READING COMPREHENSION
Divide your class into groups, having students sit behind one another, asking the front group of students the questions and having them
return to the back and rotating to the next students. This is a fun way to review the most important sections of the reading.
• Early Hawaiians to the Pacific Northwest helped do what?
Navigated merchant ships and charted and developed the area that was later known as the states of Washington and Oregon.
• What city is named after a native Hawaiian?
The city of Kalama, named after John Kalama.
• What first brought Chinese immigrants to the Northwest?
News of gold in the Washington territory brought many to the Northwest.
• When was the first time the U.S. government enacted legislation specifically excluding a group of people?
In 1882, the U.S. passed the first of several exclusion acts against Asians, this one preventing Chinese laborers from coming to America.
• What papers were destroyed in a 1906 San Francisco fire?
All immigration papers were destroyed.
• What year was the Exclusion Law repealed? What were the effects for many Chinese men?
In 1943, due to the limitations of Chinese women being brought over, generations of Chinese men had worked and died without the
opportunity to marry and raise families.
• What were “Japantowns?”
The Japanese were able to raise families and settle throughout the West Coast. However, housing discrimination against Asians,
including the Japanese, resulted in Japantowns where Japanese businesses and residences were clustered together.
• Where is a former “Japantown” located in Seattle?
In Seattle, much of the International District was a Japantown with many hotels, restaurants and small businesses.
• In 1790, a citizenship law stated that only ___________ could become citizens.
Caucasians
• The U.S. Congress later passed the Immigration Act of 1924 prohibiting the immigration of “aliens ineligible to citizenship.”
Whom did this apply to and until when?
Asians
.
This act barred the immigration of Japanese, Korean and South Asians until after World War II.
•
In the 1920s, large numbers of Filipino men came to work on farms and canneries throughout the Northwest,
replacing whom?
The dwindling supply of Japanese workers.
• The passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, a sweeping reform of the immigration laws, resulted in what?
An explosion in Asian immigration.
• After the Vietnam War ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975, hundreds of thousands of refugees came to the U.S. to
escape the Communist regimes and political upheaval in what three areas?
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
CLASS DISCUSSION/ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Did you already know this information about the immigrations of Asians and Pacific Islanders? Was this new information you were
reading about?
2. Why do you think students don’t learn more about this in American History textbooks?
3. Reading about political unrest, people being killed by their own governments and the poverty and starvation that occurs in many
other countries, how does it make you feel about living in America?
4. After reading about the early history of anti-Asian laws in the United States, how do you think attitudes toward Asian and
Pacific Islanders have changed or not changed in America? How is this similar or different than attitudes toward people who
are immigrants today?
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