AAST 110W: Introductions to Asian Studies (W): Primary Sources

An Other War Memorial questions why nations should remember only their own, and why soldiers are the ones recalled in memorials. The war commemorated here is what some call the Vietnam War and what some call the American War. The people commemorated here are both the living and the dead, soldiers and civilians. Visitors can begin by clicking on a portrait to see the profile of someone who died in the war, survived the war, witnessed the war, or protested against it.

Hosted by the Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley, this archive collects and preserves the voices and stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities during the COVID-19 pandemic for future generations.

The AAPI COVID-19 Project is a collective research project bringing together faculty, graduate researchers, and undergraduate research assistants at seven academic institutions in the United States.

Established in 2009 at DePaul University, by Professor Laura Kina collects oral histories of Asian/Asian American artists and key organizers and participants of Asian/Asian American arts and cultural organizations. While the scope of the project encompasses diasporic and US born Asians across the United States, the primary focus of the archive is to document the history of Midwestern Asian American artists and arts organizations.

Sponsored by the Asian Community Center History Group of San Francisco, this collection focuses on 1968 as a tipping point for the Asian American Movement.

This oral history collection was created by students enrolled in Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau's courses in 2020- 2021. Emphasizing student-led oral histories, the class takes its cue from Grace Yoo’s course on the Auntie Sewing Squad at San Francisco State University. Founded in 2020 by performance artist Kristina Wong, who organized Asian American women as a casual effort to sew handmade face masks as personal protective equipment.

This collection consists of 21 oral histories from the Beginnings of Activism for the Department of Asian American Studies (BADAAS) at University of California, Irvine project. BADAAS was a group created by the chair of the Department of Asian American Studies, Dr. Judy Wu, and Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, director of the Southeast Asian Archive for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Department of Asian American Studies. They assembled a group of interns to research the history of the creation of Asian American Studies on campus and conducted oral histories with the professors, staff and faculty members, activists, and former students involved its foundation.

An exhibit of Asian American-related material on Calisphere, which provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration.

The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California Collection is held by the University of Southern California, and documents artifacts systematically excavated from two sites in Southern California. The first site is represented by about 1,040 color images of artifacts from the original Los Angeles Chinatown; an additional 150 images document artifacts from the site of a Chinese laundry in Santa Barbara.

Densho is a Japanese term meaning “to pass on to the next generation,” or to leave a legacy. The legacy we offer is an American story with ongoing relevance: during World War II, the United States government incarcerated innocent people solely because of their ancestry. Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all.

The Filipino American Library collection consists of materials owned by the Filipino American Library in Historic Filipinotown that were transferred to the University of Southern California in 2017. The Filipino American Library (FAL) was founded in a church basement in 1985 as the Pilipino American Reading Room and Library (PARRAL) in a neighborhood close to Echo Park by Helen Agcaoili Summers Brown, affectionately referred to as "Auntie Helen" in the local community. In January of 2000, PARRAL moved to a new location on Temple Street and was renamed the Filipino American Library. At the time, FAL comprised the largest collection of Filipino and Filipino American reading materials--at more than 6,000 titles--and promoted literacy and cultural engagement through many community programs and exhibits. When FAL closed its doors, its collections were dispersed among the USC Libraries and the Echo Park Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Concordia University at Saint Paul, Hmong Oral History Project works to connect the younger generations of Hmong, and the broader communities in which many Hmong live, with resources describing Hmong culture in Laos, the Secret War in Southeast Asia, and stories of the Hmong immigrant experience, facilitating greater intercultural and intergenerational understanding.

The year 2015 marked 40 years of the Hmong migration from Laos and Thailand to the United States of America. To commemorate this special anniversary, an exhibition comprised of photographs, stories, fine art, and artifacts was create to showcase the Hmong experience. Hmongstory 40 is a joint effort from many people from throughout the state of California. It represents a collaborative that shares a common vision. This exhibition provides a rare and intimate opportunity to connect with the Hmong people. From the past to the present, Hmongstory 40 constructed a narrative that was absent within the Hmong community and to the general public at large.

The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America. Image content in this collection is accompanied by OCR-generated text where possible, thus rendering the text searchable. The holdings of each title are browsable by date, title, and publication place, with each title cross searchable with other titles on the platform. The nature of the newspapers varies significantly from community-focused to political or military propaganda depending on the political conditions and target readership.

Immigrant Stories is a research and archiving project run by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota. Immigrant Stories helps immigrants, refugees, and their family members create digital stories: brief videos with images, text, and audio about a personal experience.

The University of British Columbia Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies seeks to gather and share the stories and histories of Chinese Canadians families and communities so future generations will be aware of the rich and complex stories that make up diverse aspects of Canadian history and identity.

The documentary record of the Korean experience in America remains dispersed and difficult to access. The Korean American Digital Archive brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.

Created by Tara Fickle, this site contains snapshots of archives related to the 1977 re-publication of No-No Boy by the Aiiieeeee! editors and CARP (Combined Asian American Resources Project). The book No-no Boy by Japanese American writer, John Okada. Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Asian American Writers, third edition published in 2021, was first published in 1974.

This UC Davis archive offers a window into the story of South Asian immigrants from the Punjab region in north India to California since the turn of the twentieth century. Explore over 700 video interviews, speeches, diaries, photographs, articles, and letters in which Punjabi Americans share their life stories, values, and contributions to California’s history over the last hundred and twenty years.

Business directories published by Wells Fargo offer important resources for researchers and family historians. In particular, several Chinese business directories from the 19th century have been digitized and are available here.

This project documents the experiences of the Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Sacramento region and beyond. Sacramento State University students in Asian American Communities, ETHN 113, identified and conducted oral histories with members of the Asian American community about their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Topics include balancing work and employment during the pandemic, the rise in anti-Asian hate, the experiences of frontline workers, and how the social disruptions of the pandemic were connected to race and racialization. This community history project is overseen by Dr. William Gow.

SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.

The University of California, Irvine Libraries established the Southeast Asian Archive in 1987 in response to the community’s interest in having this history documented, preserved, and made accessible. The Archive's collection is broad and interdisciplinary in documenting the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic life of members of the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese diaspora. Collection strengths include Southeast Asian American experiences of resettlement and community formations since the Vietnam War, Cambodian Genocide, and geopolitical turmoil in the former French-occupied "Indochina" in the latter half of the 20th century.

The University of Massachusettes, Lowell Southeast Asian Digital Archive seeks to collect, preserve, and share historical materials related to Southeast Asians in the Greater Lowell area, with particular focus on refugee resettlement and community building from the 1970s to the present.

This collection held by Rice University, consists of video interviews dating from 2011 and conducted by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation. These interviewees are Texas-based, and form part of the national 500 Oral Histories Project conducted by the Vietnamese Heritage Foundation.

Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project at the University of California, Irvine actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories for students, researchers, and the community. Launched in 2011, VAOHP is housed in the Department of Asian American Studies in the School of Humanities and collaborates with the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive.

This digital archive hosted by UC, Santa Cruz, preserves and uplifts the stories of the “manong” generation (Ilokano/Tagalog for "older brother"), the first wave of Filipino migrant farmworkers to arrive in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Focused on the pioneering families of Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley, the archive enshrines the manong, the women who married the manong, and their descendents’ memories of migration, labor, leisure, and community formation. The digital archive includes oral histories, family photographs, family heirlooms, letters and correspondences, and newspaper clippings.

Originally founded to promote Filipino American labor history, specifically the history of Filipino American involvement with the UFW movement and the Delano Grape Strikes, the mission of the Welga Archive, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies (WA-BCFS) is to provide access to documentary and ephemera material regarding the Filipino and Filipino American experience. To ensure access of collections, WA-BCFS will digitize and make available applicable documents and photographs for academic purposes.

The story of Japanese Americans in the 20th century — their migration to the United States, the Alien Land laws under which they lived, incarceration during World War II, and the Redress Movement — is a complex one. It is also a subject of tremendous historical importance, both in California and for the nation as a whole. It is archival materials that tell these local, and sometimes personal, stories best.

The CSU Japanese American Digitization Project, the 23-campus California State University system archives, and other, similar collections across the state now offer scholars, librarians, archivists, educators and the interested public far easier access to a wide variety of archival material about this crucial subject.