Guest Editor's Introduction: "Weaving Together Strands of Pacific Islander, Asian and American Interactions"

There are many strands of historic interactions between Pacific Islanders, Asians, and Americans on Pacific Islands and on the American continent that can be woven together to enrich the tapestry of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies. Gathering together at the 2001 Toronto Conference of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), Professors Amy Ku'ulei Stillman, University of Michigan; Dana Takagi, University of California, Santa Cruz; John Rosa, Arizona State University; and I discussed the intellectual challenges and advantages of weaving together the independent and disparate experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans within the framework of Asian American Studies departments. At that time, we agreed with the editorial board of the Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) to collaborate on a special Pacific Islander issue.

The 2002 AAAS Conference in Salt Lake City provided an opportunity to present drafts of the journal articles for critical review and discussion by colleagues in a panel session. Professor Vicente Diaz, University of Michigan, presented a paper on Pacific Island issues in the plenary session of the conference, and we invited him to contribute an article for this journal project.

A parallel development arising out of the 2001 Toronto Conference was the formation of the Asian Pacific American History Collective, which sponsored a series of conferences in Los Angeles, Honolulu, Seattle, Vancouver, Ann Arbor, and Washington, D.C. from 2001 through 2004. The purpose of the Collective was to bring together scholars in the growing academic field of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies to engage in a focused dialogue on reconceptualizing the field. Including the historical and contemporary experiences of Pacific Islander Americans was an integral part of such a collective reconceptualization of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies. The articles presented in this journal were further refined as presentations for the APA History Collective conferences and benefited from feedback provided by the participating scholars.

Among the historical projects explored by us, as scholars for this journal and for the APA History Collective, was that of the "U.S. Empire." Within this theme, the China Trade is at the nexus of the relations between Asians and Pacific Islanders and the United States. The stages of its development constitute significant moments in the colonization of the Pacific Islands and Asia, as the U.S. extended its empire across the Pacific in pursuit of the China Trade. Related to this theme is that of Manifest Destiny and its assertion in the Spanish-American War, the 1898 Annexations, and the Philippine-American War through news articles, racist cartoons, and essays of that period. The role of agents of American culture in the expansion of the U.S. empire in Asia and the Pacific Islands can be examined through the work of American missionaries, teachers, diplomats, health care workers, the Red Cross, the Peace Corps, and USAID. U.S. immigration policy and anti-alien laws in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as they evolved in relation to U.S. foreign policy, represent another intersecting theme. In addition, Orientalist notions, images, art, and literature can be compared with productions that celebrate the idyllic qualities of the "noble savage." Schemes of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonialism also can be compared and contrasted with strategies of late twentieth-century neo-colonialism.

Another fascinating project we discussed is that of "social movements." Nationalist movements and transnational support for such movements form an intriguing but largely undocumented theme. The example of Dr. Sun Yatsen, who was educated at 'Iolani School in Hawai'i and later organized support for the Chinese Nationalist Revolution among supporters in Hawai'i and the U.S. whom he came to know when he lived in Hawai'i, is a great case study. The history of the anti-Marcos movement in the U.S. and Hawai'i, through organizations such as the Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP) and the Friends of the Filipino People, provides a comparative case study from the latter half of the twentieth century. The remarkable experiences of Koji Ariyoshi—with Mao Tse Tung, Chou En Lai, and...