Asian Americans - Generation Rising 2 (2020) | Full Documentary
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3,621 views Feb 9, 2026
During a time of war and social tumult, a young generation fights for equality in the fields, on campuses and in the culture, and claim a new identity: Asian Americans. The aftermath of the Vietnam War brings new immigrants and refugees who expand the definition of Asian America.
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CROWD: On strike, shut it down! MAN: There's a strike going on here! GORDON: It felt like the world was about to explode.
DAN: Retuning Vietnam veterans were telling us the truth about what was going on. SCOTT: How do these atrocities get to be committed?
BRENDA: It felt great to be a part of this incredible ground-swell that was just enveloping the country.
LAUREEN: We wanted to start a school of ethnic studies to tell the true histories of the people who contributed and
built this country. EDILLOR: Filipino's were here, and we made a difference. ALEX: They create the United Farm Workers and
they became, in a sense, the west coast civil rights movement. If a lot of people put their mind to it, they can win.
MAN: It was the first time the voices of Asian people in our generation were coming out.
NOBUKO: It was like a genie coming out of the bottle, you couldn't put us back in.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
MAN: One, two, three, testing, testing, one, two, three.
NARRATOR: In the 1960s, Asian Americans are looking at the world through a new lens.
Everything is in upheaval. And anything is possible.
As the children of immigrants, Asians are trying to understand their role in America's history.
They are claiming their voice. In the fields, on college campuses,
and in the public square. No one can imagine where these struggles will take them.
♪ ♪ NARRATOR: California's Central Valley. One of the richest agricultural regions of the
United States and home to some of its poorest workers.
It is here where Asian Americans spark a farm labor movement that will galvanize the world.
For Alex Fabros, this story begins with World War II when his family immigrates from the Philippines.
Like many new arrivals, they rely on farm work to make ends meet.
FABROS: The family came to California in 1948, so my father's in the military,
but on the weekends my dad would work out in the fields just to earn extra money so he could buy a house in Salinas.
Then in 1950, he buys a home in a part of Salinas where Asians are not allowed to own homes.
And they tell them, we don't want you in this neighborhood.
After we moved in, they would take stones and they'd break our windows.
My mother had brand new rose bushes. They would come in and they tie ropes around the rose bushes,
and they do wheelie's on the lawn. There was this kid that had this dog and he'd sic
that dog on me. I'm about six years old and I'm running as fast as I can. This dog is barking at my heels.
It's a German Shepherd. So my father went around the neighborhood.
He had a pistol and he banged the doors and said the fight's between you and me and not my family.
And nobody bothered us after my father did that.
Years later I enrolled in a local junior college, but I basically flunked out.
My father said, you're going to go work on your grandfather's farm until you decide exactly what it is that you want to do.
You've got to learn what life really is like on the outside. So I became a migrant farm worker in Delano, California.
NARRATOR: Alex joins the army of farm laborers that crisscross California harvesting crops.
Working long hours for low wages, they're not protected by labor laws and can be
fired at any time. FABROS: You get up at 4:00 in the morning.
You're hoeing, you're bent over, it's cold, it's wet out there.
But these guys are working hard for $1.25 cents an hour.
These are really old Filipino men. We called them Manongs.
Manongs is a term of respect that we give to people who are older than us.
In the evenings, these old men would sit outside and
they'd tell stories about what it was like to grow up in California in the 1930s.
They'd say, "Junior, go back to school. Become something, become someone," you know,
"Don't end up like us."
NARRATOR: Very few Filipino women were able to immigrate to the US, and Filipino men were barred from marrying white women.
As a result, an entire generation is forced to live out their lives as bachelors deprived of family.
But there are some exceptions. LORRAINE: I'm half Filipino and half Mexican.
My father met my mother working in the fields and he didn't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English.
So my father learned how to speak Spanish so that he could get to know her.
Had my father not met my mother, he would have been like the Manongs.
I was born in a labor camp. It's a mile and a half from Delano.
It was a two bedroom, barrack, bunk house. We all slept together.
There were seven of us and then my mom and dad. The bathroom was out back,
which we shared with two other families. So you get to know your neighbors well.
Working in the fields you work in the fields from when you're a child. There were no labor laws set that prevents parents bringing
their children to work. It gives them one less thing to worry about if your children are out there working with you.
FABROS: Lot of Filipino men wanted me to become the person they could not become.
They're telling me, we'll save money for you to go to college.
All these old men had that dream of having us young kids out of the field, not to go through what they did
for the last 20, 30 years. NARRATOR: By the mid 1960s,
working conditions have gone from bad to worse. The Manongs reach a tipping point,
and are willing to put their jobs and lives on the line to establish a union.
FABROS: We didn't have medical benefits. When one of our guys falls down and he gets hurt.
Someone's got to cover his benefits. We didn't have a health plan. When these guys get old, we want to have a pension plan.
EDILLOR: Larry Itliong was president of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee known as AWOC.
Summer of '65 he began to talk about organizing, improving the working conditions and
increasing the salaries. LARRY: We feel that we farmworkers should have an
organization of our own. FABROS: One of the things that most people forget is that it was the Filipinos in September,
1965 who started the grape strike, not the Mexicans.
(overlapping chatter)
EDILLOR: The strike happened mainly because of Larry Itliong's will and determination.
He was a trained labor leader. He was gruff. He was not a polished speaker.
LORRAINE: I was 13 years old the day that my family went out on strike.
I remember we were working, when my father says, "Come on, we're leaving."
I said, "We're leaving? It's 10:00 in the morning." So we left. LARRY: To go on strike, you suffer a lot of hardship.
Maybe you'll get hungry, maybe you're going to lose your car, maybe you're going to lose your house.
LORRAINE: And I remember leaving the field and driving through, seeing the strikers. So the Filipinos.
NARRATOR: But the Filipinos face a dilemma. As they strike for a union, the farmers bring in Mexican
workers to replace them. FABROS: It's one of the things I learned that the farmers like to do.
They liked to pit the Mexicans against the Filipinos. You're going to be fighting for the same pot of gold.
NARRATOR: Many Mexican laborers have already joined the National Farm Workers Association, led by the charismatic Cesar Chavez.
FABROS: I remember meeting at the Filipino community hall in Delano.
All the labor contractors were there. A lot of the farm workers were there and you're trying to decide,
"Are we end the strike or are we going to negotiate with the Mexicans to join us?"
Then Larry Itliong, he gets up and says, "I'm going to go talk to the Mexicans."
LORRAINE: When the strike happens, Cesar Chavez wasn't really quite ready.
But Cesar also knew that if they didn't join Filipinos then, then it would never happen.
NARRATOR: Larry approaches Cesar Chavez and his colleague Dolores Huerta, another powerful organizer.
DELORES: Come on out, brothers. We are waiting for you. NARRATOR: As one of AWOC's cofounders, her relationship with Larry and the Filipinos goes back years.
FABROS: And then a couple of days later we're at this church. They're talking about the strike.
They're discussing, "Should we go on strike or not go on strike?" Now all of a sudden it says "huelga."
I said, "What the heck's 'huelga'?" Because I thought they were saying hell no. They said, "No, It means strike. We're going on strike."
So the Mexicans joined us.
LARRY: We are your brothers and sisters over here. Come on. Come on out!
Long live the cause! Strike!
FABROS: They take the Mexican labor movement and the Filipino labor movement, they create the United Farm Workers.
LORRAINE: They really pushed that the workers eat together, they have meetings together,
that they were at picket lines together. It was only because they become one union,
that they were able to win the strike. EDILLOR: Larry knew that his style was not good PR.
He's aggressive. He wore his emotions on his sleeve. He needed Cesar's charisma, his ability to speak.
Cesar was the spokesman. CHAVEZ: For a union that we can belong as farm workers was going to be built by farm workers. It's going to be for farm workers.
EDILLOR: Whereas Larry wanted to get down and dirty, he wanted to work out in the fields.
FABROS: Delano became more than a farm labor dispute. It became, in a sense, the West coast civil rights
movement for people of color. All of a sudden people started equating what's happening in
Delano to the black civil rights movement on the East coast in Alabama and Mississippi.
You started having these politicians coming out there. You have Robert Kennedy calling hearings as to why the
white growers are not going to get people of color these benefits that they're asking for.
Not only are you boycotting in Delano, now you're sending groups and college students and people
who believe in a labor union and equal rights to do a secondary grape strike.
Now they're boycotting in New York. They're boycotting in Montreal, in Canada. They're boycotting in Europe.
They're boycotting California grapes. LARRY: The strike and boycott against grapes will continue.
LORRAINE: It took five years to finally get the growers to sign a contract.
And that was only because people went out on the boycott and they convinced people all over the United States
not to eat grapes. MAN: Boycott grapes! Boycott grapes!
LORRAINE: Growers couldn't sell their products and so they had to sign. MAN: Larry Itliong, what do you have to say about seeing
grapes at the stores after all this time? LARRY: Well I think that's it's great and thanks to the
co-op store that have been supporting the grape boycott to help bring about justice, and dignity,
and help the farm workers. EDILLOR: For me, that's one of my pride and joys.
Yeah, Filipinos were here and we made a difference.
FABROS: Working in the fields, that's where I realized that if a lot of people put their mind to it,
they can win. I left field working behind me completely,
but I never left the memories of these guys.
My decision to leave was made for me, not because I wanted to leave, but because I had received my draft notice.
NARRATOR: Alex Fabros ships out for Vietnam, one of thousands of Asian Americans who will serve in
the most polarizing and disruptive global event of the 1960s. REPORTER: In South Vietnam, the seemingly endless war
against the communists is once again in the forefront of world attention. REPORTER 2: As of today, there are 507,000
American troops in Vietnam. FABROS: I had a lot of nightmares about Vietnam,
that I don't want to talk about. NARRATOR: This is the fourth war the United States
has fought in Asia in only 60 years. As in Korea, the country's perceived enemy is communism.
Many Asian Americans are forced to confront their racial identity in a whole new light.
SCOTT: Well, I was pretty wild in high school. I used to get in a lot of trouble.
I decided, you know, I need to get out of LA. So I joined the Marine Corps.
The idea of Vietnam didn't even cross my mind. I was 18.
At that age, I didn't think past a week in front of me. MARINE: Right face!
SCOTT: Soon as I got to boot camp, the drill instructors told us, you know all you guys in this platoon are probably
going to end up in Vietnam; 95% of you. Half you aren't going to make it back.
MIKE: When I decided to enlist, it was not a deeply thought out decision.
When I went to boot camp, we had to line up on these yellow footprints in single file and
they instructed us to go tallest to shortest. Four drill instructors pulled out the two biggest
guys in the front and they beat them. Beat them down, kicked them, they were bleeding.
I was thinking, "What the f... "What have I done?" I mean, this is a big mistake.
During one of these classes, my drill instructor says, "Private Nakayama stand up."
Stood up at attention and he goes, "Turn around." So I turned around and he goes,
"All right everybody. This is what a gook looks like. You remember this, because they're going to come after you."
SCOTT: I arrived in Vietnam in October of 1967. I was stationed at Khe Sanh and Hill 881
Tet offensive of 1968. It was the biggest battle of the war.
REPORTER: The pressure at Khe Sanh has lasted a week now. A bad week for the marines here. A week in which they've suffered under the guns of the
North Vietnamese in these surroundings hills. SCOTT: The hill I was on, 881, we had 100% casualty rate.
That means out of the 400 Marines initially stationed on the hill, 400 Marines were either killed or wounded in
the three months I was there. (explosions) Not a fun place to be.
MIKE: We would go out for 30 to 60 days into the jungle.
We're trying to draw out the North Vietnamese army into battles.
I was 11 months there and we had set up a perimeter
next to a hill. Boom. We got hit with rockets.
I got hit from a grenade explosion in my shoulder.
And I'm thinking, "I'm going to die here." I got taken off the helicopter on the stretcher.
The treatment tables are in the back. There's doctors and they're treating people. They treated him, they treated him.
They left me and I was the last one. I said, "Hey man. When you guys are going
to treat me?" And he says, "Oh you should have told us you were American. We thought you was a gook."
NARRATOR: Asian American women also serve in Vietnam. Lily Adams is Chinese Italian from the Bronx.
When she tells her father she's enlisted in the Army, it's the first time she sees him cry.
LILY: I was in nursing school. An army nurse recruiter came to visit our school once.
And she made it sound pretty good because it would pay for my last year of nursing school.
I would have some money in my pocket. I got orders for Vietnam.
I was 20. It was the town of Cu-Chi and we had built a
giant military base. We were told it was the busiest hospital in Vietnam.
My first day, it's this guy that said, "Well, I'm Doctor so-and-so. And we could kind of pair up, spend some
12 months together." I basically worked to contain my anger.
I said, "Thank you very much. That's very nice of you, but I'm not interested."
That was my first day.
I was mistaken for a Vietnamese prostitute. If I wanted to walk around the compound,
I had to be in uniform. Even when I was in uniform, sometimes these guys would ask me if I wanted to do whatever for so much money.
♪ ♪ I was afraid of American GIs because they really believed
that we were there for them. I had to be vigilant, very vigilant,
on base, off base or whatever.
SCOTT: When I was there, the Vietnamese people would come up and try to trade for stuff, you know,
for cigarettes and C-rations. Some of the Vietnamese people looked at me and said,
"Hey, you, same, same Vietnam," and for a minute I thought, "What are they talking about?" Then I got it, you know,
"Hey, you look like me, and you're just like us." We called them Gooks.
That's what I thought they were, and then when he said that to me, then I thought, "Well wait a minute, I must be a Gook also."
FABROS: I'm 22 years old. I'm a Sergeant. I was assigned to a unit in Vietnam
that required translators.
♪ ♪ One day Sergeant C calls me up and says,
"Al, they think they've got a VC, that they just captured in the village."
Well, we went out there and the Vietnamese security people had already worked him over a little bit,
and I squatted down next to him, so we were eye to eye, and I asked him in Vietnamese,
"Why are you fighting us?" He looks right at me, right in my eyes.
"Why are you here? This is my country.
Why are you here?"
I think right at that moment I realized that,
"Okay, Alex, why are you here?"
GORDON: 1968 is a transformative year in American history, specifically for Asian Americans.
Many of us were deeply affected by gruesome images of death and destruction.
At the same time, there was upheaval in America, cities were exploding and Dr. Martin Luther King
would be assassinated. There were other killings, political murders. It felt like the world was about to explode.
DAN: The younger generations started taking positions, very strong on what was happening in Vietnam,
and it was because we had so many returning Vietnam veterans who were telling us the truth about what was going on.
REPORTER: The war in Vietnam, the problems of race and the cities, these are issues facing the citizens of the United States,
and they are issues vividly facing the students on an urban campus.
NARRATOR: As the school year begins, students are trying to make sense of a world turned upside down.
At San Francisco State, a college with a mostly white student body, young people of color question whether their
own education is failing them. They demand more minority faculty and a curriculum that
reflects their lives and concerns and they want it now. Students like Dan Gonzales,
Penny Nakatsu and Laureen Chew, all of them, 18 or 19 years old.
LAUREEN: I grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown. Growing up in Chinatown was a very nurturing experience.
You had a community that you interacted with on a daily basis, especially for my mom who didn't speak English.
I was accepted into San Francisco State in 1966, and that's only because my mom refused to have me
go away for college. She thought the worst, like I would be some wayward woman
having free sex everywhere or something like that. NARRATOR: Galvanized by the civil rights movement
and the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., student activists organize to have more classes
in black history and culture. HARE: We're trying to start a black studies,
a program at state college, and I think that it has the greatest and last hope to solve the educational problems
of the black race. DAN: The demand for black studies was influencing Asian Americans.
We started reflecting on our, our own experiences. And saying, "Yeah, you know, we need to have something like
that for ourselves." MAN: For your information: Philippines refers to the country, and Filipino refers to the people.
This is exactly what we want. To study our Filipino culture and history.
LAUREEN: I was trying to figure out who I was, and then I met this other Chinese girl who grew up in
South City and she was much more adventurous, and she was the one that asked me to go to this meeting.
NARRATOR: Laureen joins the impromptu gatherings that are springing up all over campus.
Black and Brown students call for solidarity with the people of colonized Latin America,
Asia, and Africa, what they call the Third World. MAN: This is the first time in the history of all
existing colleges in the United States that we have dissolved class barriers between people of
the Third World. LAUREEN: It was a real "A-ha" for me, saying like, "Wow, you know, they're not Chinese,
but we have similar experiences, in terms of the dominant culture not validating
who we are." DAN: African Americans had been here for a long time.
They were well established. Their civil rights movement was complemented by our perspective, for example, on internment,
and the concentration camp experience of Japanese Americans. On the exclusion of Asians from citizenship, decades long,
almost a century long, exclusion by design. NARRATOR: In 1968 Alex Fabros is serving in the Marines,
but he has friends in college who are confronting these issues. FABROS: Our story was not taught in the classrooms.
The Chinese built the railroads. Okay. That's it? They didn't talk about the hardship.
They didn't talk about the exploitation. The laws that they passed against the Chinese.
They didn't talk about the Filipinos working in the fields. They didn't talk about the farm labor strikes.
Total omission. LAUREEN: That is what the Third World Liberation Front was about.
To tell the true histories of the people who contributed and
built this country.
PENNY: History? I never learned anything about the history of Asian Americans,
or Japanese Americans, or camps. That eventually led me to involve myself
in political activism. What we wanted to see was an educational institution that
served the communities, served the people. NARRATOR: Under the umbrella of the
Third World Liberation Front, Asian, Latino, and Native American students, as well as progressive whites,
join forces with the Black Student Union. DAN: One of the major objectives was to start a
School of Ethnic Studies. We called it Third World Studies that would have the same status as other established schools on the campus.
NARRATOR: At first, the administration seems open to a School of Ethnic Studies, but students grow frustrated with
what they see as empty promises. After months of inaction by the university,
the students call for a general strike on November 6th, 1968. CROWD: On strike, shut it down.
On strike, shut it down. On strike, shut it down. PENNY: The BSU-TWLF demands,
asks that a School of Third World Studies be formed that was based on a concept of self-determination.
We asked for students and faculty members to boycott, stop classes, stop business as usual.
LAUREEN: Our main thing on campus was to be disruptive, to force the administration to be responsive to the demands.
NARRATOR: Laureen and others used a variety of tactics to make their point. They interrupt classes, form picket lines,
and broadcast their demands by loud speaker. Their goal, to shut the school down.
LAUREEN: I was with one group where people picked up the typewriter and threw it across the room, and students got all freaked out and started running out of
the classroom, you know, because we were that passionate to start a School of Ethnic Studies.
♪ No more pigs on our campus ♪ ♪ The revolution has come ♪♪
NARRATOR: But behind the scenes students like Dan Gonzales are doing the hard work of building a brand new
curriculum from scratch. DAN: That was my major task, understanding how to put the courses together.
The Filipino Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans drafted their own curriculum proposals,
and then we all met together as Asian Americans and talked about how we were going to start these courses.
PENNY: In those days the term Asian American didn't exist. We were all Orientals.
1968, that was the first time that I heard the term Asian Americans.
MAN: There's a strike going on here, and that means that either you're on our side, or you against us.
NARRATOR: No one anticipates the magnitude of the strike. From the start, the police come in force to
shut down the protestors. REAGAN: A little dissident group, with their 15 non-negotiable demands,
you talk about negotiating. I would call to your attention that the Black Student Union has declared that their demands are non-negotiable.
NARRATOR: Soon afterward, the state of California appoints a new president, S.I. Hayakawa,
an English professor at the college. LAUREEN: And he was supposed to shut us down.
DAN: It was really clear to us that he was being used because he was a person of color, and if he could exercise his
authority and power in a manner that was consistent with the Ronald Reagan way of dealing with campus upheaval,
he was going to be very useful. REPORTER: The new president, renowned as an expert in the meaning of language, decided early in the day to face his critics.
The communication failure was obvious. Hayakawa took that matter, and the sound truck wiring, into his own hands.
MAN: Some of the militants have called you and Uncle Tom. They say they thought that you would identify with the minority groups, such as the Blacks.
What is your answer to them? HAYAKAWA: Well, I'm the first Japanese Uncle Tom in history.
I think it's kind of an achievement. LAUREEN: He forbade any rallies on campus,
that he threatened, you know you can have a rally, I'm going to arrest all of you. And that was kind of like, a turning point.
PENNY: The rally was going to be called at 12 noon. LAUREEN: I heard all these people outside
already saying the, "On strike, shut it down." CROWD: On strike, shut it down. On strike, shut it down.
On strike...
PENNY: It all happened really quickly. I saw the police come running up with their batons in hand.
MAN: Go to your classes. Disperse from the center of the campus. LAUREEN: Suddenly, there was like a military movement.
The TAC squad on horses, they came out from the gym and just like surrounded all of us.
(crowd chatter).
(crowd chatter).
But then it just got all quiet, and then at that point no one could get out.
The TAC squad just surrounded us. We could not leave. If you were in that circle, you are going to be arrested.
Al: There was over a thousand police, dogs, horses, Paddy wagon. We will fight the oppressor on our terms, not theirs.
MAN: This morning, they're going to arraign 10 at a time. All of those who were arrested out at San Francisco State College.
LAUREEN: I was not going to cop a plea. I mean, my mother had a hissy fit.
"What are you doing, you know, getting arrested? I have one child, whom I thought I raised and
spent money to go to a high end Catholic school. You should be like a saint."
NARRATOR: Laureen and a few other demonstrators argue their case in court. But a jury sentences her to 20 days in prison.
LAUREEN: When I finally had to go to jail, she was devastated. She came and visited me in jail.
I was so scared of being there. You know when I saw her, I just started to cry, and then she did also.
You know, basically knowing that I shouldn't be there. After I finished my 20 days,
for the first time I heard her say something to defend me. She said, "My daughter was not very smart,
but I'll say this. She did not hurt anybody, and what she wanted to do
was to make a better world for people." NARRATOR: The San Francisco State Strike is the
longest student strike in US history. After five months, the administration finally agrees
to establish a School of Ethnic Studies.
The legacy of the strike defines a generation eager to change society, and assert a new identity
as Asian Americans. FABROS: It's just like the, the Filipinos and the Mexicans getting together to form a labor union.
Asian-American encompasses everybody. I thought wow that's something.
People are finally starting to realize that we wear our race on our face.
NARRATOR: The Asian American movement bursts forth across the country. In New Jersey, Gordon Chang is one of
only five Asian students in his class at Princeton. GORDON: It was the summer of 1969,
when I came back to the Bay area and met a lot of the activists who had been at San Francisco State or
at UC Berkeley. It was a stunning moment for those of us,
that we look at each other and all of a sudden found that we had so much in common.
If we were to transform in society, we had to move beyond the ivory tower gates,
and to go into where the everyday people lived. BRENDA: When we moved to New York we were told,
"There's a budding Asian American movement. You've got to really get involved in that." JAN: You have to remember that there was not an
Asian American sense before and it was just starting to gel.
The first thing we got involved with were these demonstrations.
GORDON: I remember my mother, I told her about going in anti-war demonstrations, and sharing with her my hope for a radical new world,
and she was very upset. She was almost crying, and she said, "This is their country. They're just going to shoot you down."
And I said, "Well this is my country. This is where I live and this is what I feel I must do."
BRENDA: It felt great to be a part of this groundswell of a movement that was just enveloping the country.
We were involved with Black, Asian, White, Latinos, and that was incredible.
And then there's this duo, Chris and Joanne, and they're singers, folk singers.
They sing about the Asian American experience. LENNON: These are two young people that,
they call themselves "Yellow Pearl". Their grandparents were Japanese, I guess, and they're young singers called "Chris and Joanna"
and they're beautiful singers and they have a story to tell, and they're going to come on down and do it. Here they are, Yellow Pearl.
NOBUKO: Usually people know very little about Asians,
and this is a song about our movement, about our people's plight in America.
♪ BOTH: We are the children of the migrant worker. ♪ ♪ We are the offspring of the concentration camp. ♪
♪ Sons and daughters of the railroad builder who leave ♪
♪ their stamp on America. ♪♪ NOBUKO: It was a very powerful thing to be able to do that
for Asian Americans, for young people to be able to hear us sing these words because we had never had our own song.
♪ BOTH: Sing a song for ourselves, ♪ ♪ what have we got to lose. ♪
♪ Sing a song for ourselves. ♪ ♪ We've got a right to choose. ♪♪ NOBUKO: And there's something about music that's
a visceral thing. It's emotional. You can't do it in a speech. You can't do it by reading a book.
(Taiko drumming)
♪ ♪
It was like a genie got me out of the bottle. You couldn't put us back in.
You can't just have a leaflet, you can't just have a demonstration. Art gives flesh and blood to the politics.
People were drawing, people were making posters, people were making films, people were writing,
people were doing poetry. LAWSON: I told you so, oh yes. You take your old name back, Chano.
I told you so, oh yes. Chano.
GORDON: Really appreciate the visual art, the poster art, but also the documentary film making that
was I think so important in helping craft an Asian American identity.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Even as Asian American culture is blossoming, the war in Vietnam continues to rage.
Veterans returning home have to grapple with their role in the conflict.
SCOTT: Coming home was the biggest cultural shock. Especially during the '60s.
You kind of went from "Leave it to Beaver" when I left, to the hippies
and the radical antiwar movement when you get back.
I started going to LA City College. Since I was a Vietnam veteran,
and there weren't too many around, that subject came up a lot. "Hey you were in Vietnam. You know, you're Asian American.
You're a Marine Corps veteran. What did you think about the war?" MIKE: Before and during I didn't have a concept of the
racist nature of the war. Afterwards I was very aware.
It was such a traumatic and extreme experience I wanted to be able to understand what happened.
So that drove me in to looking into the anti-war movement. ♪ GROUP: Bring em home. Bring our brothers home. ♪♪
SCOTT: The Winter Soldier Investigation was put on by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. They were trying to get the opinion of the veterans,
the people who actually fought in the war. MIKE: It was a Holiday Inn with a large auditorium.
And there was tables set up in the front with about 15 chairs. And then there was the audience.
So different groups of vets would go up and would talk about what atrocities they experienced or participated in.
We were all the non-whites. And they never asked us to participate.
So when it was almost over we just went up and took over the tables and chairs and just started talking.
SCOTT: We all spoke and gave the perspective from each individual. How did these atrocities get to be committed?
They just don't happen. There's the whole thing of how they tell you, you know, the people over there aren't really people.
But they can't deny the testimony of all these dudes in the room.
NIXON: We today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.
REPORTER: Saigon, April the 30th 8:00. The last American helicopter on the roof of the
American Embassy prepares to lift off the last of the evacuees fleeing before the advancing communist army.
Tens of thousands of Vietnamese still struggle to escape their homeland for a new life elsewhere.
They are always arriving, these so-called boat people. Sometimes as many as a thousand in one day.
NARRATOR: The war in Vietnam is officially over but its effects resonate for years to come.
A new generation of refugees from Southeast Asia will soon enrich the American experience.
NGUYEN: Typically when it comes to war we believe that it is the victors who write the history.
The Americans, for the most part, have gotten to write the history of this war,
whether it's in books or whether it's in movies. Americans can't completely re-write the past to say
they won the war, but they've put themselves at the center of the story. So, even if it's a tragedy, in which they lose,
they're the stars of the tragedy.
Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of people who died were Southeast Asians.
I really don't remember much about Vietnam. My memory really begins coming here to the United States
as a refugee arriving in Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania.
My parents found an opportunity. They opened a Vietnamese grocery store in downtown San Jose on East Santa Clara Street,
which is the heart of the city. My impression of San Jose is inseparable from the
experiences of being a refugee.
These refugees were suffering. They were trying to build a life for themselves here. And yet they were still traumatized by the war or they
were trying to forget the war. I remember, when I was around 10 or 11 years old,
walking down the street from my parents store and seeing a sign in another store window that said,
"Another American driven out of business by the Vietnamese." And I knew that this was directed at people
like my parents. My parents worked 12 to 14 hour days in the store almost
every day of the year. My parents were shot in that store on Christmas Eve...
So, for me...
that sign will stay with me because it was a sign that was a story that was targeted at my parents and
everybody like us. So I swore one day that I would have an opportunity to re-write that sign, to write another story.
TRAN: I was born in 1974. I was born in District 5, which is called Cholon.
It's like Chinatown in Vietnam. Then my aunt, who had left in '78,
sponsored our family, so we left in '83.
Grew up in southern California, in Santa Ana. I had no awareness that the war had just happened.
Probably because my parents protected us from all of that. And my dad, though he had gone to re-education camps,
we didn't know much about that. We didn't really talk much about that.
The only education I ever got from the Vietnam War was "Apocalypse Now," "Deer Hunter," "Platoon."
NGUYEN: Hollywood made literally dozens of movies about the war in Vietnam through the '70s and the '80s.
And they posed a real problem for me because I was a war fanatic. I really enjoyed war.
I was into soldiers and guns. And identifying with American soldiers. My problem was that they were fighting Vietnamese people.
So, to see movies like, "Apocalypse Now," when I was 10 or 11, and to watch Vietnamese people being
slaughtered, massacred, or raped in the case of other films,
was really traumatic for me. Coming to Berkeley as a student in the late 1980s was
really a transformative moment for me. I remember when I was being arrested and cuffed.
I was thinking... I was looking at the floor and I was thinking, "God, this is what Berkeley's all about."
The first class I took there was Ronald Takaki's Intro to Asian American Studies. He had just published his book,
"Strangers from a Different Shore," which was the first major collective history of Asian Americans.
Most of us, in this classroom, had never heard of so many of the things that he was lecturing about.
They were Asian American students back then. Now they've become the Asian American Studies professors. I remember them telling us,
"Well the '60s are going to happen again any moment now." That was the 1990s.
We were convinced that that was going to happen. They had committed their lives to academic knowledge
but also this idea of the necessity of Asian American Studies as an activist practice.
And their classes were absolutely fundamental to me, in terms of turning me into a scholar but also into an Asian American.
NARRATOR: Ham Tran is also seeking to address the unspoken trauma experienced by Vietnamese Americans.
He raises $1.5 million from his community to make a film about the war from a Vietnamese point-of-view.
TRAN: Making "Journey From the Fall" we had an opportunity to tell its peoples' story.
The people who were involved. (speaking in native language).
TRAN: Action.
When we were casting I didn't want to cast actors. I was looking for real people who had had experience,
within the community. We saw, like, 600 something people.
People would come and then share their stories with us. MAN: The prisoner stood up, and raised his arms kin surrender.
He still had a cigarette in his hand. The guard fired one shot at him.
He fell, still holding the cigarette. TRAN: My education was my audition process.
A lot of people telling me stories. Hearing 500 stories within two weeks really just...
To some people I felt like they had been waiting years to get this off their chest.
The woman who came to visit the re-education camp, to give the news to our main character,
she shared with us the day that she went to visit him and how she slid her foot under the table and spoke with him.
The only way they had contact was through that. It was such a beautiful moment.
I'm like, "Let's try to capture that on film."
And action. NARRATOR: "Journey From the Fall" is embraced by the Vietnamese American community and
considered a critical success. Meanwhile Viet Thanh Nguyen is seeking a way to address
the legacy of the war. NGUYEN: I wanted to confront what had been done to us.
I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be an activist, I wanted to be a scholar and I didn't want to give up any of those kinds of things.
FRANK: Tonight our guest is the author Viet Thanh Nguyen. NGUYEN: I wanted to write a novel that evoked the fall of
Saigon and the Vietnam War. And to tell it from a perspective that we hadn't seen before. NARRATOR: In 2015, Viet is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
"The Sympathizer", a darkly comedic tale about an undercover communist agent whose loyalties are
split between Vietnam and the United States. MEYERS: Viet Thanh Nguyen, everybody.
NGUYEN: All this success was made possible by pioneering people.
FABROS: You got these young people, all under probably age 21,
fighting to make change happen. And they had dreams.
A lot of those people went on to become professionals. Some became judges, some became lawyers,
a few became professors. NARRATOR: Former student activists Dan Gonzales and
Laureen Chew become professors of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State.
After retiring from the military Alex Fabros would also study and teach Asian American history there.
50 years after the Third World Strike there are now dozens of ethnic studies programs
across the country. And Asian American Studies courses are taking root
in unexpected places.
Today, volunteers teach a weekly course to inmates at San Quentin State Prison.
Students learn about Asian American history from Exclusion, to Civil Rights, to the war in Southeast Asia.
The program's motto: "If you know history, you know yourself."
On graduation day, students are recognized for their achievements and celebrate their gains.
(applause and cheers)
CHUNG: I give to you the graduating class of Roots Super Cycle 5, cap 35.
Another person we want to celebrate today, a person that we affectionately know as one of
our blackanese students. I'm going to bring Thanh Tran up to the stage here.
THANH: This entire ROOTS experience it's been nothing but love, inclusivity,
and feeling like I finally have a family. Feeling like there's support out there. And that's tremendous.
My mother she's Vietnamese and black. But the problem is I never got to know my mother because when
I was two years old I was placed into foster care. And I lost more than just my mom, I lost my roots.
I lost my only connection to my roots in America, because I had no other family here besides her.
I began to notice that it was more than just the Asian struggle, the Latinx and black struggle,
these were stories about what it meant to be human.
And that's what ROOTS taught me. So I want to thank the team for seeing the humanity in me,
for seeing the humanity in our brothers, for bringing ROOTS to us, dedicating your free time to us,
because for a lot of us we didn't have a family, we didn't have hope, and you give us that.
(applause)
NGUYEN: 1968, when Asian Americans came into being, now that story's no longer new.
There should be a new story beyond that.
I'm committed to the new story. A new generation will go off and do something that
I might find offensive, or I might disagree with, or that I may just not understand.
That's fantastic. That's a logical consequence of what we wanted to
do as a part of an Asian American movement, is to create a situation in which Asian Americans were
free to do anything they wanted.
==
<아시안 아메리칸: 세대의 각성 (Asian Americans: Generation Rising, 2020)>
1,000단어 요약 + 평론
1. 요약
Asian Americans - Generation Ri…
이 다큐멘터리는 1960년대 후반, 격변의 미국 사회 속에서 “아시아계 미국인(Asian American)”이라는 새로운 집합적 정체성이 어떻게 형성되었는지를 추적한다. 베트남전, 흑인 민권운동, 학생운동, 농장노동자 파업, 그리고 전후 난민 유입이라는 역사적 맥락 속에서, 다양한 아시아계 집단이 서로를 발견하고 연대하며 하나의 정치적 이름을 만들어 가는 과정을 그린다.
1) 델라노 포도 파업과 필리핀 노동자
이야기의 출발점은 캘리포니아 중앙계곡이다. 이 지역의 가난한 농장 노동자들, 특히 필리핀계 ‘마농(Manongs)’ 세대는 열악한 임금과 무권리 상태에서 일하고 있었다. 1965년, 필리핀계 노동자 지도자 래리 이틀리옹(Larry Itliong)이 주도하여 포도 파업이 시작된다. 이후 세사르 차베스(Cesar Chavez)와 돌로레스 우에르타(Dolores Huerta)가 이끄는 멕시코계 노동자들과 연대하여 ‘전미농장노동자연합(United Farm Workers)’을 결성한다.
다큐는 흔히 멕시코계 운동으로 기억되는 이 파업의 출발이 사실상 필리핀 노동자였음을 강조한다. 농장주들이 필리핀계와 멕시코계를 이간질하려 했지만, 연대가 형성되면서 파업은 미국 서부의 민권운동으로 확장된다. 5년간의 보이콧 끝에 노동자들은 계약을 체결한다. 이 경험은 “함께하면 이길 수 있다”는 정치적 자각을 낳는다.
2) 베트남전과 인종적 자각
베트남전은 또 다른 전환점이다. 수많은 아시아계 미국인 청년이 미군으로 참전했다. 그러나 그들은 전장에서 “gook”이라는 인종적 모욕을 들으며, 적으로 지목된 베트남인과 자신이 외모상 구분되지 않는다는 사실을 깨닫는다.
어떤 병사는 부상 후 치료를 받지 못하다가 “미국인인 줄 몰랐다”는 말을 듣는다. 또 다른 이는 베트남인 포로에게 “왜 당신은 여기 있느냐, 이곳은 내 나라다”라는 질문을 듣고 충격을 받는다. 이 장면은 제국과 인종, 시민권의 문제를 날것 그대로 드러낸다.
귀국 후, 이들 참전 용사 일부는 반전 운동과 연결된다. 전쟁은 아시아계 미국인들에게 단순한 외교 정책 문제가 아니라, 자기 존재의 모순을 드러내는 거울이 된다.
3) 샌프란시스코 주립대 파업과 ‘Asian American’의 탄생
1968년, 샌프란시스코 주립대에서 제3세계해방전선(Third World Liberation Front)이 주도한 학생 파업이 시작된다. 흑인 학생회와 아시아·라틴계·원주민 학생들이 연대하여 ‘자기결정권에 기반한 제3세계학부’ 설립을 요구한다.
이때 “Asian American”이라는 용어가 등장한다. 이전에는 ‘Oriental’로 불렸던 집단이 스스로를 재명명한다. 이 명칭은 단순한 인종 범주가 아니라, 정치적 연대의 이름이었다. 중국계, 일본계, 필리핀계, 한국계 등 서로 다른 민족적 배경이 “미국 사회에서 주변화된 아시아계”라는 공통 조건 아래 묶인다.
5개월간 이어진 미국 역사상 최장기 학생 파업 끝에, 최초의 민족학(Ethnic Studies) 대학 프로그램이 설립된다. 이 사건은 학문 제도의 지형을 바꾸는 계기가 된다.
4) 문화와 예술의 역할
다큐는 음악과 예술이 정치 운동을 “살과 피”로 만들었다고 말한다. ‘Yellow Pearl’ 같은 포크 가수들은 “우리는 이민자의 자녀, 수용소의 후손”이라고 노래한다. 포스터, 다큐영화, 시와 퍼포먼스는 새로운 정체성의 감각을 확산시킨다.
5) 난민 세대와 새로운 이야기
1975년 이후 베트남, 라오스, 캄보디아 난민이 대거 유입된다. 이들은 이전 세대와는 다른 기억을 지닌다. 베트남계 미국인 작가 비엣 타인 응우옌(Viet Thanh Nguyen)은 헐리우드 전쟁 영화가 베트남인을 주변화했다고 비판하며, 『동조자(The Sympathizer)』로 퓰리처상을 수상한다.
또한 영화 <Journey from the Fall> 같은 작품이 공동체 내부의 기억을 복원한다. 이 세대는 “1968의 서사” 이후를 새롭게 써 내려가야 한다고 주장한다.
6) 현재로 이어지는 유산
오늘날 수십 개 대학에 아시아계 미국학 프로그램이 존재하며, 심지어 교도소에서도 관련 수업이 진행된다. 프로그램의 모토는 “역사를 알면 자신을 안다”이다. 다큐는 운동의 성과를 제도적 성취와 개인적 치유의 차원에서 동시에 보여준다.
2. 평론
이 작품은 아시아계 미국인의 정체성이 자연스럽게 존재해온 것이 아니라, 정치적 투쟁 속에서 만들어진 ‘발명된 공동체’임을 설득력 있게 보여준다. 특히 세 가지 점이 인상적이다.
1) ‘피해자’ 서사에 머물지 않는다
다큐는 차별과 폭력을 묘사하지만, 그것을 수동적 피해의 이야기로 소비하지 않는다. 오히려 노동, 파업, 파업 연대, 교과과정 창설 등 능동적 행위에 초점을 둔다. 이는 기억을 도덕적 분노가 아니라 조직화된 행동과 연결시킨다.
2) 내부 다양성과 긴장을 인정한다
필리핀계와 멕시코계의 갈등 가능성, 참전 군인의 복잡한 심리, 난민 세대의 문화적 단절 등 내부 차이를 감추지 않는다. “Asian American”은 고정된 정체성이 아니라 전략적 범주라는 점이 드러난다.
3) 1968 신화를 상대화한다
비엣 타인 응우옌의 발언은 중요하다. 1968년의 창세 서사는 더 이상 새롭지 않다. 다음 세대는 다른 질문을 던질 것이다. 운동의 목적은 특정 노선을 고정하는 것이 아니라, 자유롭게 다른 길을 선택할 수 있는 조건을 만드는 것이었다는 점을 상기시킨다.
한계
다만 몇 가지 아쉬움도 있다.
냉전 구조나 미국 외교정책의 거시적 맥락은 상대적으로 간략하다.
동아시아 내부의 역사(한국전, 중국 혁명 등)와의 연결은 깊이 다루지 않는다.
최근의 반아시아 혐오(코로나 이후 폭력 등)와의 직접적 연결은 다소 약하다.
그러나 이는 다큐의 초점이 1960–70년대의 ‘형성기’에 맞춰져 있기 때문일 것이다.
종합 평가
<Generation Rising>은 “아시아계 미국인”이라는 말이 단순한 인구통계학적 범주가 아니라, 노동 현장과 전쟁터, 대학 캠퍼스, 문화 예술 현장에서 피와 체포, 노래와 토론을 통해 만들어진 정치적 정체성임을 보여준다.
이 다큐는 세 가지 질문을 남긴다.
연대는 어떻게 만들어지는가?
전쟁은 정체성을 어떻게 뒤틀고 각성시키는가?
제도화된 성공 이후, 다음 세대는 무엇을 할 것인가?
운동은 끝나지 않았다. 다만 형태가 바뀌었을 뿐이다. 1968년이 “탄생의 순간”이었다면, 이후의 세대는 그 탄생을 넘어서는 이야기를 써야 한다. 이 다큐는 바로 그 지점에서 멈춘다.
그리고 관객에게 묻는다.
이제 당신의 세대는 무엇을 할 것인가.
==
다큐멘터리 <아시아계 미국인: 일어나는 세대 (2020)> (Asian Americans - Generation Rising)에 대한 요약과 평론이다.
요약: 연대와 투쟁으로 빚어낸 새로운 정체성
이 다큐멘터리는 1960년대와 70년대 미국 전역을 휩쓴 사회적 격변기 속에서, 차별받던 아시아계 이민자 자녀들이 어떻게 자신들의 목소리를 찾고 <아시아계 미국인>이라는 통합된 정체성을 형성했는지를 조명한다
이야기의 중심에는 필리핀계 농장 노동자들의 헌신이 있다. 1948년 미국으로 이주한 알렉스 파브로스의 가족 사례처럼, 당시 아시아인들은 집을 사는 것조차 위협받는 극심한 인종차별에 시달렸다
1960년대에 접어들며 이민자 자녀 세대는 부모 세대와는 다른 시각으로 세상을 바라보기 시작했다
또한, 베트남 전쟁 이후 유입된 새로운 이민자와 난민들은 '아시아계 미국인'이라는 정의를 더욱 확장시켰다
평론: 주변부에서 주체로, 미완의 해방을 향한 여정
이 작품은 단순히 과거의 기록을 나열하는 데 그치지 않고, 아시아계 미국인이 미국 역사의 수동적인 관찰자가 아니라 능동적인 건설자였음을 강력하게 웅변한다. <일어나는 세대>라는 부제처럼, 이 다큐멘터리는 침묵을 강요받던 세대가 어떻게 '병 속의 지니'처럼 터져 나와 다시는 돌아갈 수 없는 변화를 만들어냈는지 그 역동성을 성공적으로 담아냈다
가장 인상적인 지점은 투쟁의 현장을 농장에서 캠퍼스로 확장하며 노동 계급과 지식인 계층의 연대를 보여준 것이다. 필리핀 농민들의 생존권 투쟁이 대학생들의 정체성 찾기와 맞물려 거대한 민권 운동으로 승화되는 과정은, 오늘날의 소수자 운동에도 시사하는 바가 크다. 특히 '마농'들이 젊은 세대에게 "우리처럼 되지 말고 무언가가 되어라"라고 격려하며 교육의 중요성을 강조한 대목은 이민자 사회의 눈물겨운 희망을 잘 보여준다
또한, 이 다큐멘터리는 아시아계 정체성이 고정된 것이 아니라 시대의 흐름에 따라 끊임없이 재정의되는 유동적인 개념임을 명시한다. 베트남 전쟁이라는 비극이 오히려 다양한 아시아 민족들을 하나로 묶는 계기가 되었다는 분석은 역설적이면서도 날카롭다
결론적으로 이 영상은 아시아계 미국인들이 쟁취한 자유가 거저 주어진 것이 아니라, 피와 땀으로 일궈낸 투쟁의 산물임을 상기시킨다. "아시아계 미국인들이 원하는 것은 무엇이든 할 수 있는 자유로운 상황을 만드는 것"이라는 다큐멘터리의 메시지는, 과거의 승리를 축하하는 동시에 미래 세대가 써 내려갈 새로운 이야기에 대한 기대를 품게 한다. 이는 단순히 한 인종의 역사를 넘어, 진정한 인간다움과 정의를 향한 보편적인 투쟁의 기록이라 할 수 있다.
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