When it comes to those who have contributed to American history, most people tend to think in black and white, forgetting that plenty of people of Asian descent are also generational or heritage Americans.Most of our heroes are of Chinese and Japanese descent, but our heroes also include people of southeast Asian, Polynesian, and even Indian descent.From entertainers such as Pat Morita and Henry Cho to scientists like Michio Kaku and Har Gobind Khorana, and athletes such as Bruce Lee and Kristi Yamaguchi, we have it covered.These men and women prove that when it comes to contributing to their country, they are truly imbued with the American spirit.Surviving the Killing FieldsMost people today live pretty boring lives.We work, start families, retire, and die.If we’re lucky, we choose to attend a certain college and study a specific subject.We focus our energies on landing work in a certain profession.And we are attracted to a certain person that becomes our partner.But not everyone has the luxury of stability and predictability.Some people’s lives are in constant flux to the point of chaos, and yet, they still manage to be successful and even influential.Ngor was one such person.Ngor was an ambitious and bright young man who did all the right things, but none of it mattered after a brutal dictator came to power in his country, ruining his and millions of other people’s lives in the process.After losing everything, Ngor made his way to the United States where he started over again from the bottom.He was the first and presently is the only Asian actor to have won the award.From Doctor to SurvivorHaing Somnang Ngor was born on March 22, 1940, in French Indochina, which would later become Cambodia.Ngor married and was about to welcome his first child into the family when his life took its first major turn.In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and refashioned it into a communist dictatorship known as Democratic Kampuchea.Overnight the perfect, seemingly idyllic yet boring life that Ngor had known was over.He was immediately thrust into a place and way of life to which he wasn’t accustomed.Ngor quickly found out that the medical degrees he had hanging on his wall and most of what he had learned at university and medical school were worthless.After the Khmer Rouge took over the country, they depopulated most of the major cities, sending the hated urbanites to the country to work in the rice fields.Some were just outright executed.Ngor kept his background a secret, telling police and soldiers that he was a cab driver.But when his pregnant wife was about to give birth, Ngor was faced with yet another major twist in his life.Ngor knew his wife needed a Caesarian section to save her and the baby’s lives, and he knew how to do the operation since he was a gynecologist.However, doing so in the concentration camp would’ve meant exposing his background.Needless to say, it was a choice that hopefully none of us has to make.As we live our boring, ordinary lives, more than likely none of us will even have to consider such a choice, but for Haing Ngor, it was a matter of survival.He pointed this out on more than one occasion after he became successful, telling reporters, [No matter] How rich you are, you can’t buy a happy family.But Haing Ngor was a resilient man, who despite immense loss and suffering, made it his life’s mission to make something positive out of what he, his family, and his countrymen suffered in the killing fields.A Chance for RedemptionLike all brutal totalitarian regimes, the Khmer Rouge didn’t last long, falling in 1979 under the pressures of international opposition and its own destructive nature that all but destroyed Cambodia’s economy and infrastructure.For most Cambodians, including Haing Ngor, this was welcome news.It meant a chance at having a normal life.However, it also meant that more struggles were ahead.For Ngor, he saw it as an opportunity to deal with the guilt and shame over the death of his wife and to redeem himself and his people.After the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, Haing and his niece Sophia Ngor lived for several months in refugee camps in Thailand.He used his medical training to help people in the camps and he began writing down some of his painful memories of the killing fields.And to make things even better, his niece’s application had also been accepted.Haing and Sophia left for Southern California where they had support from members of the Cambodian community.The amiable Ngor put his experiences and personality to use helping Southeast Asian refugees in Southern California, which is where he was discovered by casting directors working on the 1984 feature film, The Killing Fields.The Killing Fields, which was a critical and box office hit, stars Sam Watterson as an American journalist and Haing Ngor as his friend and colleague, Cambodian journalist Dith Pran.The film follows Pran’s brutal saga through Pol Pot’s regime, as he loses everything.The character of Dith Pran reflected Haing Ngor’s troubled life in so many ways.But beyond the depravities that the character of Dith Pran and the real Haing Ngor suffered in Cambodia, both also eventually found redemption.The Killing Fields brought Haing Ngor professional success in the form of a coveted Oscar award and more film roles.Ngor’s acting career also brought him financial success, which he used to support clinics in his native Cambodia.By the 1990s, Ngor had become an American citizen and continued to act and support the Cambodian community.But on February 25, 1996, it all came to a tragic end when Ngor was shot and killed in an apparent robbery gone wrong outside his Los Angeles home in the Chinatown neighborhood.The police and prosecutors later established that the three men who killed Ngor were members of an Asian street gang.They were attempting to take his Rolex watch and a locket belonging to his late wife when the deadly struggle ensued.If only they’d known who Haing Ngor was and what he had been through.Maybe things would’ve turned out differently.Haing parlayed his fame from The Killing Fields into a successful career as a writer.A Cambodian Odyssey, which tells of his struggle to survive during Pol Pot’s regime, was released.However, just as Dith Pran traveled through the jungle to a Red Cross camp in the film, so too did Ngor in real life.After Ngor was murdered, many in southern California’s Cambodian community made claims on his wealth, including one woman who said she was his wife.His younger brother got most of his assets in Cambodia, while lawyers received the bulk of Ngor’s American wealth, fighting off illegitimate claims.Although Ngor’s killers were known members of a gang, and all had criminal records, their defense lawyers argued, with no supporting evidence, that the murder was a Khmer Rouge revenge assassination.In a final ironic twist to a life that was full of many twists, the three killers were convicted on April 16, 1998, which also happened to be the day that dictator Pol Pot’s death was announced.Memorializing Those Who Gave AllLike most people, Americans proudly build and showcase memorials to their heroes.And as history continues to be made, new monuments are erected to memorialize the contributions that men and women have made to the process.So, in 1981, the federal government announced that it would have a national competition to decide the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.In case you don’t know, Athens is located in the heart of Ohio, which is in the heart of America.You can’t get any more American than Athens, Ohio.And that’s how Maya Lin saw herself as she grew up, even stating in an interview that she basically didn’t even realize I was Chinese, until she got older, adding, I was a kid from Ohio.Lin would later develop an interest in Chinese and Asian architecture, but during her formative years, she focused on learning the foundations of design and architecture and doing well in school.Lin did well in her classes and dedicated most of her time to her studies, as she had in high school.However, she was still very cognizant of the changes that were taking place in the United States.In 1980, America elected Ronald Reagan, who led the country on a different path.Under Reagan, patriotism was cool again and those who died fighting for their country were to be given places of honor.Designing the WallWhen Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, the United States was experiencing a minor cultural shift.Traditions such as honoring veterans.The Vietnam War may not have been the costliest American war in terms of lives lost, but it was perhaps the most polarizing conflict since the Civil War.Families were divided over support or opposition to the war, so when it finally ended in 1975, many Americans wanted to forget about it.And forget about it they did until Reagan came into office.The Reaganism of the ‘80s was a conservative philosophy that wanted to uphold the men and women who fought in America’s wars.It also didn’t hurt that the baby boomers who fought in Vietnam were by then voting and were also becoming part of the power structure.So, in early 1981, the government decided to commission a contest to decide the design of the monument.At stake was $20,000, but even more important was the prestige of having your name associated with a piece of American history.More than 2,000 people registered for the initial competition but only 1,421 officially submitted designs.Among them was an unknown designer/architect named Maya Lin.As Lin took a vigorous course load at Yale, she heard about the contest and decided to give it a try.Although she was confident in her abilities, she knew she was up against some pretty stiff competition.The apex where the panels meet is just over ten feet tall.From the middle, both walls gradually taper until they are just eight inches on either end.The walls were to be built into the ground.As Lin later said, the Memorial was to resemble a wound in the earth that is slowly healing.The focal point of the monument was the names of every serviceman, and eight women, who died in the Vietnam War inscribed on the panels.In May 1981, a Marine colonel came to Lin’s dorm room to announce that she had won the contest.But not long after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened to the public in 1982, it became clear to everyone how poignant it is.It was a war that most Americans still have a difficult time understanding, but the feelings that the monument brings out in those who view it have universal appeal.Lin went on to have a successful career in design and architecture, designing the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama as well as numerous other buildings and works of Footer&af_web_dp=http://sustainabubble.blogspot.com art.Obviously, for me home is Athens, Ohio, in America, but at the same time, in my 20s and 30s, I realized how much my aesthetic is influenced by my parents’ aesthetics.And how much were they influenced by the fact that they were born and raised in Shanghai and Beijing?Today, millions of Americans of all backgrounds view Maya Lin as a true heroine for setting in stone the memories of those who gave their all in the Vietnam War.One of the most noticeable elements of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial is the three bronze soldier statues known as The Three Soldiers.Lin did not design this piece and was initially against having it installed in front of the memorial.A compromise was finally reached in 1984 where the statues would be placed to the side of the walls.Although the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial doesn’t stylistically look much like most of the other monuments in Washington, one of its walls looks toward the Washington Monument and the other to the Lincoln Memorial, giving it a sense of symmetry and belonging in the monumental landscape.Lin had two daughters with Wolf, India and Rachel.MiyagiIf you grew up in the 1970s or ‘80s, you no doubt remember seeing Noriyuki Morita on the small and big screens.Who is Noriyuki Morita, you’re probably wondering?How about Pat Morita?A Rough StartNoriyuki Pat Morita was born in 1932 in the Sacramento, California area to Japanese immigrant parents.And most of the chaos was out of Morita’s control.Morita suffered from spinal tuberculosis from the age of two until he was 11, spending most of that time in hospitals.The situation led Morita to look inward and find his voice.Young Pat Morita was a comedic hit with his family and anyone who met him, but unfortunately for him and nearly every person of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, 1943 proved to be a bad year.It ordered more than 112,000 people of Japanese ancestry, including generational Americans, out of the West Coast and into internment camps.When Morita was finally released from the hospital in 1943, he was sent to live with his family in internment camps in Arizona and California.Needless to say, living in the internment camps was a tough experience.However, the Morita family stayed together and when the war ended, they returned to Sacramento to run a Chinese restaurant.The situation would later provide grist for Morita’s career as a standup comedian and inspiration for some of his acting roles.It also wouldn’t be the last time Morita played the part of a Chinese person.The death of the Morita patriarch shook the family, and although Pat continued to run the family restaurant with his mother Momoe, it was soon time for him to move on.Making it BigAs was expected of him, Pat Morita was a good son to his parents.Morita worked several jobs in the ‘50s and ‘60s and became quite successful in California’s booming aerospace industry.But no matter where Morita went, or whatever he did, he was always cracking jokes and making people smile.People told him he should try his luck in standup comedy, and after he did a small gig at a Sacramento nightclub, he was hooked.Morita took the name Pat but kept his last name to emphasize both his Asian and American heritage.The small clubs of northern California weren’t the place to make it big, though, so Morita took other comedians’ advice by taking his act to the Los Angeles area.He found the Hollywood lifestyle to his liking, but it came at the expense of developing a drinking problem, and it cost him his first marriage.But by the late 1960s, he was also getting noticed by some pretty important people.Redd Foxx, who was already legendary at that time, took Morita under his wing and mentored him on the entertainment industry and life in general.Morita opened up for Foxx’s act, which in turn, opened many professional doors for him.By the early 1970s, though, Morita didn’t need to go to Foxx or anyone else for money.Miyagi, a lonely Japanese American martial arts master who mentors the main character on karate and life.Miyagi and in many ways, he stole the show.Ngor won the award that year.In many ways, it’s how he’s best remembered.Pat Morita died in 2005 at the age of 73, but he left a powerful, lasting legacy.Pat Morita was married three times.He had one daughter, Erin, with his first wife, Kathleen Yamachi.He had two daughters, Aly and Tia, with his second wife, Yukiye Kitahara.He married Evelyn Guerrero in 1994 and remained married to her until he died.Miyagi, Morita wasn’t skilled in karate and only learned enough for his roles.Although Aly Morita believes that Pat was typecast after The Karate Kid, he did appear in 100 more roles after the first film in the franchise.According to the film, Morita battled alcoholism for most of his adult life, which may have contributed to his health problems.Breaking Sports BarriersYou’ve probably heard the saying that there’s nothing more American than baseball and apple pie, right?Well, you could also say that there’s nothing more Japanese than baseball and sushi.When Japan opened to the world in 1868 and ushered in what is known as the Meiji Era, the country rapidly transformed into a modern industrial, economic, and military power.One outside influence that the Japanese (木) 02:58:00url=http://sustainabubble.blogspot.com quickly adopted was the very American sport of baseball.The war also damaged relations between the Japanese and the Americans, sowing distrust in a generation of people from both nations.Wally Yonamine may not be a household name, but he should be.After playing in the American minors for several years, Yonamine brought his skills to the burgeoning Japanese professional baseball leagues.Yonamine changed many aspects of the way baseball was played in Japan, but perhaps most important was how he served as a symbol of peace and renewed friendship between the American and the Japanese peoples.Although Wally’s parents, father Matsusai and mother Kikue, were Japanese born, they raised him to be 100% American.Yonamine didn’t learn Japanese until he moved to Japan as an adult and he was quick to point out that he never liked sushi and wasn’t much of a fan of Japanese food in general.It was clear to Matsusai that his young son was extremely athletically talented.He arranged for Wally to attend high school in Honolulu, where he could attract attention from universities and professional scouts.But the war ultimately put a damper on Yonamine’s dream to play college ball.
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