In May. we honor Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We acknowledge and celebrate the people, history, food, and cultures of our various Asian communities and what they have added to our collective experience. Many important anniversaries of important milestones in the American story take place in May from the first Japanese immigrants’ arrival in 1843¹ to the completion of the transcontinental railroad, built with Chinese immigrant labor, in 1869² to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882³ that banned immigration from Chinese laborers. 

This year, the Korematsu Institute honors the 80th anniversary of the 1944 Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. United States, which ultimately upheld the constitutionality of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which started the Japanese American Incarceration that sent 125,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them American citizens, to desolate camps across the United States without due process. The namesake of the Institute, Fred T. Korematsu, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu resisted and was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s order. In 1944, when he appealed his case, the Court ruled against him arguing that the Incarceration was justified due to military necessity. Like the quiet activism of Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi or the preservation and education of Hawaiian culture and language by Edith Kanakaʻole, these civil rights landmarks and remarkable stories need to be heard. That is why the Korematsu Institute promotes ethnic studies curricula in all 50 states to show us how our differences only make us richer as a country. We all can come together. We can learn to support each other to move forward and not repeat the mistakes of our past. 

And at the Korematsu Institute, we believe ALL of our histories are important. There is no place more important than the public education classroom for sharing the truths, victories, defeats, and voices of all peoples and the power of the U.S. Constitution. Fred Korematsu believed when you see something wrong or unfair, you speak up. And to know when something is unjust or unfair, you need to know the whole story. This is about all of us. You let your voice be heard. In the end, we must all stand up for what is right every day. For ourselves and for our communities and for each other.

2024 is a mega-election year with 2 billion people voting worldwide. In the US, your voice matters! According to U.S. Census data from 2020, as many as 1 in 4 eligible Americans are not registered to vote. This year, you can double-check your registration status, find where to vote, and find out what is on your local ballot at nonpartisan organizations like Asian Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) here: https://apiavote.org/ 

 1) “First Japanese immigrant arrives in the U.S.”: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-japanese-immigrant-manjiro-arrives-in-the-us Retrieved April 18, 2024 from History.com

2) “Chinese Labor and the Iron Road”: https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/chinese-labor-and-the-iron-road.htm Retrieved April 18, 2024 from NPS.gov

3) “Chinese Exclusion Act”: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act#:~:text=It%20was%20the%20first%20significant,immigrating%20to%20the%20United%20States. Retrieved April 18, 2024 from Archives.gov