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First recorded settlement of Filipinos in America. To escape imprisonment aboard Spanish galleons they jump ship in New Orleans and flee into the bayous of Louisiana.
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First recorded arrival of Asian Indians in the United States.
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U.S. and China sign first treaty.
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Three Chinese students arrive in New York City for schooling. One of them,Yung Wing, graduates from Yale in 1854 and becomes the first Chinese to graduate from a U.S. college.
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First group of 195 Chinese contract laborers land in Hawaii.
- Over 20,000 Chinese enter California.
- Chinese first appear in court in California.
- Missionary Willian Speer opens Presbyterian mission for Chinese in San Francisco. -
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- Chinese excluded from San Francisco public schools
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Japan sends its first diplomatic mission to U.S.
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- U.S. and China sign treaty giving the U.S. the right to limit but "not absolutely prohibit" Chinese immigration.
- Section 69 of California's Civil Code prohibits issuing of licenses for marriages between whites and "Mongolians, Negroes, mulattoes and persons of mixed blood."
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Chinese exclusion extended for another ten years.
- Immigration officials and the police raid Boston's Chinatown and, without search warrants, arrest almost 250 Chinese who allegedly had no registration certificates on their persons. -
- Chinese in the U.S. and Hawaii support boycott of American products in China.
- Koreans establish Korean Episcopal Church in Hawaii and Korean Methodist Church in California.
- San Francisco School Board attempts to segregate Japanese schoolchildren.
- Korean emigration ends.
- Koreans in San Francisco form Mutual Assistance Society.
- Asiatic Exclusion League formed in San Francisco.
- Section 60 of California's Civil Code amended to forbid marriage between whites and "Mongolians."
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Anti-Asian riot in Vancouver.
- Japanese nurserymen form California Flower Growers' Association.
- Koreans establish Korean Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles.
- Major earthquake in San Francisco destroys all municipal records, including immigration records, so Chinese immigrants are able to claim they are U.S. citizens and have the right to bring wives and children to America.
- Japanese scientists studying the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake are stoned. -
- California passes alien land law prohibiting "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from buying land or leasing it for longer than three years.
- Sikhs in Washington and Oregon establish Hindustani Association.
- Asian Indians in California found the revolutionary Ghadar Party and start publishing a newspaper.
- Pablo Manlapit forms Filipino Unemployed Association in Hawaii.
- Japanese form Northwest Japanese Association of America in Seattle.
- Korean farmworkers are driven out of Hemet, Californ
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- Japanese form Japanese Association of America.
- Canada curbs Asian Indian immigration by denying entry to those who have not come by "continuous journey" from their homelands (there is no direct shipping between Indian and Canadian ports).
- Asian Indians are driven out of Live Oak, California.
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- U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind declares Asian Indians ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
- Idaho, Montana, and Oregon pass alien land laws.
- Terrace v. Thompson upholds constitutionality of Washington's alien land law.
- Porterfield v. Webb upholds constitutionality of California's alien land law.
- Webb v. O'Brien rules that sharecropping is illegal because it is a ruse that allows Japanese to possess and use land.
- Frick v. Webb forbids aliens "ineligible to citizenship" from owning stock
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December 7 - Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. United States enters World War II.
- After declaring war on Japan, 2,000 Japanese community leaders along Pacific Coast states and Hawaii are rounded up and interned in Department of Justice camps. -
- August 6 - atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, ushering in nuclear age.
- August 14 - Japan surrenders, ending World War II.
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- U.S. breaks off diplomatic ties with newly formed People's Republic of China.
- 5,000 highly educated Chinese in the U.S. granted refugee status after China institutes a Communist government.
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- Korean War
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- California repeals its alien land laws.
- Dalip Singh Saund from the Imperial Valley, California, is elected to Congress
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Students strike at San Francisco State University to demand establishment of ethnic studies programs.
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- First formal signing of the Proclamation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Week by the White House.
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- President George Bush signs into law an entitlement program to pay each surviving Japanese American internee $20,000.
- U.S. reaches agreement with Vietnam to allow political prisoners to emigrate to the U.S.