Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, that’s a mouthful, but that’s
what happens when you lump 48 countries with hundreds of ethnic groups all into one
category. What non-Asian Americans see as a monolith, we know as an extremely diverse
group. Making up approximately 5.6% of the American population, AANHPI represent a wide
array of immigration stories, cultures, customs, and experiences. All this to say that my story is
just one of over 18 million different stories.
Growing up, there was so much I didn’t understand about my own heritage. My dad
immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong as a teenager, and spoke very little about his
experience. It was painful, and incongruent with the other people’s lives in our small town in
Indiana. He wanted my sisters and me to have easier lives than his own as “Americans.”
My parents married just one year after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and I was
born a year later, the same year the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. were
repealed. My father was 28 when he married my mother, ten years his junior. At the time,
immigration from China was limited to 102 males per year. There were a few exceptions for
what is called “family reunification,” but for more that 70 years, immigration of Chinese women
was few and far between.
As a kid, I didn’t know how anomalous my own birth was. It would take me decades to sort
through the complexity of my own multiracial identity. What I finally came to understand was
the story of my family’s long and difficult history in the United States.
My great-great grandfather was one of the 20,000 Chinese immigrants who constructed the
western section of the transcontinental railroad. Chinese workers comprised as much as 90% of
the workforce. “These Chinese laborers worked under extreme and hazardous environments.
Due to their ethnic appearance and language barriers, the Chinese were greatly taken
advantage of by their employers. These Chinese laborers became pioneers in the collective
labor actions of American labor history, while also contributing to the economies of the U.S.
After the completion of the project my great-great grandfather was deported back to China.
My great-grandfather acquired a Visa to the United States, but before he could embark, his
brother (my great-uncle) took it and traveled to the States, assuming his name. Undeterred, my
great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. by crossing through the Mexican border. They both
settled in Chicago along with a large number of immigrants from their region of southern China.
The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces launched an all-out assault
on Hong Kong, then a British colony. My father was only four years old when his family was
forced to flee to the countryside for safety. His mother, two older sisters, and younger brother
all died early during the occupation. Without his grandmother’s protection and care, my father
would have met the same demise.
My father and another boy were adopted by dad’s great uncle and immigrated to the U.S. in
1952 as what would become known as “paper sons.” While his great uncle did not have
children of his own, the purpose was not to make a family, but to have workers to support him.
As an unaccompanied minor to the U.S., my father spent three months in the detention center
in San Francisco before being released. When he arrived in Chicago, his great uncle informed
him that he owed $10,000 for bringing him to the States. This led to years of indentured
servitude to pay off a debt he never consented to.
Dad worked hard, holding multiple jobs at a time. His kitchen skills earned him his own
restaurant in a popular Chicago hotel. But rather than working to make other people money,
my father and his friends moved to a small town in Indiana to have a restaurant of their own.
The best part of this heritage is that my father didn’t let hardship jade or harden him. He was
the most generous and kind person I’ve ever known. He taught me the value of hard work and
sacrifice. He always encouraged me to pursue any career I wanted, and wanted for me the
freedom to have choices that he did not. Moreover, he didn’t just take care of my family. He
and my “uncles” employed hundreds of people in our small town over thirty-five years. They
hired youth who couldn’t otherwise get jobs, cooked all of the staff meals to order at the end of
the night, and were the mainstay of many families’ incomes over the years. The three of them
put all of their children through college, so that none of them would have to do the back-
breaking work it took them to make it in America.
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