Search the Media Repository

Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures

History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.

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  • Image
    The Adoptee Consciousness Model

    Developed by Susan F. Branco, JaeRan Kim, Grace Newton, Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter, and Paula O’Loughlin, the Adoptee Consciousness Model reflects the touchstones in an adoptee’s journey. It contrasts a linear model of “adoption is the best option” to questioning adoption processes.

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  • Image
    Transnational Adoptions From Korea

    This graph features the number of transnational adoptions from Korea from its origins in 1953 through 2004. Korean transnational adoption is still ongoing into 2025. Data from Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea.

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  • Video
    Geographies of Kinship Trailer

    Geographies of Kinship documents four adult adoptees as they return to their country of birth and recover lost personal histories. They question policies and become advocates for birth family and adoptee rights, support for single mothers, and historical reckoning.

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  • Video
    Universal Newsreel: Harry Holt Brings Korean War Orphans to Seattle

    On December 2, 1957, Universal Newsreel released footage of Harry Holt bringing eighty Korean orphans to Seattle, Washington.

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  • Image
    American Family with Adopted Korean Son

    More than two hundred thousand Korean children have been adopted into other countries since the end of the Korean War in 1953, with roughly two-thirds of these children arriving in the United States.

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  • Image
    Ui Chin & Robert Smith Family Wedding Portrait

    Korean brides became an anchor for a burgeoning Korean American population. After the 1965 Immigration Act introduced family reunification, Korean American women sponsored their families to migrate to the US.

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  • Image
    Korean Demilitarized Zone

    The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula. It serves as a buffer zone between North and South Korea as a result of the division at the 38th parallel after Japan’s surrender in WWII.

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  • Text
    Distinguishing Between Japanese and Chinese People

    LIFE magazine (Dec 1941) used offensive racial distinctions to differentiate between Japanese and “friendly” Chinese allies. While Koreans did not identify as either, they were often mistaken as “enemy aliens” and subject to verbal abuse and even physical violence.

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  • Image
    Mary Paik Lee And Family

    Mary Paik Lee; her husband, HM Lee; and son, Henry, in Anaheim, California, in 1926. The Hawaiʻi-based family would face racial discrimination and harassment in the wake of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

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  • Image
    The U.S. National Guard Tiger Brigade

    The US National Guard Tiger Brigade, pictured here in 1943, was formed by patriotic Korean American men ineligible to serve in the US military.

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  • Video
    The Korean Children’s Choir Visits the US

    The Korean Children’s Choir visited the United States in 1954 in an effort by both the Korean and American governments to promote adoption.

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  • Image
    Korean War Aftermath

    USAF Airmen give a helping hand in the aftermath of the Korean War. American families saw these images of Korean children and perceived them as in need of rescue.

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  • Image
    1992 Korean Pride Parade

    The Korean Pride Parade in the midst of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, also known as the Los Angeles uprising, included the presence of the National Guard.

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  • Image
    Korean Military Bride With Husband And Child

    Sergeant Morgan and wife “Blue,” pictured in LIFE magazine in 1951, were part of the second major wave of Korean immigration as American soldiers began relationships with Korean women, sometimes bringing them back to the United States and having multiracial children.

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  • Image
    1919 First Korean Congress in Philadelphia Meeting

    First Korean Congress in Philadelphia, April 1919. The goal of the meeting was to mobilize Koreans in the United States and win support from influential white Americans for the Korean independence cause.

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  • Image
    1911 Korean National Association of North America

    The Korean National Association of North America, pictured here at their 1911 meeting in Riverside, California, was an influential organization founded in support of promoting Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule.

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  • Video
    Pachappa Camp, America’s first Koreatown

    An early wave of Korean immigrants formed one of the first Korean American communities at Pachappa Camp in Riverside, California. Pachappa Camp is sometimes called “America’s first Koreatown.”

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  • Image
    Angel Island Immigration Station

    Two Korean women and a child dressed in traditional clothing at Angel Island Immigration Station. The Station, housed on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, was active between 1910 and 1940.

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  • Image
    Map of Lao Restaurants

    Lao-centered restaurants now stretch across the US from Morganton, North Carolina, to Wasilla, Alaska. The Lao Food Movement has become a way for Lao and Laotian Americans to shape their identity and presence in America since their resettlement in the late 1970s.

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  • Video
    Lao Food Movement

    Chef Seng Luangrath is known as the godmother of the Lao Food Movement for encouraging Laotian American chefs across the US to embrace and celebrate their heritage through cooking.

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