OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
February 20, 2017
Volume 27 Number 4
February 20, 2017
ISSN: 1094-9453
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MY TURN
n Dmae Roberts
A history of exclusion
and resistance
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or the last year, I’ve been creating an archive
website for the Crossing East radio series
that aired more than ten years ago. The
project gathered 100+ hours of scholar interviews
and oral histories of Asian Americans and Pacific
Islanders (AAPIs). Before the series began, I had a
preconception that AAPIs had little history of
resistance and protest, but scholars on the project
insisted there has been opposition and struggle
throughout AAPI history. During the three years of
working on Crossing East, I learned how much
AAPIs circumvented and resisted a mountain of
unfair laws and practices specifically designed to
keep them out of this country.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented
Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S.; it
was the first time a federal law in the U.S. denied
entry to a specific nationality. The merchant
classes, diplomats, and their servants were allowed
entry, but Chinese people who had already settled
here found themselves in permanent limbo. They
were denied the right to become citizens or bring
their wives and families to the U.S. The law created
a bachelor society of men, including frontier her-
balist Ing “Doc” Hay and his business partner Lung
On in the small mining town of John Day in eastern
Oregon. The two gained prominence and became
relatively wealthy running a medical practice at the
Kam Wah Chung & Co. store which is now an
Oregon heritage site and national historic land-
mark.
Chinese in America found ways to resist the
Exclusion Act, including the use of “paper sons.”
The term “paper sons” referred to the practice of
circumventing unfair exclusion laws by selling fake
documents claiming to be a child of an American
citizen, thus making a person eligible to enter the
country. After the 1906 earthquake and subsequent
fire in San Francisco, which damaged the building
where immigration records were stored, Chinese
men already in the U.S. could claim they were born
here. They could then travel to China and bring
back “sons” or other family members.
Despite this effort, it still wasn’t easy. In 1910,
the Angel Island Immigration Station off the coast
of San Francisco was opened to question and detain
people trying to enter the U.S. While white
European immigrants who landed at Ellis Island
were pretty much allowed to immigrate without
much difficulty, people from 84 countries (including
those from Asian countries, with Chinese being the
most prevalent nationality), found themselves in
prison barracks surrounded by barbed wire,
sometimes for months at a time. They faced daily
F
interrogations that could last hours. Often people
were sent back if they didn’t have their facts
straight or struggled with language differences and
could not communicate well. Years later, etched
onto the walls of the buildings, scholars found
protest poetry written in Chinese documenting
the unfair living conditions and unwelcome treat-
ment.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 wasn’t
repealed until 1943, when America was at war with
Japan. During the war, Japanese Americans lost
their property and businesses and were imprisoned
in internment camps in extreme conditions
surrounded by barbed wire. Portland attorney
Minoru Yasui, along with Gordon Hirabayashi in
Seattle and Fred Korematsu in Oakland, were three
revered activists who protested and were jailed for
challenging the constitutionality of Executive
Order 9066 signed by U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, which led to the
mass removal and incarceration of more than
120,000 Japanese Americans without trial.
Crossing East also covered plantation history in
Hawai‘i. Many plantation laborers had organized
strikes and protests against unfair labor practices
since the early 1900s. But in 1946, workers staged
the largest protest — 76,000 people (including
workers, families, and other supporters) — at a
79-day strike that shut down most of the sugar
plantations on the islands.
U.S. history during the 20th century includes
numerous unjust laws preventing Asians from
freely immigrating here and owning land or
becoming citizens, in contrast to white European
immigrants. Much of this changed when U.S.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished
the national origins quota system and replaced it
with a preference system for skills and family
relationships, allowing Asian and African citizens
of the U.S. to finally bring their families into the
country to join them.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Oregon embraced a
sudden influx of refugees — Vietnamese, Cambo-
dian, Lao, Mien, and Hmong people — fleeing
Southeast Asia. Crossing East told the stories of
many Portland refugees who came to American in
their youth. Oregon was one of the top five states
that welcomed people affected by wars in Southeast
Asia. Many of the former refugees are now commu-
nity leaders and proud citizens.
The radio series and the archive of the audio
recordings also focus on Korean Americans who
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.