Locating East Asian Family Roots

(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/locating-east-asian-family-roots/)

I have been asked on various occasions how to research Asian American ancestors, especially who immigrated where and when, and how to locate family roots prior to immigration. Since different Asian American groups differ in history, timing and circumstances surrounding waves of immigration, family structure, and so forth, most online tools are group-specific rather than lumping all Asian Americans together. Here I offer tools and resources that may be useful for Americans of east Asian descent, focusing on Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino.

First, I emphasize starting with the standard resources described in this blog (as well as in other family history resources), such as census records, probate records, death records, and so forth. These records may give clues as to the district, town, or village from which ancestors immigrated, which you might then be able to visit.

Many Chinese American ancestors passed through Angel Island (sometimes dubbed the West Coast equivalent to Ellis Island, although it served more as a detention center than a port of entry); during World War II, some Japanese Americans were also detained there. Unlike Ellis Island, however, Angel Island does not maintain immigration records. Those are kept at the National Archives Records and Administration. (You might, however, find helpful resources about Angel Island itself on Cyndy’s List). Probably the easiest way of finding National Archives Records for Asian Americans is to go to the Chinese-Americans Guide. There, while you won’t find an online searchable database, you will find a detailed description of the kinds of records that are available, and where they are located. A wide variety of records are archived, such as immigration records, and Chinese case files, diaries and letters. To have some idea of where to begin, you would need to know approximately where and when your ancestors entered the U.S., working with other tools described in this blog such as U.S. Census records, family stories and letters, and so forth.

Branching beyond the National Archives, you will find three somewhat different kinds of related sources for digital tools and resources for Asian American family history: those produced by family history organizations (especially Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org); those produced by members of the national origin group (such as Hmong Genealogy and Korean Genealogy) or individual members of the group; and those organized by the GenWeb Project. The family history organizations have probably the deepest array of resources, although they may charge a fee to join. Websites organized by national origin groups may have more extensive information about the group itself, although that depends on who organized the site. Some of the websites created by members of the national origin group I find very helpful when authors discuss their own search and what they learned from that process. The GenWeb Project is a worldwide volunteer organization, organized by nations, states, counties, or other configurations. Some locations have rich websites of resources, others have only just started or are in the process of starting. I personally believe it is useful to use all of these kinds of sources, especially since the information you are looking for may be hard to find.

Chinese ancestry. You can start tracing your family using standard U.S. census data by searching your Chinese surname, although as Alice Kane points out, you need to be aware that at the point of immigration, Chinese names were often recorded inaccurately when American recorders did not know how to transliterate Chinese into English. Traditionally, Chinese clans have recorded their genealogy in Jia Pu, records some of which go back hundreds of years, and which for the most part give greater prominence to males (who carry on the family name) than to females. While Jia Pu aren’t all digitized, Family Search does have a collection that is worth looking at, if you read Chinese. Records are also kept by province, which might prove useful if you know generally where your ancestors immigrated from. Wikipedia has a useful list of Chinese language surnames, some of which have quite a bit of information. On YouTube is a discussion of Finding your Ancestral Village in China. Although its scope is limited, it shows the relationship between family name, county, and village, and how you might conduct a search online.

Japanese ancestry. Carolyn Brady’s website is somewhat like this blog in that she researched her own Japanese family ancestry, and shares both what she learned about Japanese American genealogy in the process, as well as her Takagi and Yamasaki family history. This may be a very good place for Japanese Americans to start, since Brady addresses questions you will likely have as you start your own search. GenWeb Japan has several potentially useful links, such as link to a searchable database of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. between 1887 and 1924. One of the links that at the time of this writing doesn’t work would take you to the National Archives of Japan, which has a searchable digital archive, complete with information (in English) about how to use it.

Filipino ancestry. Dutch genealogist Henk van Kampen created a webpage of Genealogy in the Philippines Resources that is very helpful. In addition to directing family historians toward tools in Family Search, he suggests that you start with the Catalog of Filipino Names, which discusses the impact of Spanish rule on Filipino names and naming systems, then gives an extensive list of “truly Filipino” names. In addition to links to other tools, van Kampen includes a blog about his wife’s Filipino ancestry, which I found interesting. If you are on Facebook, I recommend checking out the Filipino Genealogy Project, where many people are posting their discoveries, questions, insights, and so forth. The Geni Project, which is another large family tree organization, has an interesting page on Families of the Philippines, although since it focuses on notable personalities, you may not find it helpful.

To theorize about why your family immigrated, John Lee's discussion of the Hidden "P" Factors and Immigration is very useful, taking you beyond the who, when, and where, to explore the circumstances leading people to leave their homeland, and the difficulties as well as resources they probably encountered after immigrating.

The Hidden ‘P’ Factors and Immigration

(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/hidden-four-ps/)

By John J. Lee, Guest Writer

In the fall of 2012 and again in spring 2013, Dr. Kevin Kumashiro and I co-taught an undergraduate course called “Introduction to Asian American Studies.” We examined the diversity and experiences of Asian Americans, like the transnational labor brokering of Filipinos and the binary of race relations between African Americans and Koreans during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Of particular significance in our course was the opportunity for students to critically examine their family history. Tracing one’s family genealogy is a complex process that requires situating a family’s narratives within a historical context. Since our family histories and autobiographies are embedded in social, political, and economic relationships, the way we view our history, progress, and standing varies from individual to individual. However, the historical reality of our past is often forgotten or neglected. To have a historical consciousness, we need to complicate what we know about our past and examine policies and cultural practices that have led to a racialized system of power and privilege, racialized policies, and racialized oppression and progression.

We asked the students to examine their family history with four concepts that we believed would allow them to challenge the common and commonsensical stories of “how we got here.” The four Ps – push, pull, punish, and privilege – reflected the social, economic, and physical reasons why people emigrated and what they experienced upon arrival.

Push factors are reasons that encourage or ‘push’ a person to leave a particular place. These push factors drive people to emigrate from their country of origin due to economic, political, or social factors. For example, a famine crisis in Korea at the turn of the 20th century or the war-torn devastation from the armed conflict of the Vietnamese War served to push some groups out of their country of origin.

Pull factors are reasons that encourage or ‘pull’ a person to relocate to a particular place.  These factors are typically characterized by desirable and favorable conditions like higher employment rate, political stability, and better climates. Examples of pull factors were the high demands for highly skilled workers in the fields of science, medicine, and engineering, and Hawaii’s high demand for cheap labor for the sugar and pineapple plantations.

Punishing factors are the negative experiences that punish or marginalize a person upon arrival. An example of a punishing factor was the victimization and internment of the Japanese Americans during the Second World War, as was the explosion of anti-sentiment against Filipinos in the 1930s that propelled lawmakers to amend anti-miscegenation laws to include Filipinos.

In contrast, privileging factors are the positive incentives that helped or privileged a person upon arrival. For example, the ethnic enclave of Chinatown and its internal structures that supplied social services and economic aid for newly arrived Chinese immigrants was a privileging factor.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many students found that the ideals of “rags to riches” and the pursuit of the “American Dream” was a common story among their ancestors. For many of the students’ families, the “American Dream” was what triggered their immigration. But there was a cost of emigration, and the students were able to relive and witness, in a sense, what this cost was through this assignment. For example, one student wrote about the high unemployment rates and poverty that pushed her family out of Mexico. She talked about her hometown and its slowly developing commercialization as a push factor for her family. The largely agrarian-based economy of her hometown meant that many of its citizens grew and sold crops, but the competitive nature of harvesting and selling crops proved to be too demanding and costly for her father and grandparents. As a result, her family looked to America, and the pulling factor for them was America’s growing industrialization. Her family believed that in America, they would be able to set their own working hours, earn a dependable paycheck, and purchase a house. Her narratives, and many others, encompassed the desire for a better life and an escape from economic hardships. Another student wrote about the stagnant economy of the Philippines that pushed her father to immigrate to America. Her father spoke of the unbearable rising cost of living in the Philippines that fueled his decision to seek “greener pastures.” 

The “critical family history” assignment was an opportunity for the students to challenge what they know about their family and to examine these triumphs and failures within the context of U.S. immigration policies. What we discovered from their uncovering is despite the unique family history of each student’s migration experiences, there was a commonality of a racialized system of power and privilege. That is, the students’ narratives all touched on racism, racialized oppression and progression, and political inclusions and exclusions.

By employing the hidden four Ps to answer “when, where, why, and how” their families entered U.S. society, the students discovered the sociohistorical contexts of their families’ immigration journey. This conceptual framework – a way of thinking and talking – for understanding family history can be used to examine the historical past of any individual. People migrate for many different reasons, and this framework helps us identity and rethink the political, social, and economic reasons for migrating. This way of critically examining our family history can also be useful for rethinking constructs like race. The underlying feature of applying the four Ps is the necessity to take a critical lens to challenge the common and commonsensical stories of our past. Relatedly, if we apply this conceptual framework to examine the discourse on race, we will understand the evolving definition of race, how race is used to define an individual, and how race was historically used to justify unequal distribution of wealth, power, and resources. I believe that developing a critical lens to challenge and rethink what we know of our past and linking them to broader sociohistorical contexts will yield a greater understanding of “how we got here.”

John J. Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction – with a concentration in Literacy, Language, and Culture – at the University of Illinois at Chicago.