Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
May 21, 1979 The U.S Air Force (USAF), in a key victory for a group of American women who had flown planes in support of their country during World War II, officially recognized the active military status of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during that global conflict and issued honorable discharges to those aviators.... Continue Reading →
May 18, 1997 The STS-84 spaceflight mission was very much in progress three days after its seven-member crew lifted off from John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on board Space Shuttle Atlantis. This mission was part of the Shuttle-Mir Program, a collaborative effort between the United States and Russia that included having American... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Ben Kuroki was born in Gothenburg, Nebraska. His parents were Japanese immigrants. Kuroki grew up in the Cornhusker State, graduating from high school in 1936. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kuroki’s father encouraged both him and his brother Fred to join the U.S. military. The brothers were turned down... Continue Reading →
In the midst of World War II, U.S. Navy Commander Gordon Paiʻea Chung-Hoon (1910-1979) took over command of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Sigsbee in the Pacific Theater. Chung-Hoon, who was born in Honolulu to a Chinese-English-Hawaiian father and a Hawaiian mother, had made history in 1934 as the first Asian American/Pacific Islander graduate of the... Continue Reading →
The Los Angeles Times highlighted an important but increasingly overlooked aviation pioneer from the World War II era. Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese-American woman to fly in support of U.S. military efforts, and the article in the Los Angeles Times focused on a 1944 letter from her to one of her still-surviving relatives.... Continue Reading →
In a ceremony at the U.S. Labor Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., approximately 12,000 Chinese immigrant laborers were inducted into the Labor Hall of Honor for their work on the First Transcontinental Railroad during the 1860s. These laborers were the first Asian Americans to be inducted into the Hall of Labor since its establishment in... Continue Reading →
Manjirō Nakahama became the first known Japanese immigrant to the United States when he arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on board the American whaleship John Howland. He was only 16 at the time. Manjirō had been a fisherman in the coastal village of Naka-no-hama on Shikoku, one of Japan’s four main islands. His life underwent... Continue Reading →
In the spring of 1985, Taylor Gun-Jin Wang became the first Chinese-American to travel into outer space. Wang had been born in the Jiangxi Province of southeast China in 1940. He and his family moved to Taiwan in 1952, and he graduated from the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan University in Taipei. Wang... Continue Reading →
Lawrence Kiyoshi “Larry” Shinoda, who was born in Los Angeles in 1930 to Japanese immigrants, became a highly acclaimed automotive designer. His father died when he was only 12, and not long after that, he and various surviving members of his family were interned with other Japanese-Americans at the relocation camp at Manzanar, California, that... Continue Reading →
Rose Lok achieved nationwide fame as a Chinese-American aviation pioneer during the 1930s. Lok, who was born in China in 1912, immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. They settled in a home on Tyler Street in Boston. By the time she was 20, Lok had developed a strong interest in... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 