Before Internment, Between Nations, Beyond Integration: Asian Migration Studies in the Shadow of Yuji Ichioka, Him Mark Lai, and Edgar Wickberg

Abstract

In the last two years, a pair of giants of Chinese American and Overseas Chinese migration history have passed away—Him Mark Lai and Edgar Wickberg. As each passing led to an examination of his individual impact upon scholarship, it is perhaps fitting that all of us who have benefited from the foundational work that an earlier generation of scholars performed pause a moment to take stock. A decade ago, the historian Valerie Matsumoto guest edited a special issue of Amerasia entitled and Historians in the Making, which featured reflections by Him Mark Lai and Yuji Ichioka (who passed away in 2002) about their pioneering work as scholars.1 Another essay reflected upon the work of Alexander Saxton, who helped found the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, and I wrote an essay for the volume that used the rather inelegant conceit that, in the field of Asian American history, we were all dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. In the last decade, it does seem even more striking that a genera...