The Making of Asian America: A History

Fred Korematsu (1919-2005) was a prominent Japanese American civil rights activist. Korematsu is best known for the court case Korematsu v. United States (1944). It was his activism, along with that of other Japanese Americans, that led to the 1988 Civil Liberties Act.

Korematsu was a second-generation Japanese American and a US citizen, born in Oakland, California. During World War II, he refused to follow President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 initiating the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast. He was arrested for non-compliance. Korematsu spent a part of this time in the Topaz camp. His case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction in 1944. After the war, he returned to California, got married, and worked as a drafter. It was not until 1983 that the criminal conviction was invalidated “on the grounds that the Supreme Court had made its decision based on false information” (395).

Korematsu was one of the lobbyists for President Reagan’s 1988 Civil Liberties Act that offered an official government apology for the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War, allowing victims to obtain reparations. In 1998, Korematsu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mee Moua (b. 1969) is an American politician of Hmong descent. She is also the former Executive Director and President of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

Born in Laos during the Vietnam War, Moua’s family immigrated with other Hmong refugees to the US in the 1970s. Moua attended high school in the United States and earned a law degree from the University of Minnesota. She went on to become the first American of Hmong descent to be elected to a state legislature. Moua served in the Minnesota Senate for nine years, starting in 2002.

Afong Moy (ca. 1815-?) was the first documented woman of Chinese descent to immigrate to the United States. Nathaniel and Frederick Carne brought Moy to New York City in 1834 to use her as living advertising for their business. She received wide publicity as a “beautiful Chinese lady” with bound feet, toured the US, and met President Andrew Jackson (31). By 1848, Moy was working with the P. T. Barnum show. Her subsequent fate remains unknown.

Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967) was an Indian American writer. He is best known for the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1922) Supreme Court case.

Thind was born in Punjab, present-day India. Arriving in the United States to study, he served in the US Army as a Sergeant during World War I. Failing to become a naturalized US citizen, Thind’s case went to the Supreme Court. He argued that he was Aryan and thus fit the racial requirements of naturalized citizenship. The Supreme Court disagreed because he was not recognized as white by ordinary Americans. This decision led to the denaturalization of other South Asian immigrants. It was not until 1935 that Thind became a US citizen as a World War I veteran.