Asian Texans: Our Histories and Our Lives

This landmark work in Asian American history and Texas history features chapters on the fascinating histories of every Asian ethnic group in Texas. The book features 75 rare photos and images. In 1845, Francisco Flores witnessed the annexation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America. Flores was a Filipino Texan fisherman who first arrived in Texas as a cabin boy on a Spanish galleon, likely a slave ship. Francisco Flores was the first Asian Texan. Every Asian ethnic group, every region of Texas, and every decade of Texas s exciting history is featured in this volume. After the Civil War, Southerners sought to replace black laborers with Chinese workers. Some plantation owners even spoke of the Chinese being used as labor as of old. Approximately 250 Chinese Americans migrated to Texas to build the Houston & Texas Central Railroad through cotton country. Far from servile, though, these early Chinese Texans had their own ideas about what they would do in Texas. In the late 1800s, stringent laws aimed at stopping Asian immigration turned El Paso into the Asian mecca of Texas and the Southwest. Asians of many nationalities traveled an underground railroad from Mexico into or through El Paso. Those Asians who settled in El Paso often lived the Wild West lifestyles typical of the city known as Six Shooter Capital. At the turn of the 20th century, Japanese Texans established huge rice plantations in East Texas even as the anti-Asian violence of the Mexican Revolution sent Asian Mexicans into the Lone Star State. Some five hundred Chinese Mexicans who aided the legendary General John J. Pershing in his hunt for Pancho Villa followed the U.S. army back to San Antonio and established a new community. World War II saw the building of Japanese internment camps in Texas, as well as the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team s rescue of Texas s lost battalion from Nazi siege. During the military period of Asian Texan history, most Asian immigration to Texas consisted of Japanese, Korean, and Filipina war brides ; Asian veterans and soldiers; and war refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After the 1965 immigration reform, Indian and Pakistani immigrants worked hard to integrate into a Christian Texan society; Vietnamese refugees fought bloody battles with the KKK on the Texas coast; Korean Texans struggled with the tumultuous aftermath of the LA Riots; Filipino, Korean, and Indian nurses and doctors established new communities; the fortunes of Asian Texans rose and fell according to the booms and busts of oil and high tech industries; and new Chinatowns, Koreatowns, and Little Saigons flourished in Texas cities. . This book is highly relevant to those interested in Asian American history, Texas history, American history, Latin American Studies, immigration, border studies, and ethnic studies. It utilizes historical, sociological, and demographic methods and perspectives. Asian Texans draws from interviews, archives, articles, and rare photographs, the top experts of Asian Texan history tell the stories of Asian Texan individuals and communities. Unusual topics featured in this book include the invention of the Border Patrol to combat the Asian Underground Railroad; the early Asian-black and Asian-Mexican families; and the violent battles between Asian Texans and the KKK and other racists.