International Nikkei Legacy Project
APAS is an affiliate member of this international project spearheaded by the Japanese American National Museum.
Our role within this project is to archive the Nikkei holdings in the state of Arizona as a contribution to the forthcoming DISCOVER NIKKEI website which will feature resources, and information about Nikkei communities worldwide.
APAS Japanese American Project partnership with the
Japanese American National Museum
This forthcoming project involves state and local historic research and education on the experiences of Japanese Americans in Arizona. Japanese American National Museum will work in collaboration with APAS faculty and the Arizona community including the Japanese American Citizen’s League–Arizona Chapter, and the Japanese Americans in Arizona Oral History Project to bring national awareness to Arizona and the Southwest as regions rich in Japanese American history. The project will involve a national conference that will be held in Arizona in 2006.
Islands in the Desert:
An Oral History of the Pacific Islander Community in Phoenix
Principal Investigator: John P. Rosa, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe
Statement of Problem and Objectives
Arizona has one of the largest Pacific Islander populations in the continental U.S. and yet there are no academic or even popular writings that describe the scope and nature of its Pacific Islander community. Although this community is often grouped together with the larger Asian American population locally and nationally, there are relatively few studies that focus specifically on the experiences of Pacific Islanders—the indigenous peoples of Hawai`i, Guam, Samoa, Tonga, and other Pacific Islands. Despite the lack of a written record of Pacific Islander experiences here, this community has often told their history among themselves in family settings, meetings of civic and religious organizations, and public performances.
Islands in the Desert: An Oral History of the Pacific Islander Community in Phoenix is an attempt to document a sampling of Pacific Islander experiences in the Phoenix metropolitan area for future generations. The oral history interviews generated by this project that will serve as the groundwork phase for a Pacific Islander Community Oral History Project whose tapes and transcripts will be housed in a future Asian American and Pacific Islander archive and collection.
Pacific Islander Population: Local Figures and National Context
According to Census 2000, the state of Arizona has the tenth largest Pacific Islander population by state with a “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone or in combination population” of 13,415. Of the ten largest census designated places in total population in the U.S., Phoenix has the third largest proportion of Pacific Islanders (0.3 percent).
The state of Arizona also has some of the largest specific Pacific Islander group populations:
• Tongans: Arizona ranks 6th with 954
• Native Hawaiians: Arizona ranks 8th with 6,733
• Guamanians: Arizona ranks 8th with 2,101
• Samoans: Arizona ranks 10th with 1,874
The majority (9,092) of Pacific Islanders in Arizona live in the Phoenix metropolitan area:
•Phoenix (3,470)
•Mesa (1,618)
•Tempe (821)
•Glendale (668)
•Chandler (545)
•Scottsdale (403)
•Gilbert (312)
Other Arizona areas with sizable Pacific Islander populations include the cities of Tucson (2,097) and Yuma (406), and the Arizona parts of the metropolitan statistical areas of Las Vegas, Nevada-Arizona (368) and Flagstaff-Utah (205).
Quantitative data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates the size and location of Pacific Islander populations but does not provide detailed information about individuals’ lives, families, migration histories, and social and cultural activities. The Islands in the Desert project supplements quantitative data with qualitative information in the form of life interview narratives and testimonies concerning community affiliations and events. Project Significance and Historiography While the shape and nature of the Asian American population nationwide is already well known, there is little research on the condition of Pacific Islanders living in the continental United States.
To date, there are only two academic monographs on specific Pacific Islander communities in the continental United States: Craig R. Janes’ Migration, Social Change and Health: A Samoan Community in Urban California and Cathy A. Small’s Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs.
Oral history interviews have often played a crucial role in the writing of ethnic histories in the United States. Gary Okihiro, Director of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity noted in a landmark Oral History Review article: “Oral history is not only a tool or method for recovering history; it also is a theory of history which maintains that the common folk and the dispossessed have a history and that this history must be written.”
Pacific Islanders have resided in Arizona for at least the past three decades; Islands in the Desert assists the Pacific Islander community in providing a forum for making their stories known beyond their own community to a general public. Oral history can also help forge links the academy and the community.
As an ethnic history, this oral history project has the potential for generating a localized ethnic studies curriculum for ASU’s Asian Pacific American Studies Program. APAS students benefit by learning about local Pacific Islanders whose stories are not covered at all in texts like Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from A Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans and Sucheng Chan’s Asian Americans: An Interpretive History two popular course books in Asian American Studies classes across the country.
Sitton, Mehaffy, and Davis note that oral history projects “actually do something...They produce tangible products of personal and social value, and this, perhaps more than anything else, explains their unique potential to stimulate student enthusiasm and excitement.” Local oral histories have the potential to contribute “something of real value to families, community, school, and the larger world of historical scholarship.”
