David Inoue
The month of May has long come to be a time to celebrate our Asian and, more recently, our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander history and culture as Americans. It has admittedly been an interesting tightrope between celebrating that which we share from our ancestral heritage and that which makes us American.
Most of us have a shared history of immigrating to this country, but we also recognize that for those who are indigenous or in territorial states, this Americanism has been forced upon them, and the interplay between one’s ancestral culture and heritage and that which is American can be an antagonistic relationship.
And yet, we find ourselves together to celebrate our “shared” heritage as Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. We have forged a community together, one perhaps even more diverse internally than the rest of the United States, but it is a community we have claimed as ours. But even as we celebrate this shared heritage, we find it under attack.
From Day 1 of the new Trump administration, the president has issued sweeping executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the federal government.
Over the past three months, we have seen the website for the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism to WWII and other sites of importance to the Japanese American community disappear for a few hours to be quickly restored in full by the following week, if not within hours. This was noted as a technical error on the part of the National Park Service’s website administrator.
However, in a more overt implementation of the White House’s executive order to eliminate DEI content from the federal government, the U.S. Army removed its page about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This was part of a full removal of sites connected to the Army’s history of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander service and Army leadership.
While the outcry from our community was enough to get the content of the page about the 442nd restored to the Army website, it remains without a home, existing as a random blog post, as the parent page on AANHPIs remains unrestored. Many other pages were removed from military sites such as the Army’s including sections from Arlington National Cemetery that highlighted notable figures buried at the site.
Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot stated in response that “DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission.”
Yet, the reality and what makes the motives of these changes so apparent and obvious is that none of the sites targeted focused on white men. This is not about erasing so-called preferences or highlighting any one group over another, it is entirely about erasing the stories of people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals and women.
Any reasonable person would agree that the Army can celebrate and acknowledge the Texas Lost Battalion while also celebrating and recognizing the 442nd, who rescued those soldiers behind German enemy lines. Without Chinese and Irish immigrants working together from opposite sides of the country, we would not have had the transcontinental railroad. To promote a story of the railroads having been built by the Irish would be missing half the story. And yet, that is the story this administration would like for you to hear. It is not just a matter of no longer highlighting stories of AANHPIs, this is an effort to erase the stories from existence.
Understanding the diversity of our U.S. history does not preclude learning the history of any other group. In fact, we cannot know and understand our history without understanding the history of all groups and participants in our nation. The whole point of our country is the diversity, citizen and noncitizen, straight and nonbinary, male and female, Black and white, Asian and Pacific Islander, indigenous and immigrant. The list could go on forever.
So, as we “celebrate” Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, let us celebrate all of America. And likewise, we cannot limit our recognition of AANHPI history to just this one month. More than ever, we need to be highlighting the importance of all our stories to this nation’s amazing culture, heritage and history. It is all of our responsibility to ensure that we never forget these stories.
David Inoue is executive director of the JACL. He is based in the organization’s Washington, D.C., office. Click here to read past columns.
