"The U.S. Government Must Stop the Genocide of Asian People": Gender and the Rise of Peace Activism in Asian America in the 1970s

In January 1970, a group called Asian Americans for Peace organized an anti-Vietnam march in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California. Six months later, Asian-American Ad-Hoc Committee on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was planning a commemoration for the A-bomb anniversaries of August 6 and 9. Both events were first-of-a-kind for Asian Americans. They were witnessing an era of transformation, with the condemnation of the Vietnam War quickly growing into anti-nuclear activism. By breaking silence around the Asian "genocides," Asian Americans were resisting stereotypes of a quiet model minority and asserting new modes of citizenship.

          Using ethnic newspapers and manuscripts of key organizations and individuals, I explore significant roles that anti-war and -nuclear activism played in Asian American citizenship in the 1970s. I do so by examining how Asian American women linked their critique of gender inequality in ethnic communities (health disparity and sexual degradation in particular), their understanding of wars in Asia as their wars, and their assertion of citizenship arising out of a new-found Asian American kinship to Asia. This inquiry remedies two scholarly shortcomings. First, the invisibility of peace activism in the studies of Asian America and, in turn, the absence of Asian Americans in the scholarship about peace movements. Moreover, my work adds to the gender analysis in Asian American history by highlighting women's roles in anti-war and -nuclear activism. Women's participation in these movements, which refuted traditional images of women peace activists as "maternal" and "feminine," was formative for a more participatory, critical citizenship in Asian America.