Since most of the men left their wives and families behind in China during the first few years, they sometimes made trips back to China to either check on their families or if they made permanent homes, to bring them to America.In these cases, the men had to keep their very distinct queue hairstyle, which was the front half of the head shaved bald and the back half uncut and tied in a braid.Well, the exotic look of the Chinese miners made them the object of scorn and the fact that they were competition meant that they were subject to assault, robbery, or even murder.So, to mitigate the language barriers and hostilities from other miners, the Chinese formed Chinatowns that catered to the needs of Chinese workers and they tended to work more communally for protection.Some had become successful Chinatown businessmen, a few had struck it rich in the gold and silver mines, while most were left looking for employment.They didn’t have to wait long, though.The Golden SpikeIn 1863, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads combined their resources to complete the first transcontinental railroad in North America.The ambitious plan called for the Central to work west from Omaha and meet the Pacific, which began in Sacramento, in Utah.It would cost plenty of money, take a lot of time, and consist of plenty of workers.At first, it wasn’t clear where the railroads would find the workers.It was tough and dangerous work and at only about $1 a day, the railroads weren’t paying much, even for that time.A fair number of Irish immigrants signed on, as did a spattering of Germans, Russians, Irish, and Americans, but it wasn’t enough to complete the endeavor as the railroad barons wanted.So, they looked to the Chinese immigrants.Some railroad barons thought that since the Chinese people had proved to be good miners, they could also be good railroad workers.But others thought they were too small and weak for the job.The Chinese workers proved to be more than fit for the task.Chinese men ended up comprising 90% of the railroad workforce, for a total of about 10,000 workers.The railroad owners initially hired them to save money by paying them far less than American or European workers, but when they saw they were also good workers, they began importing them.The Chinese population in America Footer&af_web_dp=http://headingonupwards.blogspot.com continued to grow in size due to immigration related to building the transcontinental railroad, but it also grew in influence.Possibly more than 1,000 Chinese railroad workers died completing the transcontinental railroad, which was a true sacrifice to the future of America.Although the contributions of the Chinese railroad workers were once overlooked, in more recent years researchers have noted that these men were true heroes.For the most part, these shows depicted the Chinese immigrants in a generally sympathetic, although sometimes stereotypical light.After the California gold rush faded in the late 1850s, many of the Chinese miners turned to agriculture or to work as domestic servants in the cities.The Chinese miners were quite mobile.When the Comstock Lode was discovered in Nevada in 1859, sparking a silver rush, many traveled there, and when gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874, Chinese miners soon followed.To protect themselves from violence from the outside, and to keep order within their communities, early Chinese Americans formed societies known as Tongs. The Tongs were originally benevolent, paternal societies, but in more recent decades, they have been accused of being involved in organized crime and more like a Chinese mafia than a cultural association.A Congressional FirstThe geographical and cultural status of Indians has been a point of debate and a subject in itself for decades in many countries.It’s true that India is in Asia, and therefore the people are considered Asians, but Indians clearly look different from East and Southeast Asians and are also culturally different.Hindi, the lingua franca of India, is related to European languages and is not connected to East Asian languages, and India has a unique history that has probably influenced East Asia more than East Asia has influenced it.After all, Buddhism, which most people associate with East Asia, originated in India.In the United Kingdom, Indians and Pakistanis, as well as most Arabs for that matter, are referenced to as Asians, while in the United States and Canada, Indians are considered Asian by the government, but the average person generally thinks of Asians as being East or Southeast Asian.With all of that said, Indians have encountered many of the same trials as East Asians when they arrived in the United States and have produced their share of heroes as well.Also, unlike the early Chinese immigrants, the Indians usually moved with their families.Many of these early Indian immigrants worked in the timber industry of the Northwest and some worked alongside the Chinese on the railroads.Nearly all of the first wave of Indian immigrants were of the Sikh religion.Dalip Singh Saund was one such Sikh immigrant.Inspired by AmericaDalip Singh Saund was born in 1899 to a financially successful family in the Punjab region of India.From an early age, Saund’s primary interests were education and Indian liberation.Saund’s parents paid for his education, which he reciprocated by achieving good marks.The young Saund had a particular aptitude for science and mathematics, but when he wasn’t solving equations or formulas, he was reading up on history and political science.Like many young Indians of the time, Saund took a particular interest in the Indian independence movement.The vast country was still part of the British Empire, and when the British reneged on their promise to give independence to India after World War I, it sparked a mass liberation movement.Saund never really took part in any of the activism, but he did follow the lectures and speeches of Mohandas Gandhi.He also read up on Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and other early American leaders for inspiration.But doing so would be no easy task.American immigration laws at the time were very restrictive and favored Europeans.Saund’s only chance to live in America was to get a student visa, which he acquired when the University of California, Berkley accepted him into their agricultural program.Next, he had to convince his parents to allow him to leave.Saund’s family was considered progressive by the standards of the era, but still traditional when it came to big decisions, so he was expected to ask for permission to leave the country.Saund could have returned to India and taught or done research, but he instead chose to move to Southern California and work alongside thousands of other Indians in the fields of the Imperial Valley.Just like most immigrants of the era, Saund scrimped and saved until he earned enough to farm his own land, although he knew that farming would never be his lifelong vocation.Saund was at the time an ardent Indian nationalist, but he was also becoming more ingrained into American culture.He began spending much of his time in Los Angeles area libraries and gave lectures and speeches around Southern California about Indian nationalism, culture, and the place of Indians in American society.It was at one of these lectures where he met his future wife, Marian Kosa.Kosa was a Czechoslovakian immigrant, and although of a different nationality and religion to Saund, she shared with him a similar immigrant story.The couple married in 1928 and later had three children.Taking OfficeDalip Saund had big political aspirations.But the government at the time didn’t concur.Many thought Saund was joking when he announced his plans to run for the office of Justice of the Peace in Westmoreland township, California in 1950, but they were more than surprised when he won.The result was overturned, though, when it was revealed that Saund had been a citizen for less than one year, which made him ineligible.Undeterred, Wars - tic tac too flash game. Saund ran for the post again and won.Saund’s challenger in the Democratic primary questioned his loyalty and Americanness, but by that time the Judge had built enough of a coalition to push through that issue.The real question would be if he could defeat his Republican challenger, Jacqueline Odlum.It was the era of Eisenhower and the California electorate was much whiter and more conservative than it is currently, yet Saund still beat Odlum by more than 3,000 votes.Dalip Saund served three terms in Congress before a severe stroke left him debilitated and unable to campaign in the 1962 election.Although Saund left public life after losing the 1962 election, he left a lasting and important legacy on the American cultural and political landscapes.He opened the door for others of Indian and Asian ancestry to run for political office and showed that sometimes one person really can change things.Saund’s tuition was paid for by the Stockton, California Gurdwara.A gurdwara is essentially a Sikh temple or church, and the Stockton Gurdwara is the oldest and first gurdwara in the United States.While in graduate school, Saund spent his summers working in canneries and even made his way into management with a company.In the 1700s, the Sikh Guru Gobind Singh mandated that all male Sikhs take the name.Saund’s political positions were fairly moderate for the period but would probably be considered conservative by today’s standards.After farming for more than 20 years Saund started a fertilizer business in Westmorland while living with his family near Los Angeles.During that period, he commuted about 1,000 miles a week.We may briefly think about how taxes are paid and how our governments function, but very few of us spend much time contemplating how atoms interact, how cells divide, or the limits of the universe.And let’s face it, most of us probably don’t have the patience either.When it comes to science, unless you’re a scientist, most of us just don’t understand what’s being said.When the average scientist speaks, it may as well be in an alien language to most of us.Born in California to immigrant parents from Japan, Kaku was fortunate enough to avoid the internment camps and to be raised in a family that nurtured his natural curiosity and desire to learn.Michio Kaku determined that he would make complex scientific (木) 03:00:43url=http://headingonupwards.blogspot.com concepts and theories understandable and even fun.It definitely wasn’t an easy endeavor, but most would agree that based on the popularity of his shows and the emergence of other popular scientists, Kaku’s mission has been a success.Like so many young people in the camps, Kaku’s parents met, fell in love, and had Michio’s older brother in the camp before they were all released.Fortunately for Michio, his parents shielded him from the pain of even knowing about the internment camps until he was a little older.For him, life was fairly easy growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, as his parents indulged his natural scientific curiosities.By the time he was a teen, Kaku had developed a particular affinity for physics.He voraciously read anything on the subject of physics, became an acolyte of Einstein’s theories, and began conducting experiments of his own at home.He created a small particle accelerator in his parent’s garage with the ultimate goal of creating antimatter.By the late 1960s, Kaku’s curiosity and hard work were starting to pay off.He graduated at the top of his physics class in 1968 and seemed destined to land a lucrative position with the government, a research lab, or at a top graduate school.But the Vietnam War was raging and Uncle Same needed bodies.After graduating, Kaku was no longer exempt from the draft, so when his number came up in 1968, he was obligated to report for service.Due to his education, Kaku thought he’d probably be assigned to a technical unit, although he soon found out that he would be just another grunt in the infantry.As he trained to fight and possibly become one of the 500 Americans who were dying in Vietnam in the late ‘60s, a bit of biology came to the future popular scientist’s aid.So, I wrote a letter to my draft board saying that I’m ‘not fit’ to be part of the infantry because there’s too much sugar in my blood, I’m borderline, not really diabetic, Kaku remembered in a 2014 interview.All of a sudden, it was as if a voice up there said, ‘I’m going to give you back your life.However, or whatever was behind the turn of events, Kaku made the most of it.Kaku was at the vanguard of string theory and quantum physics, yet something was missing.He believed science was the most important subject kids should learn, but it was usually at the bottom of any list.Kaku reasoned that a big part of the problem was its accessibility.Making Science FunFor guys like Michio Kaku, science and math come easy, but for most people, even most intelligent people, difficult scientific concepts can be hard to grasp.As Kaku did serious academic research and writing on physics in the 1970s and into the ‘80s, he began to see this inaccessibility as a problem.He reasoned that if the world in general, and the United States in particular, were to move forward, then young people would have to embrace science.So, Kaku decided to embark on a crusade to make science more interesting, understandable, and fun for the average person, particularly kids.Michio Kaku intended to make science cool.And making science cool to Generation X and beyond was no easy task.It was much easier for Bruce Lee to make martial arts cool than it was, or has been, for Kaku to make science cool, or even accessible.But if one person has been able to make strides in this regard it’s been Kaku.Kaku’s work has made him wealthy, and a cultural icon who’s easily recognizable with his now grey long hair.It’s no doubt been a good and fun ride for Kaku, but he’s adamant about what his goals are.In a 2014 interview, Kaku explained in detail how his mission is to ultimately raise scientific knowledge among American kids.I’ll go where people invite me because I want to try to excite young people to go into science.Science is the engine of prosperity, and we can’t create enough scientists, I think.To keep America prosperous and healthy and alive, we have to have more scientists and we have to have more engagement of young people.For example, we have one of the worst science educational systems in science known to science.It’s awful, Kaku said.Our high school kids scored dead last among the other industrialized nations.Our students scored a little bit above the students of Jordan in many math and science exams.That’s not sustainable.You cannot sustain a scientific establishment when we have one of the worst educational systems known to science, in high school.College, of course, makes up for it.Kaku’s parents and older brother were interned at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California during the war, which also happened to be one of the camps where Pat Morita and his family were interned.Beginning in the 1990s, Kaku began writing about Futurology, making some predictions that ultimately have come true.He wrote that in 2020 we’d be able to get on the internet with our eyeglasses and that personalized gene sequencing would be a reality.Heroine to Her PeopleYou probably know that Texas was for a time an independent nation, but did you know the same was true for Hawaii?Before Hawaii was a state, it was a territory, but long before it was a territory, it was the Hawaiian Kingdom.The British controlled most of the world, but the Americans were continually moving west under the philosophy of the Manifest Destiny, and once the North American frontier was conquered, many began looking out into the Pacific.Eventually, American military adventurists, industrialists, and expansionists set their eyes on the Hawaiian Islands.By the late 1800s, Hawaii had suffered a series of pandemics and was constantly being pressured by American interests.The culmination of these conflicts took place in 1887 when wealthy Americans and Hawaiians conspired to force the king to sign a new constitution at bayonet point, which earned the document the title The Bayonet Constitution.Those behind the coup argued that it benefited Hawaiians by disenfranchising the Asian landowners, but the truth was it kept the elites in power and gave them more land.With the royalty relegated to figureheads, the American and Hawaiian elites thought they could do as they wished.They didn’t consider Queen Liliuokalani.Privilege in ParadiseToday, the state of Hawaii is often referred to as a paradise because of its natural beauty, climate, and relatively isolated location.When the future Queen Liliuokalani was born as Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha in 1838 on the island of Oahu, great changes were taking place all around her.The French briefly conquered the islands in 1849, which was followed by a gradual increase in American and European influence.But for Liliuokalani, none of those things mattered much.She came from Hawaiian royalty and was educated in schools with other kids from her class.Liliuokalani’s teachers were Protestant missionaries, which is how she was introduced to the Christian faith that she devoutly followed for the rest of her life.Liliuokalani took an ecumenical approach to religion, helping to unite all Hawaiians who professed Christian beliefs, and it was her deep belief in faith that helped her through the difficult situations that she later faced.
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