Celebrating Heritage

A Brief History of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is an annually observed commemorative month in the United States. Celebrated during the month of May, it recognizes the contributions and influence of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islander Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the U.S.

A former congressional staffer in the 1970s, Jeanie Jew, first approached Representative Frank Horton with the idea of designating a month to recognize Asian Pacific Americans. In June 1977, Representatives Horton and Norman Y. Mineta introduced a U.S. House of Representatives resolution to proclaim the first ten days of May as Asian-Pacific Heritage Week. Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga introduced a similar bill in the Senate a month later.  President Jimmy Carter signed a joint resolution for the celebration on October 5, 1978.

In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed a bill passed by Congress to extend Asian-American Heritage Week to a month. May was officially designated as “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month” two years later. On May 1, 2009, President Barack Obama signed Proclamation 8369, recognizing the month of May as “Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.” Then on April 30, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Proclamation 10189, re-recognizing the month of May as “Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.” 

On January 20, 2025, the Trump administration's Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions eliminated federal recognition of the month. The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders was subsequently dissolved. Nonetheless, on May 16, 2025, the proclamation was issued anyway. Local and state governments continue to officially observe May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Federally, the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum continue to offer resources, toolkits, and other resources to help people observe the month.

There appears to be some confusion as to the current name, as some federal agencies continue to refer to “Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month” (Smithsonian, National Park Service), while others use “Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month” (National Archives). The Library of Congress hosts the heritage month site, and it uses neither, calling it “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.”

The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. Though they were excluded from its history, the majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.

Asians in America
The first Asians documented in the Americas arrived in 1587, when Filipinos landed in Morro Bay, California. The earliest documented Asian settlement in the U.S. was the Filipino fishing village of Saint Malo on Lake Borgne in Louisiana. Oral tradition suggests that Filipinos arrived there as early as 1763. The next group of Asians documented in what would become the United States were Indians in Jamestown, documented as early as 1635. In 1778, the first Chinese arrived in Hawaii, then still a sovereign nation. (Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. in 1900 and became a state in 1959.) That same year, the first Native Hawaiian arrived in the continental U.S., in Oregon. Japanese arrived in Hawaii in 1806 and in the U.S. in 1843. In 1884, the first Koreans arrived in the U.S. In 1904, what is now American Samoa was ceded to the U.S., and beginning in the 1920s, Samoans began to migrate to Hawaii and the continental U.S. with the first Samoans documented in Hawaii in 1920. The first Vietnamese was documented in the United States In 1912.

Resources

“A Journey of Hope” 2023 Charlotte Museum of History Exhibit and Timeline >

Asian/Pacific Heritage Month web site (U.S. government site) >