Volume XI, Number 3 -Summer 1999

Reclaiming Our History

Welcome to America:
The Angel Island Immigration Station
by Jeffrey Ow, Katherine Toy and Shizue Seigel

"Cheap Labor" and Anti-Asian Immigration Law
by Shizue Seigel

Timeline of Immigration Laws
compiled by Shizue Seigel

Angel Island’s Writing on the Walls:
Detention Barracks Poetry
by Chizu Iiyama and Ken Kaji

A New Land: Issei Women in America
Excerpts from Our Reflections and "Okasan"

Tracing the Roots:
Using the Regional Offices of the National Archives
by Rodger Rosenberg

The Medal of Honor: Army Reviews Nisei Veterans
by James McNaughton, PhD

Letter to the Editorial Board

NJAHS News
May 15 Park Partner Ceremony and Angel Island Tour
Update: Redress Funds by Kenji Murase

New Members and Donations

Upcoming njahs programs
In Memoriam: Michi Weglyn & Karl Yoneda

It is a well-known truism that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Key to understanding history is to pay notice whose version of the facts is being disseminated. All too often, Asian American history has been minimized or distorted. Reclaiming and proclaiming our true history requires vigilant efforts to uncover facts, correct omissions and introduce the multifaceted lessons into mainstream awareness.

Sen. Daniel K. Akaka of Hawai‘i, recently honored by NJAHS, has been instrumental in helping Asian/Pacific Islanders reclaim their history. Among other accomplishments, he spearheaded a Congressional appropriation of $100,000 for a feasibility study on restoring the Angel Island Immigration Station and establishing a West Coast immigration museum to be located in the S.F. Bay Area. In this issue, "Welcome to America" details the immigration experience at Angel Island, as well as on-going efforts to preserve the facility and its history. "Cheap Labor" and the accompanying timeline give us an overview of the economic underpinnings of anti-Asian immigration policies. In "Writing on the Walls" and "A New Land" new immigrants reflect on the personal impact of discriminatory treatment, in their own words.

Sen. Akaka has also been a long-standing and effective ally of military veterans. Dr. James C. McNaughton contributes an article describing the senator’s role in facilitating a review of medals awarded to Asian/Pacific Islanders for extraordinary heroism during WWII.

Rodger Rosenberg encourages us to reclaim our own history by using the National Archives’ regional repositories. Recently, the Bay Area Asian American community united to keep alien case files (A-files) of the San Francsco INS office at the regional archives in San Bruno instead of being removed to the Midwest.
The current issue also brought home the interplay of past and present, as the development of the immigration articles took place during the recent battle to preserve and strengthen the Ethnic Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley. Jeffrey Ow, a Chinese American Ph.D. candidate in the program, managed to contribute greatly to an article despite his heavy end-of-term academic load and the turmoil of hunger strike and mass arrests. Much of the material in other immigration articles was drawn from research done by two other scholars with ties to U.C. Berkeley: Professor Ronald Takaki and Ethnic Studies alumnus Judy Yung. Through work like theirs, our understanding of Japanese American history is enlarged by placing it in the larger context of Pacific Rim immigration, which began with the first Chinese arriving in 1848 and which continues through the present.

Shizue Seigel
Managing Editor