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First recorded arrival of Asian in the United States.
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U.S. and China sign first treaty
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Chinese miners arrive in Cal. after gold is discovered
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Over 20,000 Chinese enter California
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California passes a law to bar entry of Chinese and "Mongolians."
Chinese Exclusion Act -
California imposes a "police tax"
$2.50 a month on every Chinese -
Transcontinental railroad construction begins
Central Pacific Railroad Co. recruits Chinese workers -
Two thousand Chinese railroad workers strike for a week.
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Completion of first trancontinental railroad.
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"Gentlemen's Agreement"
Japan stops issuing passports to laborers desiring to emigrate to the U.S. -
Immigration Act denies entry to virtually all Asians.
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Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
United States enters World War II. -
Japanese Americans forced into camps
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 authorizing the secretary of war to delegate a military commander to designate military areas "from which any and all persons may be excluded" - primarily enforced against Japanese Americans. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, ushering in nuclear age.
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Japan surrenders, ending World War II.
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Korean War
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Immigration Law abolishes "national origins"
Asian countries now on an equal footing with others for the first time in U.S. history. -
More than 130,000 refugees enter the U.S. from Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos
as Communist governments are established there following the end of the Indochina War -
President Gerald Ford rescinds Executive Order 9066, 34 years after WWII.
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President George Bush signs into law an entitlement program to pay each surviving Japanese American internee $20,000.
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Asians surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants in the U.S. A
record 18.2 million Asians were recorded to be living in the U.S., making them the fastest-growing racial group in the country.