Every may we celebrate Asian American
and Pacific Islander Heritage month.
San Diego County has a large API
community with more than 425,000 people,
the 7th largest in the country.
While we are united under the API umbrella,
we represent many different ethnicities
from around the world and each one is woven
into the cultural fabric of San Diego.
All month long will be showcasing
several of our API communities so
we can learn more about each other.
Our friends, neighbors, business owners.
But we begin now with a closer
look at the history of.
The API Heritage month and
who exactly it honors?
The celebrations here in the US all started
with this joint resolution by Congress,
approved in October 1978.
President Jimmy Carter signed
the proclamation kicking off
the first Asian Pacific American
Heritage Week in May 1979, about
a decade later, President George
HW Bush expanded the celebration
from a week to a month on May 7th,
1990, I was invited to attend that
ceremony in the White House Rose
Garden as the youth ambassador for the
Organization of Chinese Americans.
I remember how special it.
Felt as a teenager to have an entire
month dedicated to honoring
Asian Pacific American heritage
nearly 20 years after that.
In 2009, President Barack Obama
updated the name to Asian American
and Pacific Islander Heritage Month,
separating the two groups,
and that is what we celebrate today. Part of
it is we're just trying to invite as
many people to the party as possible.
I like to say that people in
Asia don't call themselves Asian.
Brian, who artistic director
of Pacific Arts Movement,
explains the term Asian.
As a convenience of the West,
many people come from home
countries with territorial disputes,
but once here in America viewpoints change.
Yeah, when people from Asia
boots the United States,
they they see themselves as
like I'm a Chinese immigrant.
I'm a Pakistani immigrant.
But when you start realizing that
the mainstream United States thinks
you're all the same, they can't tell
the difference between any of you.
They don't bother learning any of our names,
how to pronounce them.
Then you realize, wait,
we have something in common,
and if they're going to see us all the same,
maybe we should stick together and fight
for each other.
I'm half Japanese American,
my family was incarcerated
during World War Two.
Wendy Sasaki is associate director
of Asian Pacific Islander Middle
Eastern Desi American programs
and services at UC San Diego.
It's a new office.
Just five years old that students requested
as a resource for support on campus,
the student driven coalition is in
many ways the same as the alliance
formed when students first used
the term Asian American in 1968.
It was a term coined by a graduate
students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s,
and at the time there were
predominantly Asian Americans in
the US who were from China, Japan,
and the Philippines. Through
the years the population has
grown more diverse, leading to
the importance of distinguishing.
Pacific Islanders from Asian Americans
because they're indigenous people like
Native Hawaiian is not the same as like
a Chinese person who lives in Hawaii.
And so by saying, Asian American and
Pacific Islander who are giving the
opportunity for say like Pacific Islanders,
they're different and they
go to something different.
Much in the ways that we look
at Native American populations.
This is the same kind of idea.
Pacific Islanders are
descendants of the indigenous
peoples of Polynesia,
Melanesia and Micronesia.
The definition of an Asian
American is less clear.
Depending on who you ask,
it generally includes people with
origins from 5 different regions.
Eastern Asia, including China,
Korea and Japan, Southern Asia,
including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Southeast Asia, including Cambodia,
Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Central Asia including Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan and Hijiki,
Istan and even West Asia including Israel.
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.
But which communities celebrate API
Heritage Month is still evolving.
I like to think about it as who
wants to be included, right?
Like let's let's be inclusive as
opposed to just drawing boundaries
and we're finding that these
boundaries are constantly changing.
I think that's still something that
people are trying to figure out.
Like is this actually where we
belong in in the celebration or
do we want our own thing and?
And I think people are still trying to
sort that out and decide how that goes.
So such a broad term, yeah and OK. So why me?
OK, so I didn't know this.
I did some research.
It's to mark the arrival of the first
Japanese immigrants back in 19 or 1843,
rather and then to celebrate the completion
of the First transcontinental railroad.
We have some images here on May 10th, 1869.
About 15,000 Chinese workers worked
to help complete this railroad.
They got paid less.
They had to live in tents
instead of train cars.
They had to pay for their own food,
and so now that history has looked at
the impact of these Chinese workers.
On the history of the US,
they chose, May
it. It's also interesting how it's evolving.
We've we've discussed this
because as somebody who grew
up in California and Hawaii,
my concept of Asian American Pacific
Islander and this celebration was people
who surrounded directly the Pacific.
You know, like like Micronesia,
Polynesia, China,
Japan but but really it's inclusive now.
They're growing and including more and more
and of of Western Asia and later this
month our net Iran power is going
to explore that a little bit more.
She's Persian and so she's
gonna talk to people.
In those Western Asian communities
to see if they do consider
themselves Asian or not,
it's still very much evolving
and in a very big debate,
but the bottom line is inclusivity.
We're learning more about it too,
and we're gonna share it with you
all month long. So stick around.
We got a great series of stories as
you saw kicking off right there.