Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings

Published by University of Hawaii Press 2017

Pacific America

Histories of Transoceanic Crossings

Edited by: Lon Kurashige
With contributions by: Eiichiro Azuma , Keith L. Camacho , Greg Dvorak , Augusto Espiritu , Peter E. Hamilton , Brian Masaru Hayashi , Madeline Y. Hsu , Lon Kurashige , Phuong Nguyen , Christen T. Sasaki , Elizabeth Sinn , John E. Wills , Susie Woo , Yujin Yaguchi and Kariann Akemi Yokota

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824855796

Overview
Contents

About this book

In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country’s fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present?

The essays in this volume offer answers to this question challenging current assumptions about transpacific relations. Many of these assumptions are expressed through fear: that the ascendance of China threatens a U.S.-led world system and undermines domestic economies; that immigrants subvert national unity; and that globalization, for all its transcending of international, cultural, and racial differences, generates its own forms of prejudice and social divisions that reproduce global and national inequalities. The contributors make clear that these fears associated with, and induced by, pacific integration are not new. Rather, they are the most recent manifestation of international, racial, and cultural conflicts that have driven transpacific relations in its premodern and especially modern iterations.

Pacific America differs from other books that are beginning to flesh out the transnational history of the Pacific Ocean in that it is more self-consciously a people’s history. While diplomatic and economic relations are addressed, the chapters are particularly concerned with histories from the “bottom up,” including attention to social relations and processes, individual and group agency, racial and cultural perception, and collective memory. These perspectives are embodied in the four sections focusing on China and the early modern world, circuits of migration and trade, racism and imperialism, and the significance of Pacific islands. The last section on Pacific Islanders avoids a common failing in popular perception that focuses on both sides of the Pacific Ocean while overlooking the many islands in between. The chapters in this section take on one of the key challenges for transpacific history in connecting the migration and imperial histories of the United States, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, and other nations, with the history of Oceania.

Author / Editor information

Kurashige Lon :

Lon Kurashige is associate professor of history at the University of Southern California.Camacho Keith L. :

Keith L. Camacho is professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.Dvorak Greg :

Greg Dvorak is professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, specializing in Pacific/Asian cultural studies and history.Kurashige Lon :

Lon Kurashige is associate professor of history at the University of Southern California.Lon Kurashige is associate professor of history at the University of Southern California.

Reviews

Yuki Obayashi:
Gathering contributing scholars of Asian studies and Asian American studies and discussion on various locations and time periods, Pacific America exhibits Kurashige’s attempt at making transpacific studies a space of inclusion. Demonstrated by Hsu, Espiritu, and Azuma’s chapters, Pacific America intentionally includes new insights on Asian American history by shifting national and ethnic boundaries to more transpacific perspectives. This book amply presents how Asian American studies, where scholars are constantly aware of race and migration, can strengthen and enrich transpacific studies.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Integrating the Pacific Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. China and Ocean Worlds
1. A Very Long Early Modern? Asia and Its Oceans, 1000–1850 John E. Wills Jr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2. Transatlantic and Transpacific Connections in Early American History Kariann Akemi Yokota Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
Part II. Circuits and Diaspora
3. The Pacific Ocean as Highway to Gold Mountain: The Hong Kong Connection, 1850–1900 Elizabeth Sinn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
4. Pop Gingle’s Cold War Peter E. Hamilton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
5. Chinese and American Collaborations through Educational Exchange during the Era of Exclusion, 1872–1955 Madeline Y. Hsu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
6. Japanese Reinvention of Self through Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans Yujin Yaguchi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
7. Fighting the Postwar in Little Saigon Phuong Nguyen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
Part III. Racism and Imperialism
8. Transpacific Accommodation and the Defense of Asian Immigrants Lon Kurashige Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
9. Kilsoo Haan, American Intelligence, and the Anticipated Japanese Invasion of California, 1931–1943 Brian Masaru Hayashi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	146
10. Transpacific Adoption: The Korean War, US Missionaries, and Cold War Liberalism Susie Woo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
11. Inter-Imperial Relations, the Pacific, and Asian American History Augusto Espiritu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
12. Japanese Immigrant Settler Colonialism and the Construction of a US National Security Regime against the Transborder “Yellow Peril” Eiichiro Azuma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
Part IV. Islands and the Pacific Rim
13. How the Portuguese Became White: The Racial Politics of Pre-Annexation Hawai‘i Christen T. Sasaki Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
14. Who Closed the Sea? Archipelagoes of Amnesia between the United States and Japan Greg Dvorak Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
15. Japanese Commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands Keith L. Camacho Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269

Language: English
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Illustrations
- Other: 5 b&w illustrations, 1 map

eBook

Published: July 31, 2017
ISBN: 9780824855796