Home Means Nevada? The First Asians in the Silver State

Exit Spring Mountain

"Go home." "Go back to your country." "You don't belong here." These are phrases that many Nevadans of Asian descent have heard—it's rooted in a view of Asians as perpetual foreigners in this country, no matter how long they've lived here. As UNLV Professor Emeritus Sue Fawn Chung tells us, this modern-day sentiment is hardly new. It has roots in the treatment of some of the earliest Asian migrants to the U.S.: Chinese laborers who came to work in mining and railroads, in kitchens and laundry shops. That treatment, at times, boiled over into violence.

It also culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only federal law to this day to restrict immigration on the basis of race. As UNLV Law Professor Michael Kagan, author of The Battle to Stay in America, explains, the Chinese Exclusion Act and subsequent Supreme Court cases have had lasting impacts on immigration law to this day.

Chinese Exclusion came to an end when it proved politically expedient to ally with China against a different threat in World War II: Japan. Former Clark County Principal and longtime community leader Wayne Tanaka tells the story of the so-called internment camps where 120,000 Japanese Americans (including his father) were detained—and why local Las Vegans stepped up to protect their Japanese American neighbors.

Wayne also tells us why it's important to remember this history—and how it can teach us to do better.

Exit Spring Mountain is a podcast from Nevada Public Radio. Our team includes executive producer Sonja Cho Swanson, host Lorraine Blanco Moss, research assistant Nessa Concepcion, academic research consultant Mark Padoongpatt, and news director Joe Schoenmann. Sound editing, mixing and mastering is by Regina Revazova of Open Conversation.