60 Fun Facts About AAPI Heritage

In which month is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month observed in the United States?

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is observed in May; it began as a heritage week proclaimed under a 1978 resolution and was extended to a full month in 1990.

What event on May 10, 1869 is one of the two reasons May was chosen for the heritage month?

Completion of the transcontinental railroad: the golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, on a western section built largely by Chinese labourers.

The first Japanese immigrant, Nakahama Manjirō, arrived in the US on May 7 of which year?

Manjirō landed in Massachusetts in 1843, aged about 16; Captain William Whitfield of Fairhaven took the shipwrecked teenager into his home and enrolled him in school.

Which president signed the 1978 joint resolution creating the original Asian-Pacific Heritage Week?

Jimmy Carter signed the joint resolution on October 5, 1978; the idea came from congressional staffer Jeanie Jew, and Frank Horton and Norman Mineta introduced it in the House.

Which president signed the 1990 bill extending the heritage week to a full month?

George H. W. Bush signed the 1990 law that expanded the observance to a full month for that year; a later act of Congress made the month-long designation permanent.

Where did the first Asians recorded in what is now the US, in 1587, come from?

Philippines: Filipino sailors from Pedro de Unamuno's Manila galleon expedition went ashore at Morro Bay in October 1587, the earliest recorded Asian landing in the present-day United States.

Who was the first Asian performer to win an acting Academy Award, for 1957's Sayonara?

Miyoshi Umeki won Best Supporting Actress for Sayonara at the 1958 ceremony, the first Asian performer to receive an acting Oscar.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was signed by which president?

Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, weeks after vetoing a harsher 20-year version; it was the first major US law to bar immigration by a specific national group.

In what year was the Chinese Exclusion Act finally repealed?

The Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed exclusion while China was a wartime ally, but it allowed a quota of just 105 Chinese immigrants a year.

Which 1898 Supreme Court case established that a child born in the US to Chinese parents was a citizen?

In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment made a California-born son of Chinese parents a citizen, the foundation of birthright citizenship.

Which group did the Supreme Court's 1923 Thind ruling declare ineligible for naturalisation?

Indian Americans: Thind, a WWI Army veteran, argued he was 'Caucasian', but the Court held he was not a 'white person' in common understanding, making immigrants from India ineligible for citizenship.

Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans, was signed in which year?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, ten weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack; two-thirds of the people removed under it were US citizens.

Roughly how many people were displaced under Executive Order 9066?

Roughly 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from the West Coast and held in ten inland camps such as Manzanar, far more than the German or Italian Americans ever interned.

Who defied the internment order, lost his 1944 Supreme Court case, and was vindicated decades later?

Fred Korematsu's wartime conviction was vacated by a federal court in 1983 after evidence emerged that the government had withheld reports undercutting its claim of military necessity.

Which president gave the internment resister who lost his 1944 Supreme Court case the Medal of Freedom in 1998?

Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1998, placing his name beside Plessy, Brown and Parks in the nation's 'constant search for justice'.

Which president signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, apologising for internment and paying reparations?

Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act on August 10, 1988; it offered a formal apology and a $20,000 payment to each surviving detainee.

What was the 1983 federal commission report condemning the internment as unjust titled?

Personal Justice Denied, the report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, found the incarceration stemmed from race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.

Who was the first Asian American elected to the US Congress, taking his House seat in 1957?

Dalip Singh Saund, born in Punjab, won a California House seat in 1956; he was also the first Sikh in Congress and had become a US citizen only in 1949.

Who was the first Asian American US senator, elected from the 50th state in 1959?

Hiram Fong, son of a Cantonese sugar-plantation worker, took his Senate seat in August 1959 as a Republican, the first Asian American to sit in the chamber.

Patsy Mink was the first woman of color in Congress. Which landmark law did she co-author?

It bans gender discrimination in federally funded education; she had been rejected by all 12 medical schools she applied to.

Senator Daniel Inouye lost his right arm serving in which famed WWII unit?

The 442nd Infantry Regiment, a mostly Japanese American unit, is where Daniel Inouye lost his right arm to a grenade while leading an assault in Italy in April 1945; he received the Medal of Honor in 2000.

Which airport was renamed in Daniel Inouye's memory?

Honolulu International was renamed Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in 2017, four years after the senator's death; he had received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Who became the first Asian American vice president of the United States in 2021?

Kamala Harris, daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, took office in January 2021 as the first woman, first Black and first Asian American vice president.

Who was the first Asian American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, as Labor Secretary in 2001?

Elaine Chao, born in Taipei, led the Labor Department for all eight years of the George W. Bush administration and became Transportation Secretary in 2017; she married Mitch McConnell in 1993.

Norman Mineta, the first East Asian American cabinet secretary, had earlier been mayor of which city?

San Jose elected Norman Mineta mayor in 1971, making him the first Asian American mayor of a major US city; the city's airport was renamed Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport in 2001.

Activist Yuri Kochiyama was famously photographed cradling which dying leader in 1965?

Malcolm X was shot at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965; Life magazine's photograph shows Kochiyama, a former Jerome, Arkansas internee, holding his head as he lay dying.

Larry Itliong led Filipino farmworkers out on strike in 1965 against which crop's producers?

Delano table grapes: Itliong's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee walked out on Delano growers on September 8, 1965; Cesar Chavez's mostly Mexican union joined a week later, and the two merged into the United Farm Workers.

How long did the Delano grape strike last?

Five years: the walkout began in September 1965 and ended in July 1970, when a consumer boycott of non-union grapes forced the growers to sign union contracts.

What was Larry Itliong's nickname?

Seven Fingers: Itliong lost three fingers in an Alaskan cannery accident; he had immigrated at 15 with a sixth-grade education and organised cannery workers before turning to California's fields.

Native Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku won Olympic gold in which event at Stockholm in 1912?

100-metre freestyle: Kahanamoku won it in Stockholm and again in Antwerp in 1920, collecting five Olympic medals across three Games while popularising surfing worldwide.

Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American in space, died aboard which shuttle?

Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, killing its entire crew; Onizuka, born in Kealakekua on the Big Island, had made his first spaceflight the previous year.

Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born woman in space, was lost aboard which shuttle in 2003?

Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on February 1, 2003, killing its entire crew; Chawla had first flown in 1997 on mission STS-87, also aboard Columbia.

Michelle Kwan, the most decorated US figure skater, later became ambassador to which country?

Belize: Kwan was confirmed as US ambassador in December 2022; on the ice she had won five world titles, nine US championships, and Olympic silver in 1998 and bronze in 2002.

Which fashion designer, famous for bridal gowns, first pursued a career in figure skating?

Vera Wang competed at the 1968 US Figure Skating Championships, then worked at Vogue and Ralph Lauren before opening her bridal boutique at New York's Carlyle Hotel in 1990.

Who is considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood?

Anna May Wong starred in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first Technicolor features, and was voted the world's best-dressed woman in 1934.

Bruce Lee, born in the city by the bay in 1940, founded which hybrid martial arts philosophy?

Jeet Kune Do, 'the way of the intercepting fist', was the system Lee founded in 1967; he had trained in Wing Chun under Ip Man in Hong Kong before moving to Seattle in 1959.

The station that detained Asian arrivals from 1910 to 1940 sat on an island in which bay?

San Francisco Bay: the Angel Island Immigration Station processed and detained arrivals from 1910 until a 1940 fire closed it; Chinese detainees were sometimes held for months under the Exclusion Act.

How did detainees at that island station famously express their frustration?

Carving poems into the walls: more than 200 Chinese poems, many lamenting long detentions, were found cut into the wooden barracks walls and are preserved at the Angel Island station.

Which railroad's roadbed, bridges and tunnels were built mainly by thousands of Chinese workers?

Central Pacific crews were roughly ninety percent Chinese by 1867, blasting the Sierra Nevada tunnels from the west before the line met its eastern counterpart at Promontory Summit in 1869.

Which 1965 law abolished the national-origins quota system that shut out Asian immigrants?

The Hart-Celler Act, signed by Lyndon Johnson at the Statue of Liberty on October 3, 1965, replaced national-origins quotas with hemispheric caps and family preferences, building on a 1963 Kennedy proposal.

Vincent Chin, whose 1982 killing galvanised Asian American activism, was beaten to death near which city?

Detroit: Chin was beaten with a baseball bat in Highland Park in June 1982 by an auto-plant supervisor and his laid-off stepson, who blamed foreign carmakers for the industry's troubles and served no prison time.

Wataru Misaka broke the colour barrier in professional basketball in 1947, playing for which team?

New York Knicks: the 5-foot-7 guard played three games for them in the 1947-48 season after winning the 1944 NCAA title and the 1947 NIT with Utah, with two Army years in between.

Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian Best Actress Oscar winner for which 2022 film?

Everything Everywhere All at Once earned Yeoh the Best Actress Oscar at the March 2023 ceremony; she played laundromat owner Evelyn Wang in the Daniels' multiverse story.

How many Academy Awards did the 2022 multiverse film starring Michelle Yeoh win?

Seven: it took Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay and Film Editing, the most of any film at the 2023 ceremony.

Chloé Zhao became the second woman ever to win the Best Director Oscar for which film?

Nomadland, with Frances McDormand as a van-dwelling widow, won Zhao the Best Director Oscar in April 2021; she was also the first woman of colour to take the award.

Taiwanese director Ang Lee's first English-language film was which 1995 adaptation?

Sense and Sensibility, adapted by its star Emma Thompson from Jane Austen's novel, won her the Adapted Screenplay Oscar; Lee later won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi.

Which president's 2009 Proclamation 8369 formally recognised May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month?

Barack Obama's 2009 proclamation was the first to use the name Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, replacing the older 'Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month' used since the 1990s.

Which two senators introduced the 1977 Senate bill for an Asian-Pacific Heritage Week?

Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga introduced the Senate joint resolution in 1977; Representatives Frank Horton and Norman Mineta had introduced the House version a month earlier, and it became law the following year.

The 1907-08 Gentlemen's Agreement curbed labour emigration to the US from which country?

Japan: under the 1907-08 Gentlemen's Agreement, Tokyo stopped issuing passports to labourers bound for the US mainland, in return for an end to the segregation of Japanese pupils in California schools.

Diver Sammy Lee, the first Asian American man to win US Olympic gold, triumphed at which Games?

1948 London: Lee won platform gold and springboard bronze there, then retained the platform title at Helsinki in 1952, the first man to do so.

Kristi Yamaguchi became the first Asian American to win Winter Olympic gold in which year?

1992: Yamaguchi won figure skating gold at the Albertville Games, the first Asian American Winter Olympic champion; she was also World champion in 1991 and 1992.

Amy Tan is best known for which 1989 novel, filmed in 1993?

The Joy Luck Club follows four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters in San Francisco; Wayne Wang directed the 1993 film adaptation.

I. M. Pei's controversial early-1980s glass pyramid was designed for which museum?

The Louvre's glass pyramid, commissioned by President Mitterrand and opened in 1989, drew fierce criticism; Pei won the Pritzker Prize in 1983 while the Paris project was under way.

Maya Lin won the Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition in 1981 while still what?

An undergraduate at Yale: Lin was a 21-year-old senior when her design was chosen from 1,421 entries in 1981.

Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu's famous experiment proved that what is not conserved?

Parity: Wu's 1956 cobalt-60 beta-decay experiment showed the weak force distinguishes left from right; the 1957 Nobel went to theorists Lee and Yang, who had proposed the test.

Jerry Yang co-founded which internet company after studying electrical engineering at Stanford?

Yahoo! began in 1994 as 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web', a directory Yang built with fellow Stanford graduate student David Filo; the company incorporated in 1995.

Haing S. Ngor won an Oscar for his acting debut as journalist Dith Pran in which 1984 film?

The Killing Fields: Ngor, a Cambodian doctor who had himself survived the Khmer Rouge, won Best Supporting Actor, only the second non-professional actor after Harold Russell to win an acting Oscar.

Senator Tammy Duckworth lost both legs in 2004 when what was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade?

Her Black Hawk helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade over Iraq on November 12, 2004, while she was co-piloting it; she later became the first Thai American woman elected to Congress.

Sunisa Lee, the 2020 Olympic all-around gymnastics champion, was the first Olympian from which community?

Hmong American: Lee, raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, was the first Hmong American Olympian; after her Tokyo all-around gold she added all-around and uneven bars bronzes in Paris in 2024.

How old was Chloe Kim when she became the youngest woman to win Olympic snowboarding gold in 2018?

17: born in April 2000, Kim took halfpipe gold at PyeongChang in February 2018, then defended the title in Beijing in 2022, the first woman with two Olympic halfpipe golds.