Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Activities

What is Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month?

Like most commemorative months, Asian Pacific Heritage Month originated in a congressional bill.  In June 1977, Reps. Frank Horton of New York and Norman Y. Mineta of California introduced a House resolution that called upon the president to proclaim the first ten days of May as Asian Pacific Heritage Week.  The following month, senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga introduced a similar bill in the Senate, and both bills were passed. 

On October 5, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a Joint Resolution designating the annual celebration.  More specifically, the U.S. Congress passed a joint Congressional Resolution to commemorate Asian American Heritage Week during the first week of May.  This date was chosen because two important anniversaries occurred during this time: the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants in America on May 7, 1843 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad (by many Chinese laborers) on May 10, 1869.

Twelve years later, President George H.W. Bush signed an extension making the week-long celebration into a month-long celebration.  In 1992, the official designation of May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month was signed into law.  The term “Asian” refers to people having origins in any of the original peoples of Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent (for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam).  Asian groups are not limited to nationalities, but include ethnic terms, as well.

Information about Asia can be accessed through the Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html), www.embassy.org/embassies, and http://www.cetel.org/index.html.  Geographically, Asia is divided into four regions as demonstrated below:

• East Asia: China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Mongolia
• Pacific Region: Fiji, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, and Polynesia
• South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan
• Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philipines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam

Sources: Smithsonian Institute; Answer.com; U.S. Census Bureau

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Activities