No abstract

This essay argues for the importance of utilizing a framework of militarized rupture in analyzing the cultural narratives that shape the formations and meanings of many Asian American community-based archives. I focus upon four case studies: Aiko and John "Jack" Herzig's collection of U.S. government documents regarding the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans; Fred and Dorothy Cordova's development of the Filipino American National Historical Society and the National Pinoy Archives; the Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California, Irvine; and my own research gathering twentieth-century Indonesian American family materials in an interimperial context.

What happens when we examine U.S. West history from the vantage point of Asian Americans moving back and forth across the Pacific and consider a perspective shaped by both land and water? This article underscores the importance of the Pacific Ocean as a space for historical inquiry, by addressing the formation and migration of Asian American communities in and around the Pacific, particularly in the context of the considerable military, economic, and political dominance of the United States in the Pacific region.

No abstract

No abstract