Asian American history
Learning Japanese at Fort Snelling during World War II
One of the first things we saw when we got to Fort Snelling was a row of storyboards posted along the sidewalk leading to the visitors’ center. One of them showed a photo of three young Asian-American women in uniform, with a quotation above them: “I was born in the states, in Nebraska, and I’m…
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Hazel Ah Ying Lee: Chinese-American WASP
Hazel Ah Ying Lee was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1912. She was the daughter of Chinese immigrants—the second of eight children. Lee was nineteen when she experienced her first flight, at the end of a friend’s flying lesson. She was hooked. She immediately began to save up the money for flying lessons from her…
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Strangers in the Land
I ended Asian-American Heritage Month with a Big Fat History Book: Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America. Michael Luo started thinking about writing such a history in the fall of 2016. He and his family were standing in front of a restaurant in Manhattan when a…
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