Category Archives: history

Help get Anna May Wong on PBS!

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If you don’t know who Anna May Wong was, she was an Asian American pioneer in Hollywood who deserves wider recognition. Filmmaker Yunah Hong has produced a one-hour documentary about Wong, “Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words” that’s been screened at the Busan International Film Festival in Korea, and at festivals across the US and Canada. The film was completed with the help of the Center for Asian American Media, an offshoot of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Now she’s hoping to air the film on PBS so she can reach more people with Wong’s story, but she needs $20,000 just to pay for the licensing rights and insurance required by the network.

The public can help Hong get the documentary on public television. Hong is raising the funds through Kickstarter.com, and she’s raised two-thirds of her goal. She still needs about $6,000 to succeed, and that’s where you come in.

Read about the film on Kickstarter.com and donate — time is of the essence, since there are only six more days until the campaign ends. If she doesn’t raise the full amount, monies donated will be returned. So it’s all or nothing.

Give thanks for artists like Anna May Wong who helped paved the way for Asian American artists today — DONATE! The minimum amount is just a buck, but give more. There’s a list of great premiums you’ll get for giving various amounts. You’ll get a DVD of the film for $50, for instance, or a screening of the film in your hometown (US only) with Hong for $5000 or more. DONATE…

KABC’s David Ono honors Nisei soldiers of 100th/442nd RCT w/ terrific series of 4 short documentaries

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It was great to see the Nisei heroes of the 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team receive Congressional Gold Medals on Nov. 2 in Washington DC (watch the C-Span feed of the ceremony), and the media coverage of the long-overdue honor and recognition of these men’s patriotic achievements over 60 years ago.

Of all the media coverage, though, hats off to KABC in Los Angeles and to KABC anchor David Ono.

He’s produced a four-part documentary that the station should sell as a DVD, it’s that good and that powerful as an educational tool. The station sent Ono to Europe to interview people in Italy and France that remember the heroism of the diminutive Japanese American soldiers — it seems everyone was caught off-guard initially by the men’s height. He interviewed veterans and family members (the last segment is a real heartbreaker), and compiled an impressive amount of archival material for the reports.

I don’t know how long he had to produce this series, but he Ono deserves an award for this documentary. Here’s the link to the series on KABC, “witness: American Heroes.” Have some tissues handy….


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Anti-Chinese sentiment never seems to go away, even when the US Senate apologizes for past racism

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Arthur Dong DVD collection

It took four decades before Japanese Americans received a formal apology for the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II. The apology was part of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The Chinese in America are still waiting for an apology from the top, 129 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was signed by President Chester A. Arthur.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of a series of laws enacted against Chinese immigrants starting in 1879 through 1904. The 1882 Exclusion Act squeezed Chinese immigration to the US to barely a trickle – and cut down rights for Chinese already in the US, for example by excluding Chinese from citizenship and therefore denying them the right to own any property. Amazingly, the act remained on the books until 1943, when it was repealed in large part because China became an ally during WWII. It remains to this day the only US legislation that singles out people by ethnicity or national origin.

On Oct. 11, with the help of organizations including the 1882 Project, JACL and OCA, the Senate passed a resolution apologizing for the Chinese Exclusion Act. Now these groups are pushing for a similar bill, House Resolution 282, to pass in the House.

Mainstream American culture goes in cycles when it comes to anti-Chinese sentiment, and we’re in one of those periods, mostly because China is ascending to its new position as one of the top world economies and that stirs up race-based xenophobia.
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Happy Birthday to the Republic of China (that’s Taiwan to you)

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100th Year Double Ten celebration

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Wuchang Uprising in China, which occurred on October 10, 1911. The date is celebrated annually as Double Ten Day in the Republic of China as the event that marked the end of dynastic rule and the close of the Qing Dynasty.

That’s the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China, or “Mainland China.” Double Ten Day is a national holiday for the government that is currently in exile in Taiwan.

Here’s the history: The Wuchang Uprising in 1911 led to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1912, but in 1927, the Nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) which governed the ROC began fighting the insurgent Communist Party of China for control of the country. After World War II, during which the two parties united to fight the Japanese, the Communists led by Mao Zedong won control, and the KMT, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, went into exile on the island of Formosa — renamed Taiwan — off the southeast coast of the now-Communist People’s Republic of China.

The two Chinas have had a rocky relationship in the decades since, although economic ties have led to trade and some closing of the divide between them. But China likes to rattle its sword whenever (like recently) the U.S. offers military aid to Taiwan — even if the military aid is more symbolic than threatening.Its part of the delicate diplomatic tightrope that every country walks if it has relationships with China and Taiwan. No one can ignore the relationship, because both countries have become global economic powerhouses. If you have an iPhone or an HTC phone, or an iPad or some other brand of tablet computer, you have products made completely or in large part in either China or Taiwan.

But today, to mark the centennial of the Wuchang Uprising, China seems to have extended an olive branch across the Taiwan Strait. In Beijing, Hu Jintao said that China and Taiwan should end antagonisms, “heal wounds of the past and work together to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

For his part, Taiwan’s President Ma Yingjeou urged mainland China to embrace democracy and “face the existence” of Taiwan.

It doesn’t look like the stalemate has been ended by this exchange, although overall, the freeze has been thawing.

Colorado has an interesting connection to the Double Ten Celebration:
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Michele Bachmann says 1924 immigration law that banned Japanese from U.S. “worked very, very well”

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Michele BachmannReally? During Monday night’s Tea Party debate among the Republican presidential candidates, Michele Bachmann noted that U.S. immigration law was just fine until the mid-1960s when Congress made it possible for Asians to enter the country after decades of being excluded. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 finally opened the door to people like my mom’s family for the first time since the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, both passed in 1924 as part of a package of immigration laws designed specifically to give preferential treatment to European immigrants.

It was great for Bachmann, who describes herself as coming from a “family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats.”

It’s simply ignorant for a presidential candidate who claims to want to represent everyone in this huge and diverse country, to suggest publicly that people who are not like herself shouldn’t have had the opportunity to achieve the mythic American Dream. She blames the 1965 bill for leading to the immigration ills of today, and said outright during the debate that “The immigration system in the United States worked very, very well up until the mid-1960s when liberal members of Congress changed the immigration laws.”

It’s amazing how many misguided, misinformed and ignorant things Bachmann blithely says. Although the spectacle of her campaign is entertaining in a way, I hope her run doesn’t last all the way past the primaries.