Asian Americans Episode 4: Generation Rising《亚裔美国人》第四集《崛起的一代》（PBS授权）

Summary

Episode 4 of 'Asian Americans,' titled 'Generation Rising,' explores the pivotal moments and struggles faced by Asian Americans throughout the decades, showcasing their resilience and push for civil rights and identity. It begins with the exclusion acts and citizenship challenges faced by early immigrants, delves into the contributions of Japanese and Filipino Americans during WWII and the farm labor movements, and highlights the Vietnam War's impact on Asian American identity. Through education reforms driven by student activism during the 60s, and the powerful cultural expressions in the 70s and 80s, the episode chronicles the rise of Asian American voices demanding change, culminating in their lasting influence on society.

Highlights

• The Exclusion Act marked the beginning of Asian undocumented immigration in America. 🚫
• Filipino Americans initiated the farm labor movement, preceding Mexican support. 🤝
• Student strikes at San Francisco State led to the creation of ethnic studies programs. 🎓
• Asian American soldiers faced a dual identity crisis during the Vietnam War. 🚁
• Post-Vietnam War, Asian Americans turned to arts to express their unique identity. 🎭

Key Takeaways

• Asian Americans transformed hardships into movements for social justice and change. 🔥
• The farm labor movement, sparked by Filipino immigrants, was crucial in the fight for worker rights. 🍇
• Student activism led to the establishment of ethnic studies programs nationwide. 📚
• The Vietnam War significantly impacted Asian American identity and activism. 🌍
• Asian American culture and arts played a key role in advocating for change. 🎨

Overview

The episode opens by addressing the historical legal and social challenges that Asian immigrants faced, like the exclusion acts that denied them citizenship. But amid these restrictions, Asian Americans continuously aspired to the American Dream. The resilience showcased by the Japanese during WWII, despite incarceration, set a precedent for asserting rights that other Asian groups would follow.

As the plot unfolds, viewers witness the transformative 1960s, when the children of Asian immigrants began to carve out their roles in American society. Stories of Japanese and Filipino Americans spark change, inspiring movements such as the Filipino-led farm labor strikes in California's Central Valley. These strikes laid the groundwork for broader civil rights struggles across states, as ethnic minorities joined forces for common goals.

The narrative crescendos into the powerful eruptions of activism and cultural expressions in the following decades. With the Vietnam War serving as a backdrop, Asian Americans utilized education and the arts to amplify their voices, demanding courses that reflected their history and culture. The creation of ethnic studies programs epitomized this era's legacy—highlighting the importance of marginalized voices and laying the path for future generations to follow.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Historical Context The chapter 'Introduction and Historical Context' provides an overview of the American Dream and its implications on Asian immigrants. It highlights the challenges faced by Asian immigrants, specifically mentioning the denial of naturalized citizenship and the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which marked the Chinese as the first undocumented immigrants. Despite these hardships, the allure of the American Dream persisted, motivating immigrants to endure significant challenges. The chapter also references the contributions and sacrifices of Japanese Americans who supported the United States during conflicts.
• 03:00 - 15:00: Asian American Farm Labor Movement The chapter discusses the Asian American Farm Labor Movement, highlighting the struggles and resilience within these communities despite facing significant challenges.
• 15:00 - 27:00: Asian Americans in the Vietnam War The chapter titled 'Asian Americans in the Vietnam War' delves into the emergence and significance of the Asian-American movement. The narrative emphasizes themes of humanity, resilience, and a collective hope to transform societal systems towards justice and equality for all. This movement and its roots are explored as pivotal in the context of how Asian Americans contributed and evolved during the Vietnam War era, highlighting their fight for recognition and rights.
• 27:00 - 37:00: Student Activism and Ethnic Studies Movement This chapter delves into the role and impact of student activism in shaping the Ethnic Studies Movement. It highlights how various foundations and organizations, like the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, JustFilms, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Freeman Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York play supportive roles in promoting educational and social initiatives related to ethnic studies. These organizations contribute through investments and exploring the broader human endeavor, demonstrating a commitment to a shared future.
• 37:00 - 47:00: Post-Vietnam, Refugees, and Cultural Impact This chapter provides an introduction, crediting various foundations and contributors such as the Louis K. Family Foundation, Long Family Foundation, Spring Wang, and California Humanities. It emphasizes the role of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers' contributions to supporting PBS programs.
• 47:00 - 57:00: Legacy and Continuing Impact The 1960s was a period of significant change for Asian Americans as they began to see the world in new and transformative ways. As the children of immigrants, they faced the challenge of understanding their identity and place in a rapidly evolving society. This chapter explores the upheaval of that era and how the possibilities seemed endless.

Asian Americans Episode 4: Generation Rising《亚裔美国人》第四集《崛起的一代》（PBS授权） Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] i grew up with the american dream but all asian immigrants were denied the right of naturalized citizenship and with the exclusion act the chinese became the first undocumented immigrant the american dream is a lovely dream to have and so people continue to aspire enduring whatever it is that they've got to do as immigrants japanese americans fought on the side of
• 00:30 - 01:00 the united states while the rest of their family was incarcerated legal challenges were so important because they did not have political power and as much as tragedy is a part of our heritage here so is possibility the asian voices are coming out you've got these young people fighting to make change happen they had to assert their rights it was like a genie
• 01:00 - 01:30 coming out of the bottle you couldn't put us back in these are stories about what it meant to be human what it meant to be resilient to transform the system into something more just for everyone that's the hope from which the asian-american movement was born major funding for asian americans was provided by
• 01:30 - 02:00 the wallace h culter foundation justfilms ford foundation national endowment for the humanities exploring the human endeavor the arthur vining davis foundations investing in our common future the freeman foundation carnegie corporation of new york
• 02:00 - 02:30 k family foundation long family foundation spring wang and california humanities this program is made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and from contributions to this pbs station from viewers like you thank you [Music]
• 02:30 - 03:00 one two three [Music] in the 1960s asian americans are looking at the world through a new lens everything is an upheaval and anything is possible as the children of immigrants asians are trying to understand
• 03:00 - 03:30 their role in america's history they are claiming their voice in the fields on college campuses and in the public square [Music] no one can imagine where these struggles will take them [Music] california's central valley one of the
• 03:30 - 04:00 richest agricultural regions of the united states and home to some of its poorest workers [Music] it is here where asian americans spark a farm labor movement that will galvanize the world for alex fabros the story begins with world war ii when his family emigrates from the philippines like many new arrivals they rely on farm work
• 04:00 - 04:30 to make ends meet the family came to california in 1948 so my father's in the military but on the weekends my dad would work out in the fields just to earn extra money so he could buy a house in salinas in 1950 he buys a home in a part of salinas where asians are not allowed to own homes they tell them we don't want you in this
• 04:30 - 05:00 neighborhood after we moved in they would take stones and they break our windows my mother had brand new rose bushes and they would come in they tie ropes around the rose bushes and they do wheelies on the lawn there's this kid that had this dog and he'd stick that dog on me i'm about six years old and i'm running as fast as i can this dog is barking at my heels it's a german shepherd
• 05:00 - 05:30 so my father went around the neighborhood he had a pistol and he banged the doors and said the fights between you and me and not my family and nobody bothered us after my father did that years later i enrolled in the local junior college but i basically flunked out
• 05:30 - 06:00 my father said you're going to go work on your grandfather's farm until you decide exactly what it is you want to do you've got to learn what life really is like on the outside so i became a migrant farm worker in delano california alex joins the army of farm laborers that crisscross california harvesting crops working long hours for low wages they're not protected by labor laws and can be fired at any time
• 06:00 - 06:30 you get up at four o'clock in the morning you're hoeing you're bent over it's cold it's wet out there but these guys are working hard for a dollar 25 cents an hour these are really old filipino men we call them the monogs modongs is a term of respect that we give to people who are older than us
• 06:30 - 07:00 in the evenings these old men would sit outside and then tell stories about what it was like to grow up in california in 1930s and you know i'd say junior go back to school become something become someone you know don't end up like us very few filipino women were able to immigrate to the u.s and filipino men were barred from marrying white women
• 07:00 - 07:30 as a result an entire generation is forced to live out their lives as bachelors deprived a family but there are some exceptions i'm half filipino and half mexican my father met my mother working in the fields and he didn't speak spanish and she didn't speak english and so my father learned how to speak spanish so that he could get to know her
• 07:30 - 08:00 if my father and i met my mother he would have been like the monongs [Music] i was born in a labor camp a mile and a half from delano it was a two-bedroom barrack bunk house we all slept together there were seven of us and then my mom and dad the bathroom was out back which was shared with two other families so uh you get to know your neighbors
• 08:00 - 08:30 well working in the fields you're working it feels from when you're a child there are no labor laws that prevent parents bringing their children to work it gives them one less thing to worry about if your children are out there working with you a lot of filipino men wanted me to become the person they could not become they're telling me we'll save money for you to go to college
• 08:30 - 09:00 a lot of these old men had that dream of having us young kids out of the field not to go through what they did for the last 20 30 years by the mid-1960s working conditions have gone from bad to worse the manongs reach a tipping point they're willing to put their jobs and lives on the line to establish a union we want to have medical benefits when one of our guys falls down and he gets hurt someone's got to cover his benefits we're going to have a
• 09:00 - 09:30 a health plan when these guys get old we want to have a pension plan larry hetly young was president of the agricultural workers organizing committee known as awok [Music] summer of 65 he began to talk about organizing improving the working conditions and increasing the salaries we feel that we farm workers should have an organization of our own
• 09:30 - 10:00 one of the things that most people forget is that it was a filipinos in september 1965 he started a great strike not the mexicans [Music] [Applause] the strike happened mainly because of larry it leong's will and determination he was a trained labor leader he was gruff he was not a polish
• 10:00 - 10:30 speaker i was 13 years old the day that my family went out on strike i remember we were working when my father says come on we're we're leaving i says we're leaving it's 10 o'clock in the morning so we left to go on strike you suffer a lot of hardship maybe you get hungry maybe you're going to lose your car maybe you're going to lose your house
• 10:30 - 11:00 and i remember leaving the field and driving through the uh seeing the strikers of the filipinos but the filipinos face a dilemma as they strike for a union the farmers bring in mexican workers to replace them it's one of the things i learned that the farmers like to do they like to fit the mexicans against the filipinos because you're going to be fighting for the same pot of gold many mexican laborers have already
• 11:00 - 11:30 joined the national farm workers association led by the charismatic cesar chavez i remember meeting at the filipino community hall in vellino all the labor contractors were there a lot of the farm workers were there and they're trying to decide are we going to end the strike or are we going to negotiate with the mexicans to join us and then larry it leon he gets up and says i'm gonna go talk to the
• 11:30 - 12:00 mexicans when the strike happens cesar chavez wasn't really quite ready but caesar also knew that if they didn't join filipinos then then they would never happen larry approaches cesar chavez and his colleague dolores huerta another powerful organizer [Music] as one of awk's co-founders her relationship with larry and the filipinos goes back years and then a couple days
• 12:00 - 12:30 later we're at this church they're talking about the strike they're discussing should we go on strike or not go on strike and also there's a swagger i said what the heck swagger because i thought they were saying hell no i said not mean strike we're going on strike and so the mexicans joined us [Music]
• 12:30 - 13:00 they take the mexican labor movement and the filipino labor movement they create the united farm workers when they really push that the workers eat together they have meetings together that they were picket lines together and it was only because of there become one union that they were able to win the strike larry knew that his style was not
• 13:00 - 13:30 good pr he's aggressive he wore his emotions on his sleeve he needed cesar's charisma his his ability to speak cesar was the spokesman it's going to be built by farm workers and it's going to be for farm workers whereas larry wanted to get down and dirty he wanted to work out on the field delano became more than a farm labor dispute it became in a sense the west coast civil rights movement for people of
• 13:30 - 14:00 color all of a sudden people started equating what was happening in delano to the black civil rights movement on the east coast in alabama and mississippi [Applause] we started having these politicians coming out there you have robert kennedy holding hearings as to why the white growers are not going to give people of color these benefits that they're asking for
• 14:00 - 14:30 not only are you boycotting in delano now you're sending groups and college students and people who believe in the labor union and equal rights to do a secondary grave strike and now they're boycotting in new york they're boycotting in montreal in canada they're boycotting in europe for boycotting california grapes strike and boycott against grapes will continue
• 14:30 - 15:00 it took five years to finally get the growers to sign a contract and that was only because people went out on the boycott and they convinced people all over the united states not the grapes growers couldn't sell their products and so they had to sign larry italian what do you have uh what do you have to say about seeing grapes at the the stories after all this time well i think that's it's great
• 15:00 - 15:30 and thanks to the co-op store that have been supporting the grip boycott to help bring about justice and dignity on behalf of the farm workers for me that's one of my pride and joys yeah filipinos were here and we made a difference working in the fields that's where i realized that if a lot of people put their mind to it they can win i left field working behind me
• 15:30 - 16:00 completely i never left the memories of these guys [Music] my decision to leave was made for me not because i wanted to leave because i had received my draft notice alex fabros ships out for vietnam one of thousands of asian americans who will
• 16:00 - 16:30 serve in the most polarizing and disruptive global event of the 1960s in south vietnam the seemingly endless war against the communists is once again in the forefront of world attention as of today there are 507 000 american troops in vietnam i had a lot of nightmares about vietnam that i don't want to talk about this is the fourth war the united states has fought in asia in only 60 years as in korea
• 16:30 - 17:00 the country's perceived enemy is communism many asian americans are forced to confront their racial identity in a whole new light i was pretty wild in high school i used to get in a lot of trouble i decided you know i need to get out of la so i joined the marine corps the idea of vietnam didn't even cross my mind
• 17:00 - 17:30 i was 18. at that age i didn't think past a week in front of me right [Music] as soon as i got to boot camp the drill instructors told us well you know all you guys in this platoon are probably going to end up in vietnam 95 percent of you and half you aren't going to make it back [Music] when i decided to enlist it was
• 17:30 - 18:00 not a deeply thought out decision when i went to boot camp we had to line up on these yellow footprints and single file and they instructed us to go tallest to shortest fort journal instructors pulled out the two biggest guys in the front and they beat them beat them down kicked them they were bleeding i was thinking what what have i done i mean this is like a
• 18:00 - 18:30 big mistake during one of these classes my drill instructor says private nakayama stand up i stood up at attention he goes turn around so i turned around and he goes all right everybody this is what a [ __ ] looks like you remember this because they're gonna come after you
• 18:30 - 19:00 i arrived in vietnam in october of 1967. i was stationed at caisson and hill 881 during the ted offensive of 1968 it was the biggest battle of the war the pressure at caisson has lasted a week now a bad week for the marines here a week in which they've suffered under the guns of the north vietnamese in these surrounding hills the hill i was on 881 we had a 100 casualty rate that means out of the 400
• 19:00 - 19:30 marines initially stationed on the hill 400 million for either killed or wounded in the three months i was there not a fun place to be we would go out for 30 to 60 days into the jungle we're trying to draw out the north vietnamese army into battles
• 19:30 - 20:00 i was 11 months there and we had set up a perimeter next to a hill boom we got hit with rockets and then i got hit from a grenade explosion in my shoulder and i'm thinking i'm gonna die here i got taken off the helicopter in the stretcher the treatment tables are in the back they're doctors and they're treating
• 20:00 - 20:30 people they treated him they treated him they left me and i was the last one and i said hey man when you guys gonna treat me and he says oh you should have told us you were american we thought she was a [ __ ] asian american women also serve in vietnam lily adams is chinese italian from the bronx when she tells her father she's enlisted in the army it's the first time she sees him cry i
• 20:30 - 21:00 was in nursing school the army nurse recruiter come to visit our school once and um she made it sound pretty good because it would pay for my last year of nursing school i would have some money in my pocket i got orders for vietnam i was 20. it was the town of kuchi and we had built a giant military base we were told it was the busiest hospital
• 21:00 - 21:30 in vietnam my first day this guy said well i'm dr so-and-so and we could like kind of pair up and spend some 12 months together and um i i basically worked to contain my anger and i said thank you very much it's very nice of you but i'm not interested that was my first day
• 21:30 - 22:00 i was mistaken for a vietnamese prostitute if i wanted to walk around the compound i had to be in uniform and even when i was in uniform sometimes these guys would ask me if i wanted to do whatever for so much money [Music] i was afraid of american gis because they really believed that we were there for them i had to be
• 22:00 - 22:30 vigilant very vigilant on base off base or whatever when i was there the vietnamese people would come up and try to trade for stuff you know for cigarettes and see rations you know some of the vietnamese people looked at me and said hey you same same vietnam and for a minute i thought what are they talking about then i got it you know hey you look like me and you're
• 22:30 - 23:00 just like us we call them gooks that's what i thought they were and then when he said that to me then i thought well wait a minute i i must be a [ __ ] also [Music] i'm 22 years old i'm a sergeant i was assigned to a unit in vietnam that required translators
• 23:00 - 23:30 one day sergeant c calls me and says hell they think they've got a vc that they just captured in the village we went out there and the vietnamese security people had already worked them over a little bit and i squatted down next to him so they were eye eye and i asked him the vietnamese why are you fighting us
• 23:30 - 24:00 he looks right at me right in my eyes why are you here this is my country why are you here i think right at that moment i realized that okay alex why are you here [Music]
• 24:00 - 24:30 1968 is a transformative year in american history and specifically for asian americans many of us were deeply affected by gruesome images of death and destruction at the same time there was upheaval in america cities were exploding dr martin luther king would be assassinated there were other killings political murders it felt like the world was about to explode
• 24:30 - 25:00 the younger generations started taking positions very strong on what was happening in vietnam and it was because we had so many returning vietnam veterans who were telling us the truth about what was going on the war in vietnam the problems of race and the cities these are issues facing the citizens of the united states and they are issues vividly facing the students on an urban campus as the school year begins students are
• 25:00 - 25:30 trying to make sense of a world turned upside down at san francisco state a college with a mostly white student body young people of color question whether their own education is failing them they demand more minority faculty and a curriculum that reflects their lives and concerns and they want it now students like dan gonzalez penny nakatsu and laureen chu all of them 18 or 19 years old
• 25:30 - 26:00 i grew up in san francisco's chinatown growing up in chinatown was a very nurturing experience you had a community that you interacted with on a daily basis especially with for my mom who didn't speak english i was accepted into san francisco state in 1966 and that's only because my mom refused to have me go away for college she thought the worst like i would be a
• 26:00 - 26:30 some wayward woman having free sex everywhere or something like that galvanized by the civil rights movement and the death of dr martin luther king jr student activists organized to have more classes in black history and culture we're trying to start a black status program as a state college and i think that it has the greatest and less hope to solve the educational problems of the black uh race the demand for black studies was influencing asian americans
• 26:30 - 27:00 we started reflecting on our own experiences saying saying yeah you know we need to have something like that for ourselves for your information philippines refers to the country and filipino refers to the people this is exactly what we want they study on filipino culture and history i was trying to figure out who i was and then i met this other chinese girl who grew up in south city
• 27:00 - 27:30 and she was much more adventurous and she was the one that asked me to go to this meeting laureen joins the impromptu gatherings that are springing up all over campus black and brown students call for solidarity with the people of colonized latin america asia and africa what they call the third world this is the first time in the history of all existing colleges in the united states that we have dissolved
• 27:30 - 28:00 class barriers between people of the third world it was a real aha for me saying like wow you know they're not chinese but we have similar experiences in terms of the dominant culture not validating who we are [Music] african americans have been here for a long time they were well established their civil rights movement was complemented by our perspective for example on
• 28:00 - 28:30 internment and the concentration camp experience of japanese americans on the exclusion of asians from citizenship decades-long almost a century-long exclusion by design in 1968 alex fabros is serving in the marines but he has friends in college who are confronting these issues our story does not taught in the classrooms the chinese built railroads okay that's it
• 28:30 - 29:00 they didn't talk about the hardship they didn't talk about the exploitation the laws that they passed against the chinese they didn't talk about the filipinos working in the fields and talk about the farm labor strikes total admission that is what the third world liberation front was about to tell the true histories of the people who contributed and built this country
• 29:00 - 29:30 history i never learned anything about the history of asian americans or japanese americans or camps that eventually led me to involve myself in political activism what we wanted to see was an educational institution that served the communities serve the people under the umbrella of the third world liberation front asian latino and native american
• 29:30 - 30:00 students as well as progressive whites join forces with the black student union one of the major objectives was to start a school of ethnic studies we called it third world studies that would have the same status as other established schools on the campus at first the administration seems open to a school of ethnic studies but students grow frustrated with what they see as empty promises after months of inaction by the
• 30:00 - 30:30 university the students call for a general strike on november 6 1968. [Music] the bsu twlf demands asked that a school of third world studies be formed that was based on the concept of self-determination we asked for students and faculty members to boycott stop classes stop business as usual
• 30:30 - 31:00 our main thing on campus was to be disruptive to force the administration to be responsive to the demands laureen and others use a variety of tactics to make their point they interrupt classes form picket lines and broadcast their demands by loudspeaker their goal to shut the school down i was with one group where people picked up the typewriters and threw it across the room and
• 31:00 - 31:30 students got all freaked out and started running out of the classroom you know because we were that passionate to start a school of ethnic studies but behind the scenes students like dan gonzalez are doing the hard work of building a brand new curriculum from scratch that was my major task understanding how to put courses together
• 31:30 - 32:00 filipino americans chinese chinese-americans japanese-americans drafted their own curriculum proposals and then we all met together as asian americans and talked about how we were going to start these courses in those days the term asian american didn't exist we were all orientals 1968 that was the first time that i heard the term asian americans there's a strike going on here and that means that either you're on our side
• 32:00 - 32:30 are your casters no one anticipates the magnitude of the strike from the start the police come in force to shut down the protesters little dissident group with their 15 non-negotiable demands you talk about negotiating i would call to your attention that the black student union has declared that their demands are non-negotiable soon afterward the state of california
• 32:30 - 33:00 appoints a new president essai hayakawa an english professor at the college and he was supposed to shut us down it was really clear to us that he was being used because he was a person of color and if he could exercise his authority and power in a manner that was consistent with the ronald reagan way of dealing with campus upheaval he was going to be very useful
• 33:00 - 33:30 the new president renowned as an expert in the meaning of language decided early in the day to face his critics [Applause] the communication failure was obvious ayakawa took that matter and the soundtruck wiring into his own hands some of the militants have called you and uncle tom they say they thought that you would identify with the minority groups such as the blacks what is your answer to them well i'm the first japanese uncle tom in history i think it's kind of an achievement he
• 33:30 - 34:00 forbade any rallies on campus that he threatened you know you have a rally i'm going to arrest all of you and that was kind of like a turning point the rally was going to be called at 12 noon i heard all these people outside already saying the on strike shut it down [Music]
• 34:00 - 34:30 it all happened really quickly i saw the police come running up with their batons in hand suddenly there was like a military movement attack squad on horses that came out from the gym and just like surrounded all of us
• 34:30 - 35:00 [Music] but then it just got all quiet and then at that point no one could get out the tax squad just surrounded us we could not leave if you were in that circle you were gonna be arrested
• 35:00 - 35:30 there was over a thousand police dogs horses perry wagon who will fight the oppressor on our terms not theirs this morning they're going to arraign 10 at a time all of those who were arrested out at san francisco state college i was not going to cop a plea i mean my mother had a hissy fit what are you doing you know getting arrested i have one child whom i thought i raised and spent money go to a high-end catholic school you should be like a saint laurene and a
• 35:30 - 36:00 few other demonstrators argue their case in court but a jury sentences her to 20 days in prison when i finally had to go to jail she was devastated she came and visited me in jail i was so scared of being there you know when i saw her i just started to cry and then she did also you know basically knowing that i shouldn't be there
• 36:00 - 36:30 after i finish my 20 days for the first time i heard her say something to defend me she said my daughter was not very smart but i'll say this she did not hurt anybody and what she wanted to do was to make a better world for people the san francisco state strike is the longest student strike in u.s history after five months the administration finally agrees to establish a school of
• 36:30 - 37:00 ethnic studies the legacy of the strike defines a generation eager to change society and asserts a new identity as asian americans it's just like the the filipinos and the mexicans getting together to form a labor union asian american encompasses everybody i said wow that's something people are finally
• 37:00 - 37:30 starting to realize that we wear our race on our face the asian american movement bursts forth across the country in new jersey gordon chang is one of only five asian students in his class as princeton it was the summer of 1969 when i came back to the bay area and met a lot of the activists who had been in san francisco state or uc berkeley
• 37:30 - 38:00 it was a stunning moment for those of us that we look at each other and all of a sudden found that we had so much in common if we were to transform society we had to move beyond the ivory tower gates and to go into where everybody everyday people lived when we moved to new york we were told there's a budding asian-american movement you've got to really get involved in that you have to remember that there was not an
• 38:00 - 38:30 asian-american sense before and it was just starting to gel the first things we got involved with were these demonstrations i remember my mother i told her about going into anti-war demonstrations and sharing with her my hope for a radical new world and she was very upset she was almost crying and she said this is their country they're just going to shoot you down and i said well this is my country this is where i live and this is what i feel
• 38:30 - 39:00 i must do it felt great to be part of this groundswell of a movement that was just enveloping the country we were involved with black asian white latinos and that was incredible and then there's this duel chris and joanne and they're singers folk singers they sing about the asian american experience these are two young people that uh they
• 39:00 - 39:30 call themselves yellow pearl their grandparents were japanese i guess and uh they're young singers called chris and joanna and uh beautiful singers and uh they have a story to tell they're gonna come on now and do it here they are yellow pearl usually people know very little about asians and this is a song about our movement about our people's plight in america
• 39:30 - 40:00 we are the children of the migrant worker we are the offspring of the concentration camp sons [Music] it was a very powerful thing to be able to do that for asian americans for for young people to hear us sing these words because we had never had our own song sing a
• 40:00 - 40:30 song for ourselves and there's something about music that is a visceral thing it's it's emotional you can't do it in a speech you can't do it by reading a book [Music]
• 40:30 - 41:00 so it was like a genie coming out of the bottle you couldn't put us back in [Music] you can't just have a leaflet you can't just have a demonstration the art gives flesh and blood to the politics people were drawing people were making posters people were making films
• 41:00 - 41:30 people were writing people were doing poetry i told you so oh yes you take your old name back i told you so oh yes channel i really appreciate the visual arts the poster art but also the documentary filmmaking that
• 41:30 - 42:00 one thing's so important in helping craft an asian american identity even as asian-american culture is blossoming the war in vietnam continues to rage veterans returning home
• 42:00 - 42:30 have to grapple with their role in the conflict coming home is the biggest cultural shock especially during the 60s you kind of went from leave it to beaver when i left to the hippies and the radical anti-war movement when you get back i started going to l.a city college since i was a vietnam veteran and there weren't too many around that subject came up a lot hey you were
• 42:30 - 43:00 in vietnam you know you're you're asian american you're a marine corps veteran what did you think about the war before and during i didn't have a concept of the racist nature of the war afterwards i was very aware and it was such a traumatic and extreme experience i wanted to be able to understand what happened so that drove me into looking into the anti-war movement
• 43:00 - 43:30 the winter soldier investigation was put on by the vietnam veterans against the war they were trying to get the opinion of the veterans the people who actually fought in the war it was a holiday inn with a large uh auditorium and there was table set up in the front with about 15 chairs and then there was the audience so different groups of vets would go up and would talk about what atrocities they experienced or or
• 43:30 - 44:00 participated in we were then all the non-whites and they never asked us to participate and so when it was almost over we just went up and took over the tables and chairs and just started talking we all spoke and gave the perspective from each individual how do these atrocities get to be committed now they just don't happen there's a whole thing of how they tell
• 44:00 - 44:30 you you know that the people over there aren't really people but they can't deny the testimony of all these dudes in the room [Applause] we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in vietnam saigon april the 30th eight o'clock the last american helicopter on the roof of the american embassy prepares to lift off the last of the
• 44:30 - 45:00 evacuees fleeing before the advancing communist armies tens of thousands of vietnamese still struggle to escape their homeland for a new life elsewhere they are always arriving these so-called boat people sometimes as many as a thousand in one day the war in vietnam is officially over but its effects resonate for years to come a new generation of refugees from southeast asia will soon enrich the american experience
• 45:00 - 45:30 typically when it comes to war we believe that it is the victors who write the history the americans for the most part have gotten to write the history of this war whether it's in books or whether it's in movies americans can't completely rewrite the path to say they won the war but they put themselves at the center of the story so even if it's a tragedy in which they lose they're the stars of the tragedy
• 45:30 - 46:00 despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of people who died were southeast asians i really don't remember much about vietnam my memory really begins coming here to the united states as a refugee arriving in fort indian town gap in pennsylvania my parents found an opportunity they
• 46:00 - 46:30 opened a vietnamese grocery store in downtown san jose on east santa clara street which is the heart of the city my impression of san jose is inseparable from the experiences of being a refugee these refugees were suffering that they were trying to build a life for themselves here and yet they were still traumatized by the war or they were trying to forget the war i remember when i was around 10 or 11 years old walking down the street
• 46:30 - 47:00 from my parents store and seeing a sign in another store window that said another american driven out of business by the vietnamese and i knew that this was directed at people like my parents my parents work 12 to 14 hour days in this store almost every day of the year my parents were shot in that store on christmas eve
• 47:00 - 47:30 so for me that time would stay with me because i was it was a sign that was a story that was targeted at my parents and everybody liked us and so i swore one day that i would have an opportunity to rewrite that sign to write it to write another story i was born in 1974. i was born in a
• 47:30 - 48:00 uh district five which is called jello which is like chinatown in vietnam and then my aunt who had left in 78 sponsored our family so we laughed in 83. grew up in southern california in santa ana i had no awareness that the war had just happened probably because my parents protected us from all of that
• 48:00 - 48:30 and my dad though he had gone to re-education camps we didn't know much about that we didn't really talk much about that the only education i ever got from the vietnam war was apocalypse now dear hunter platoon hollywood made literally dozens of movies about the war in vietnam through the 70s and the 80s and they posed a real problem for me because i was a war fanatic i really
• 48:30 - 49:00 enjoyed war was into soldiers and guns and identifying with american soldiers and the problem was that they were fighting vietnamese people so to see movies like apocalypse now when i was 10 or 11 and to watch vietnamese people being slaughtered or raped in the case of other films was really traumatic for me coming to berkeley as a student in the late 1980s was really a transformative moment for me i
• 49:00 - 49:30 remember i was being arrested and coughed and i was thinking i was looking at the floor and i was thinking god that's what brooklyn's all about the first class i took there was ronald takaki's intro to asian american studies he had just published his book strangers from a different shore which was the first major collective history of asian americans most of us in this classroom had never heard so many of the things that he was lecturing about they were asian american students back then now they've become the asian american studies professors
• 49:30 - 50:00 and i remember them you know telling us well the 60s are going to happen again any moment now you know that was the 1990s we were convinced that was going to happen they had committed their lives to academic knowledge but also this idea of the necessity of asian american studies as an activist practice and their classes were absolutely fundamental to me in terms of turning me into a scholar but also into an asian american pam tran is also seeking to address the
• 50:00 - 50:30 unspoken trauma experienced by vietnamese americans he raises 1.5 million dollars from his community to make a film about the war from a vietnamese point of view making journey from the fall we had an opportunity to tell this people's story the people who was involved
• 50:30 - 51:00 when we were casting i didn't want to cast actors so i was looking for real people who had had experience within the community we saw like 600 something people people come and share their stories with us [Music]
• 51:00 - 51:30 my education was my audition process a lot of people telling me stories hearing 500 stories within two weeks really some people i felt like they've been waiting years to get this off their chest the woman who came to visit the re-education camp to give the news to our main character she shared with us the day that she went to visit him
• 51:30 - 52:00 and how she slit her foot under the table and spoke with him and the only way they had contact was through that right it's such a beautiful moment i'm like let's try to capture that on film and action journey from the fall is embraced by the vietnamese american community and considered a critical success meanwhile vietnam is seeking a way to
• 52:00 - 52:30 address the legacy of the war i wanted to confront what had been done to us i wanted to be a writer i wanted to be an activist i want to be a scholar and i didn't want to give up any of those kinds of things tonight our guest is the author vietnam i wanted to write a novel that you know evoked the fall of saigon in the vietnam war and to tell it from a perspective that we hadn't seen before in 2015 viet is awarded the pulitzer prize for the sympathizer a darkly comedic tale about an
• 52:30 - 53:00 undercover communist agent whose loyalties are split between vietnam and the united states vietnam everybody all the success was made possible by pioneering people you've got these young people all under probably age 21 fighting to make change happen and they had dreams
• 53:00 - 53:30 let us people went on to become professionals some became judges some became lawyers a few became professors former student activists dan gonzalez and laureen shu become professors of asian american studies at san francisco state after retiring from the military alex fabros would also study and teach asian american history there 50 years after the third world strike
• 53:30 - 54:00 there are now dozens of ethnic studies programs across the country and asian american studies courses are taking root in unexpected places today volunteers teach a weekly course to inmates at san quentin state prison students learn about asian american
• 54:00 - 54:30 history from exclusion to civil rights to the war in southeast asia the program's motto if you know history you know yourself on graduation day students are recognized for their achievements and celebrate their gains i give to you the graduating class of ruth supercycle 5 cap 35
• 54:30 - 55:00 another person we want to celebrate today a person that we actually know as um one of our black and ease students and um i'll bring uh tan tran up to the stage here this entire roots experience it's been nothing but love inclusivity and feeling like i finally have a family i feel like there's support out there and that's tremendous my mother she's
• 55:00 - 55:30 vietnamese and black but the is i never got to know my mother because when i was two years old i was placed into foster care and i lost more than just my mom i lost my roots i lost my only connection to my roots in america because i had no other family here besides her i began to notice that it was more than just
• 55:30 - 56:00 the asian struggle the latin next and black struggle these were stories about what it meant to be human and that's what roots taught me so i want to thank that team for seeing the humanity in me for seeing the humanity in our brothers for bringing roots to us dedicating your free time to us because for a lot of us we didn't have a family we didn't have hope and you give us that
• 56:00 - 56:30 in 1968 when asian americans came into being now that story is no longer new there should be a new story beyond that i'm committed to the new story a new generation will go off and do something that i might find offensive or i might disagree
• 56:30 - 57:00 with or that i may just not understand that's fantastic that's a logical consequence of what we wanted to do as a part of an asian-american movement to create a situation in which asian americans were free to do anything they [Music] wanted
• 57:00 - 57:30 you