Asian Americans

Asian Americans in Hollywood:
What is always the same:
- all Asians can do karate
- they are either dishonorable desperadoes
- or karate superstars

Some Asians in Hollywood:
- Lucy Liu
- Bruce Lee
- Jackie Chan
- Zhang Ziyi
- Maggie Cheung
- Leslie Cheung

Important films with Asians:
- Taegukgi
- Memories of a Geisha

Today we talk with Tushio Onizuka, he's 75 and when he was a child, he was in an internment camp.

Q.: Thanks that you disposed to talk with us about your experiences. In which camp have you been?
A.: The name of the camp was Topaz. I will never forget the time in the camp, it was a humiliation for my family and all Japanes Americans. We were blamed for Pearl Harbour, but we were only hard-working people.
Q.: What did they say to you? How justiefied they the camps?
A.: They tell us it's for our security and that the camps are like holiday camps. I was very young, and first I was very happy to be allowed to go there.
Q.: Can you remember the reaction of your parents?
A.: For them it was very hard, because my father was the owner of a little shop. He was a very proud man and it was really hard for him.
Q.: Can you tell us something about the daily life in the camps?
A.: I can tell you it was absolutly no holiday camp. I have never been in prison, but I imagin it's nearly the same as in the camp. It was full of people and in the rooms were terrible, there was no furniture but cots and pot-bellieds. It was very boring, but the worst thing was, that I was seperating for my family.
Q.:How did the camps change you?
A.: It conformed my opinion that the whites will see us always as foreigners, who were inferior to them.

The sterotype of an Asian American:
- they are shorter
- they have thicker black hair
- they have a ,,yellow" skin colour
- they eat Sushi and rice and insects
- they are friendly
- they take everywhere photos
- they are interessted in technology
- they are hard-working people
- and they are clever

Interview with an Asian American 1982 after Vincent Chin were killed and the judgment were given.


Reporter: Today the lawsuit against Ron Ebens and Michael Nitz ended. They were adjudged to 3 years probation and 3700$. How do you feel about this?

Asian American: It's a shame. I can't understand. There ist no equality in this state. I don't want to know what would be happen if an Asian American kills a white person. It is indignity for all Americans with an ohter origin.

Reporter: I understand, you feel to be treated in an unfair way, right?

Asian American: Yes, of course We were blamded for America's sagging in auto industry. It's ridicoulus.

Reporter: Are you afriad of violence?

Asian American: Yes, it's very hard, I don't want my children to go out in the evenings. We came to the USA to find peace and to escape poverty, only to have a better future, but now we have to live in fear...

Do you know that it costs 3700$ in the USA in 1982 to kill a Chinese American?

Korean American history

The first immigrants from Korea came to Hawaii at the beginning of the 20th century. Later they entered the United States mainland especially California, Utha, Colorado, Wyoming, Arziona and Alaska. Most of them went to L.A. or New York. In America they hoped to find work, peace and democracy. They were farm workers or wage laborers.
1908 the immigration stopped, because Koreans were Japanese nationals and the Japanese were excluded.
When the Korean War ended in 1953 a small number of students and professionals entered the USA. From then till today ther were 150,000 adoptees.
With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Koreans became one of the fastest growing Asian groups in the United States, surpassed only by Filipinos.

CHINESE LANGUAGE
some facts:
there are...

...nearly 1,2 billion speakers
...850 million native speaker
...10000 diffrent symbols in the lettering
... but 5000-6000 symbols are enough to read for example the newspaper

Some facts about Chinese Americans:
-There are 3.4 million Chinese Americans, so they are the biggest Asian group in the United States and their population is growing at a rapid rate. Reasons for that are for exampel the many adoptions especially of Chinese American girls.
And many of them arrived in the United States at "paper sons" or "paper daughters". If they all had really been children of the Chinese in America ecery Chinese woman living in San Fransisco would have had 800 children...
The reason why they came are the economic and poltical instability in China, in the United States they hoped to find gold and they needed to make money.
Their main destinations are Califonira, Seattle and the Midwest. Towns with a big Chinese American population are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ney York, Chicago, Portland and Philadelphia. There are lots of Chinatowns