “’Cleansing the Conscience of the People,’” 131-133. 66 “Prime Minister Harper offers full apology for the Chinese Head Tax,” Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper, < http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1219> (accessed February 25, 2012). The first payments were made in October, 2006. “Ottawa issues head tax redress payments to Chinese Canadians,” CBCNews (online) October 21, 2006, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2006/10/20/head-tax.html (accessed February 25, 2012).

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National Council announced. The official apology reaffirmed not only that a historical injustice had been committed, but that the Chinese Canadian community was really part of the multicultural Canadian nation of the twenty-first century. “Honorable redress is restorative and will help to redefine our Chinese Canadian community as one that is rooted in 150 years of contribution to this nation,” the council declared. It predicted that redress would “have a transformative impact on all Canadians, the lesson being that the national dream of a strong, united and inclusive Canada, is indeed possible.”

News of Canada’s action was widespread in Canada and the United States, where other efforts to secure official U.S. apologies for other historical injustices were underway.67

One hundred years after white mobs terrorized Bellingham, Washington’s Sikh community and forced them out of the city, officials representing the city of Bellingham and Whatcom County in Washington issued a joint proclamation calling for a “Day of

Healing and Reconciliation” organized by a local group called the Human Rights

Commemoration Project. The city’s Bellingham Herald newspaper also offered a heartfelt apology and published a series of retrospective articles analyzing the riots and their legacies. The newspaper coverage placed blame squarely on the racist mobs, the police officers who looked the other way, and even the Herald’s own journalists.

“Unfortunately, 100 years ago racism was not only tolerated but encouraged in the

67 “Honorable redress” quote from “Head Tax Redress Campaign,” Chinese Canadian National Council, < http://www.ccnc.ca/sectionEntry.php?entryID=10&type=Advocacy> (accessed February 25, 2012). On cross-border news coverage, see for example, “Canada apologizes to Chinese who were forced to pay head tax,” Seattle Times, June 22, 2006, (accessed February 25, 2012).

43 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 pages of this newspaper,” the editors admitted in one article. The newspaper had used racial epithets and insults to describe the Sikh immigrants while justifying their expulsion from the city. “It’s time to apologize for the venomous racism, for the demeaning talk, for the refusal to defend human beings against a mob because of their skin tone and ethnicity. We apologize to the East in our community today.”68

The Sikh community in Bellingham also made a point of commemorating the

1907 riots despite the fact that most members had arrived in the United States only within the past ten or twenty years. Satpal Sidhu arrived in Bellingham from Canada in the mid-1980s with no knowledge that a thriving community of Sikhs had once worked and lived in the city in the early twentieth century. When he did find out about the city’s

Sikh pioneers and how they had been driven out in 1907, warnings from older Canadian residents about the racism in the U.S. began to make sense. “Don’t go to America, just

68 “City, County Will Mark 'Day of Healing' Tuesday,” Bellingham Herald, September 4, 2007 (accessed February 19, 2012); “Our View: 100 Years After Riot Coverage: Our Apology,” Bellingham Herald, September 2, 2007 < http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2007/09/02/169787/100-years-after-riot- coverage.html> (accessed February 19, 2012). See also, “1907 Bellingham Riot Sparked Other Actions Against Immigrants,” Bellingham Herald, September 4, 2007 http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2007/09/03/170568/1907-bellingham-riot-sparked- other.html#storylink=cpy (accessed Februay 19, 2012); “1907 Bellingham Mob Forced East Indian Workers from Town,” Bellingham Herald, posted March 6, 2008 http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2007/09/02/170095/1907-bellingham-mob-forced- east.html#storylink=cpy (accessed February 19, 2012); “Immigrants Often Face Animosity, Historians Say,” Bellingham Herald, September 4, 2007 < http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2007/09/03/170558/immigrants-often-face- animosity.html> (accessed February 19, 2012).

44 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 stay in Canada,” they had warned him. On the eve of the 100-year anniversary, the congregation of 600 to 700 families at the county’s Sikh temple, were intent on raising money to establish a historical marker so that the community would not forget about the riot again. Remembering the early community’s experiences with discrimination also had contemporary resonance for another reason. Following the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2011, the Sikh temple had been defaced with eggs, rocks, and paintballs in a misdirected response to the attacks. The Sikhs of Bellingham hoped that such incidents would never be repeated again.69

Just as the 1907 Bellingham riots marked a high point in the North American history of violence and discrimination against South Asians, so did the 1914 Komagata

Maru incident in which 376 South Asian passengers were denied entry into Canada. This event set off a months-long standoff in Vancouver harbor until the ship was forced to return across the Pacific. Like the efforts in Bellingham, the act of remembering the

Komagata Maru incident and demanding an official government apology has come from grass-roots community activism by descendants of the Komagata Maru passengers and more recent South Asian immigrants. In 1989, the Sikh in Vancouver placed a plaque commemorating the 75th anniversary of the departure of the Komagata Maru.

Five years later, a plaque commemorating the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the

Komagata Maru was placed in the Vancouver Harbour. Ali Kazmi’s 2004 documentary film “Continuous Journey” brought the Komagata Maru history to the attention of a

69 “New Sikh Arrivals Feel Welcomed,” Bellingham Herald, posted March 6, 2008 < http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2007/09/03/170561/new-sikh-arrivals-feel- welcomed.html> (accessed February 19, 2012).

45 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 wider public in Canada, the United States, and India. And in 2005, the non-profit

Komagata Maru Heritage Foundation was founded and declared its intention to promote Indian Culture in Canada, set up “memory projects” in the villages of all

Komagata Maru passengers, and “educate future generations” about the importance of the Komagata Maru incident.70

The public attention resulted in government action. In May, 2008, the British

Columbia legislature unanimously passed a motion apologizing for the Komagata Maru incident. In August of that year, Canada's premier Stephen Harper also apologized for the mistreatment of the Komagata Maru passengers on behalf of the Canadian government.71

70 Vinay Lal, “The Tragedy of the Komagata Maru,” (accessed February 25, 2012). 71 “B.C. apologizes for Komagata Maru incident,” CBC News (online), May 23, 2008, (accessed February 25, 2012). When news of the planned apology was announced, community members and activists involved in the efforts were very enthusiastic. Their message to the press reaffirmed Canada’s “progress” away from discrimination and reaffirmed the country’s new status as a truly multicultural nation. See “Ottawa promises apology for Komagata Maru incident,” CBC News (online), May 12, 2008 (accessed February 25, 2012). However, when the apology occurred in Surrey, British Columbia, rather than in the House of Commons as community organizations had asked for (and as the government had done on the occasion of the government’s 2006 apology to the Chinese-Canadian community for the head tax and to the Japanese Canadian community for internment), the Indo-Candian community protested. See “Sikhs unhappy with PM's Komagata Maru apology,” CTV News (online), Aug. 3, 2008, http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/QPeriod/20080803/komogata_maru_080803/ (accessed February 25, 2012); “Indo-Canadians 'deceived' by Komagata Maru apology,” Canada.com, August 5, 2008, (accessed February 25, 2012). On the Harper’s apology, see:

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Most recently, Chinese Americans in the United States have organized a grassroots effort to educate U.S. lawmakers and the general public about the Chinese

Exclusion Laws and exclusion-era violations of American civil rights. Under the umbrella organization known as the “1882 Project” (named after the year that the first Chinese

Exclusion Act was passed), activists point out that “the United States Congress “has never expressly acknowledged that the laws singling out and ostracizing Chinese persons violated fundamental civil rights.” Their work has paid off quickly. In October,

2011, the U.S. Senate passed S. Res. 201 expressing regret for the Chinese Exclusion

Laws by unanimous consent. On the floor of the Senate, Senator Patrick Leahy characterized the Chinese Exclusion Laws as “racist” and “discriminatory” laws that conflicted with the “fundamental principles of equality and justice upon which our

Nation was founded. With the resolution, the Senate expressed its “regret for the passage of those unjust laws” and also affirmed the Senate’s “commitment “to ensuring that such policies never become law again.” At the beginning of 2012, a similar resolution is being introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. 72

“Harper apologizes in B.C. for 1914 Komagata Maru incident,” CBC News (online), August 3, 2008, (accessed February 25, 2012). 72 “The 1882 Project: A nonpartisan, grassroots effort to address the Chinese Exclusion Laws,” 1882 Project, < http://www.1882project.org/about/> (accessed March 3, 2012); “Senate measure regrets 1882 ,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 2011, < http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/10/MNJI1LFOT4.DTL> (accessed March 3, 2012); Congressional Record – Senate, October 6, 2011, S6352-S6354.

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Conclusion

Remembering and preserving the diverse histories of Asians in the Americas as well as advocating for justice for past wrongs have served to bind more contemporary immigrants with older ethnic communities. It has also helped redefine what it means to be Asian in the Americas in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As ethnic and immigrant minorities, transnational Asians, and diasporic citizens, Asians in the

Americas negotiate between complex, and multi-layered identities in their new homes, in relationships to their homelands, and within ever expanding and interconnected

Asian diasporas. Like earlier generations of Asians in the Americas, they have become

“American,” “Brazilian,” and “Canadian,” as they have adapted to and integrated into their new homelands. Similarly, they have also maintained strong and enduring transnational ties with their families, villages, and homelands. New travel and communications technology make these transnational ties much more intense and frequent than for previous generations.

Asians in the Americas also continue to find themselves affected by shifting international relationships between Asia and the Americas that frame then as either

“model minorities” to be emulated or scapegoats to be blamed. As in the early twentieth century, national and global anxieties about Asia have inspired anti-Asian xenophobia and violence within the Americas.

These shifting national and international contexts have facilitated the creation of flexible identities and notions of belonging. At the same time that they express their identities as new “Americans” and maintain their transnational Asian identities, Asians

48 Draft: Do Not Cite Erika Lee Asian Americas 4/18/12 in the Americas have reached across national borders to form Asian diasporic connections and organizations that connect Asians in the Americas to each other, to their host countries, and Asian homelands. As part of these processes, they have looked to the past and have made relevant the centuries long histories of Asians in the

Americas to contemporary communities and their struggles. Remembering and preserving the histories of Asians in the Americas have become an integral part of shaping what it means to be Asian in the Americas today. The past and the present have become merged as part of the ongoing saga of the Asian Americas.

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