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The Birth of the Asian American Political Alliance Here I am at Berkeley, sitting in the campus dining commons, when a woman approaches me and asks, out of the clear blue sky, if I’m politically inclined. Emma Gee and her husband, Yuji Ichioka, were working with the Peace and Freedom Party on the forthcoming elections and wanted to gather together politically conscious Orientals for a meeting at their place.1 The first thing I thought was, Yuji Ichioka, that’s Japanese; Emma Gee, Chinese. It may sound surprising that the existence of an interethnic couple was unusual in the sixties , but it was. So I went to their apartment to see what’s happening. Yuji was presiding over the meeting and Emma’s a gracious host.2 There were a half dozen other Asian Americans at that meeting, mostly students from UC Berkeley. This small group went on to form the Asian American Political Alliance, one of the most important Asian American political groups to come out of the sixties. Let me enumerate AAPA’s contributions. First, the very term “Asian American ” was coined in AAPA. Second, they were explicitly political—antiwar, pro–Black Panther Party, and one of the earliest groups of the Asian American Movement. Third, its membership was student and community and that was unusual. Fourth, AAPA represented the Asians during the Third World strike and helped form the Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley. Now I have a bone to pick. In all the books on Asian American history and the AAM, I have found that AAPA has been neglected, overlooked, or distorted.3 Prior to the strike in winter ’, there probably weren’t more than two dozen of us in AAPA. We were racially mixed—about  percent Chinese American,  percent Japanese American, and  percent Filipino American. Most were students, including Harvey Dong, Vicci Wong, and Lillian Fabros. Lillian was a firebrand in the struggle for farmworkers’ rights and important in linking up   “Support All Oppressed Peoples” with Latinos because of their grape boycott with the University of California. Community people like Emma Gee and Bob Rita joined as well. Bob Rita was Filipino Chinese from Hawaii and had been among the first to organize Filipino farmworkers along with Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz. I met Bob during my first year at Berkeley when he was manning a table for the farmworkers and we struck up a conversation. I got Bob into the meetings. Then Bob brought in Nicky Arai, a movement photographer, and Andy Higashi, a working-class kid from San Pedro who worked as a printer. There were hardly any Koreans in AAPA because the Korean population in Berkeley and in the United States was very small. It wasn’t until the strike that Korean Americans appeared, including graduate students Elaine Kim and Jerry Suhr. Both became faculty members of Berkeley’s Asian American Studies program.4 Before AAPA, I had never interacted on a militant basis with all Asians. In fact, my view was that the Asian Americans were politically backward. At Merritt College, I had checked out an Oriental fraternity, but all they wanted to do was party. I just shook my head and walked away. So I was astounded at that AAPA meeting to see so many political Asians. Don’t forget, up to this time, there was no such thing as an AAM and only a few known Asian American radicals, and just about all of them had worked in the Black movement. Yuri Kochiyama was in New York, working with Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams, the Republic of New Africa, and the Asian Americans for Action, when it formed. Shoshana Arai was in Chicago working with SNCC. Grace Lee Boggs was in Detroit working in the Black movement. We were what Miriam Ching Louie called the “bumblebees.”5 Then there were a half dozen Japanese Americans in the Communist Party, but I sure as hell was not going to interact with that group.6 Was I looking for Asian American camaraderie? I didn’t have time to think about it. But I did feel comfortable with AAPA because we were all Asians and political like I couldn’t believe. The initial struggle in AAPA centered on the issue of identity. It was almost déjà vu to me since I had already been through it with African Americans and could see the same issues coming up: Where are we from? What are we doing here? Where...

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