Amidst coronavirus racism, Asian-American stories that history tried to forget highlighted in new television series

Five-part PBS series ‘Asian Americans’ highlights milestones in their history with the help of scholars, historians and artists

Narrated by stars including Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita, it comes at a time of rising anti-Asian violence and harassment in America

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“Asian Americans” producer Renee Tajima-Pena says she feels the series, on Asian-Americans in US history, is starting a whole new conversation. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:00am, 16 May 2020Updated: 9:53am, 16 May 2020

Like many immigrant children, Daniel Dae Kim didn’t learn of the hard-won American dream that brought his parents to the United States until later in life. He was a teenager when they told him their story – one that resembled those chronicled in a new five-part docuseries Asian Americans, a programme spanning 150 years that couldn’t arrive at a more timely moment.

His parents described how, when he was one, they came to the US from South Korea with just US$200. Eventually, the family settled in the state of Pennsylvania. “From that, they built a whole life for themselves and raised three happy, healthy children, one of whom who is fortunate enough to speak to you right now,” said Kim, known for his roles on TV shows Lost and Hawaii Five-0.

Tamlyn Tomita was a junior high student in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, when she learned that America had jailed 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including US-born Japanese-American citizens, during World War II. The Joy Luck Club actress would later launch her career with The Karate Kid Part II and help tell stories of internment on screen.

On that day, she asked her father, a Los Angeles police department officer: did this happen to you?

“He said, ‘Yes’,” Tomita remembered. “I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’”

Daniel Dae Kim (right) and Grace Park in a still from Hawaii Five-0. Photo: CBS