Episode 1: Breaking Ground
This was the first significant federal law to restrict immigration in the U.S., banning all Chinese laborers from entering the country for ten years and prohibiting them from becoming naturalized citizens.
What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?
This 1941 surprise military strike by Japan led to the immediate suspicion and eventual incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans, including the Uno family.
What is the Attack on Pearl Harbor?
This was the long period of tension between the U.S. and Russia/China that made Asian Americans feel like they had to prove they were "Good Americans."
What is the Cold War?
Larry Itliong led this specific group of laborers who started the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and formed the union known as AWOC.
Who are Filipino farmworkers?
Known as "Gam Saan" (Gold Mountain), this 1848 event drew the first massive wave of Chinese immigrants to California to seek their fortune.
What is the Gold Rush?
This U.S. President signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, which authorized the forced removal and incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.
Who is Franklin D. Roosevelt? (Accept: FDR)
When this leader took over China and made it a Communist country, Chinese Americans in the U.S. were suddenly treated with suspicion and had to prove their loyalty.
Who is Mao Zedong?
This term, which means "older brother" in Ilokano, refers to the generation of Filipino men like Alex Fabros' grandpa who worked the farms.
Who are the Manongs?
This Asian country served as a major Pacific theater of conflict where the United States defeated Spain. Following victory, the U.S. purchased the territory from Spain for $20 million via the Treaty of Paris, transitioning it from a Spanish colony to an American territory.
What is the Philippines?
This global economic crisis of the 1930s made life even harder for Asian American families before the war began.
What is the Great Depression?
Because they were successful in school and work, Asian Americans were given this "Model" nickname in the 1960s.
What is the Model Minority?
This California college was the site of the longest student strike in history, where the TWLF demanded the first-ever Ethnic Studies program.
What is San Francisco State?
Over 10,000 Chinese laborers provided the back-breaking work to build the western portion of this massive infrastructure project, which was completed in 1869.
What is the Transcontinental Railroad?
This famous Star Trek actor appears in the episode to describe his childhood memory of being forced from his home at gunpoint as a five-year-old boy.
Who is George Takei?
Patsy Mink co-authored this famous law that made it illegal to discriminate against women in schools and is why girls have equal access to sports.
What is Title IX?
Many Asian American soldiers who fought in this 1960s conflict were treated poorly and called slurs by their own side because they "looked like the 'enemy.'"
What is the Vietnam War?
At this San Francisco immigration station, officials would often interrogate travelers for hours about the specific number of windows or steps in their family home.
What is Angel Island?
Located in Wyoming, this incarceration camp was the site of a famous draft resistance movement where 63 young men refused to serve until their families were freed.
What is Heart Mountain?
In 1952, Toy Len Goon, a Chinese-American mother of eight children was given this famous title.
What is "Mother of the Year?"
This college president became famous for ripping the wires out of a student's microphone during the San Francisco State protests.
Who is S.I. Hayakawa?