Asian Americans

Public schools, with the Bilingual Education Act (1968) and the Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols (1974), replaced the assimilationist “Americanization” policies with bilingual and multicultural educational programs (see Chapter 12, Providing Equal Educational Opportunity). Recently, however, bilingual education has become politically controversial, with some states making English the official language. Led by California in 1998, several states have reduced or ended their bilingual education programs.74

5-6e asian americans

Asian immigrants arrived in the United States through the Pacific Coast cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The earliest Asian immigrants, from China and Japan, tended to settle in California, Oregon, and Washington.75 More recent Asian immigrants include Filipinos, Indians, Thais, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

Chinese Americans From 1848 to 1882, 228,945 Chinese immigrated to the United States. They were often single, male contract laborers who worked in mining, farming, and railroad construction. Later, the immigrants who did not return to China were joined by their wives and family members. The Chinese settled in communities in larger West Coast cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles where they established their own social, religious, cultural, fraternal, and educational societies.

As of 1880, 105,465 Chinese were living in the United States. In 1882, the US Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited further Chinese immigration and denied citizenship to Chinese already in the country. Chinese immigrants encountered serious racial discrimination. For example, California’s Alien Land Law that prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land was directed against Chinese immigrants. The San Francisco Board of Education required Chinese students to attend segregated schools. The Magnuson Act in 1943 repealed the Exclusion Act and permitted Chinese residing in the United States to become citizens. Currently, the Chinese American population stands at 3.8 million.76

In 1973, the US Supreme Court heard the Lau v. Nichols case, which had been appealed from lower district and appeals courts. Parents of non-English-speaking Chinese students had sued the San Francisco Unified School District. The plaintiffs charged that the District had failed to provide supplemental English language instruction to 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who did not speak English. They alleged that the District’s policy caused unequal educational opportunities in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Upholding the plaintiffs, the Supreme Court ruled that:

Basic English skills are necessary to children to participate in the public-school educational program; children who do not understand English will find their classroom experiences wholly incomprehensible and in no way meaningful. . . .

The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English language instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak

English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program and thus violates . . . the Civil Rights Act of 1964. . . .77

74Guadalupe San Miguel, Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Policy in the United States, 1960–2001 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2004). 75Angel Island Immigrant Journeys: A Curriculum Guide for Grades 3–12 (San Francisco, CA: Angel Island Immigration Station Foundations, 2004). Also, see Xiaojian Zhao, Remaking Chinese American Immigration, Family, and Community (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002). 76“Race Reporting for the Asian Population by Selected Categories,” (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2010). For an autobiographical perspective, see Jean Lau Chin, Learning from My Mother’s Voice: Family Legend and the Chinese American Experience (New York: Teachers College Press, 2005). 77Lau v. Nichols, 4l4 US 563 (1974).

The enactment of the Bilingual Education Act (1968) and the Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols (1974) dismantled the assimilationist ideology that had shaped public-school policies on the education of immigrant and non-English-speaking children. Public schools and teacher-education programs began to emphasize bilingualbicultural and multicultural education. However, these programs remain controversial. Some states have reduced or eliminated bilingual education programs.78

Japanese Americans Japanese immigration began in the 1860s when American labor contractors recruited Japanese men to work on sugar and pineapple plantations in Hawaii. Later, Japanese workers also immigrated to California. The largest Japanese immigrant communities were in Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California.79 Japanese immigration continued until 1910, when it declined because of economic and political issues between Japan and the United States.80 Of the 27,000,000 immigrants who came to the United States between 1881 and 1930, only 275,308 were Japanese.81 The Japanese called the immigrants, Issei, and their children, Nisei.

In Los Angeles and Seattle, Japanese American communities developed as Japanese entrepreneurs operated hotels, restaurants, and grocery stores. Like the European and Chinese immigrants, Japanese Americans established Japanese-language newspapers, religious and benevolent societies, and recreational organizations. Seeking to maintain their language and culture, Japanese Americans established private Japanese-language schools that taught Japanese language, history, and geography.82

As with other immigrant children, state compulsory school-attendance laws required Japanese American children to attend school. The Issei, the first generation immigrants, were familiar with the schools that the Japanese government had established. Unlike some immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Mexico, and China, who had limited experience with compulsory schooling, the Japanese were more familiar and receptive to it. Japanese American children encountered racial segregation and the assimilationist ideology in public schools. In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education required Asian children to attend segregated schools. When the Japanese government protested, the Board rescinded its segregationist policy.

Japanese Americans faced strong anti-Japanese hostility after Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Suspicious that Japanese on the West Coast might commit acts of sabotage, the US Government interned 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, many American citizens, in relocation camps. Located in remote areas in California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas, the internment camps, called relocation centers, lacked adequate housing and other basic services. Over time, the internees established social and recreational activities. Japanese American teachers organized schools for the children and adult-education classes.

The suspicions that led the US government to intern the Japanese Americans proved groundless. Not a single act of sabotage was committed by a Japanese American during World War II. Despite resentment over the government’s repressive action, twenty thousand Japanese Americans (the majority from Hawaii but six thousand were recruits from the camps) served in the US armed forces during World War II.

78Guadalupe San Miguel, Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Policy in the United States, 1960–2001. 79Paul Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), p. 11. 80David J. O’Brien and Stephen S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 4–17. 81Spickard, Japanese Americans, p. 22. 82Spickard, Japanese Americans, p. 79. For Japanese-language schools, see Agato Noriko, Teaching Mikadoism: The Attack on Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, California, and Washington (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).