Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

The month of May marks Asian Pacific Heritage Month, which celebrates the histories of Americans hailing from the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. According to the 2020 Census, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are among the fastest growing populations in the United States. This month of recognition celebrates the vast cultural contributions and unique journey of Asian Americans in the United States. So, why was May selected as the month to honor the cultural contributions of Asian Americans? It’s based on two significant events in American history.

On May 7, 1843, 14-year-old Nakahama Manjiro was the first Japanese national to set foot on American soil. Months earlier, Manjiro and a small crew set out on a routine fishing trip from their Japanese coastal village, but were cast adrift in a violent storm that washed them up on a desert island 300 miles away. Five months later, a whaling ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts, miraculously found the boys and delivered them safely in Honolulu. Manjiro accompanied the captain back to Massachusetts.

After spending some time in America, Manjiro returned to Japan where, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was named a samurai and worked as a political emissary to the West. Twenty years later, Japanese immigrants began arriving in the Hawaiian Islands, later relocating to California, Washington and Oregon.

The mid to late 1860s was marked by a major infrastructure project in the United States, the Transcontinental Railroad. According to the National Park Service, more than 11,000 Chinese immigrants were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad out of Sacramento, California. Some sources estimate this number could be as high as 15,000 to 20,000. A crew of mostly Chinese workers laid 10 miles of railroad track in one day, a record yet to be beaten. The project was completed on May 10, 1869, also known as “Golden Spike Day,” where a ceremonial 17.6-carat gold spike was driven to connect the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. The contributions of the Chinese labor force were instrumental in the completion of the railroad project and fundamental to the development of the American west.

It would take Congress more than 120 years to officially designate May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in 1992.

Calling Westerville Home

Asian Americans who have called Westerville home have also made significant contributions to our collective history. With help from the Westerville History Museum, we are highlighting a few of those stories.

HOP LEE

Adapted from Alan Borer, Westerville Historical Society

Above photo: Hop Lee Laundry Advertisement, Otterbein Review, April 23, 1917

Alan Borer stumbled upon an ad for a Chinese- owned laundry in Uptown Westerville while browsing through an old issue of Otterbein’s Tan and Cardinal publication. The laundry was operated by a Chinese immigrant named Hop Lee from around 1917 to 1925 at 12 N. State St. It is believed that Hop Lee likely lived above his laundry business, like most Chinese laundrymen of the time. In a 1917 copy of the Public Opinion, Lee was quoted as saying he favored the hot weather because it meant more laundry business. Lee was born in 1861 and died in 1919 at 58, according to his death certificate. His remains were interred at Greenlawn Cemetery, but in 1936, he and 11 other Chinese men were exhumed and relocated to China.

VELMA YEMOTO

Provided by Westerville History Museum

Above photo: Velma Yomoto, Otterbein Yearbook 1945

Velma Yemoto lived with her family in California before World War II. But in 1942, Yemoto and her family were forced into a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas. Yemoto, however, was allowed to leave the internment camp to attend Otterbein University, where she graduated in 1946. Yemoto, a scientist by training, devoted her life to advocacy. She worked with atomic bomb survivors in Japan and volunteered as a caregiver for Asian AIDS patients in San Francisco, helping her church to organize a series of Asian gay and lesbian speakers who addressed the importance of acceptance in their fellowship.

TARA DHUNGANA

Provided by Westerville History Museum

Tara Dhungana, a Westerville resident who spent almost two decades living in a refugee camp in Nepal after his family was expelled from Bhutan as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign, is the focus of a recent exhibit at the Westerville History Museum. According to the exhibit “Welcome to the Table: Westerville’s Potluck,” when Dhungana arrived in Columbus in 2009, he immediately noticed the difference in staple ingredients such as lentils, rice and green leafy vegetables at Kroger and Meijer compared to those in Bhutan and Nepal.

“There was a bad feeling of missing the food,” he remembered. “Regardless of whatever food it is… it’s a big chunk of your life… it’s a disconnect.” Other members of Columbus’s Bhutanese-Nepali community, now approaching 30,000 and thought to be the largest Bhutanese population outside Bhutan, surely felt this gap too.

Dhungana recognized the power food has to bring people together and opened a grocery store, the Shangrila Corner Store, in 2011. Later, he and some friends established a restaurant called Himalayan Grille, specializing in Nepali, Tibetan and Indian cuisine. Dhungana’s contribution to the Central Ohio international food potluck is his way of helping others and enriching the community.

Visit the Westerville History Museum in person at the Westerville Public Library (126 S. State St.) or online at www.westervillelibrary.org/museum to explore resources and learn more about the community’s past.