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.
Multimedia
Chapters
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Indonesians boarding a train in San Francisco for the immigration detention facility at Crystal City, Texas
In this 1947 photograph, Indonesian maritime workers carry their possessions for their train ride to a detention facility in Crystal City, Texas.
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Indonesian maritime workers making gamelan instrument
This gamelan instrument, likely made out of discarded materials from the ship, demonstrates the cultural practices of maritime workers in recreating objects that would remind them of their home in Indonesia.
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New York Times, December 21, 1945
This New York Times article from December 21, 1945, chronicles the Indonesian maritime workers who refused to work on ships transporting weapons and other armaments to suppress resistance against Dutch colonizers in Indonesia.
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Indonesian sailor during World War II
An Indonesian sailor at work maintaining a ship. These photos represent the importance of Indonesians as workers in the global economy, as well as the value of the maritime industry worldwide.
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Indonesian maritime workers during World War II
Two Indonesian maritime workers and the Dutch ship they worked on in the background during World War II.
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Indonesian merchant seamen during World War II
Indonesian merchant seamen during World War II. Because they are wearing more formal clothing, it is likely that this picture was taken during their leisure time.
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Bhairavi Desai and yellow-cab drivers, 1998
Co-founders of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, with Indian American Bhairavi Desai (center) and Pakistani American Javaid Tariq (third from left), in a photo from The New Yorker, captured in 1998.
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Photograph by Corky Lee (1947–2021)
Chinese American photographer Corky Lee (1947–2021) photographed his elderly uncle and his wife in their Chinatown apartment in 1981, as part of his project to show Asian Americans in their everyday lives.
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Vietnamese refugees await rescue
In the years following the Fall of Saigon, many refugees left Vietnam secretly in unseaworthy and overcrowded boats. This second wave of refugees became known as the “boat people.”
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Map of previously divided Vietnam
A map of previously divided Vietnam. The Việt Nam-American War (1955–1975), including adjacent wars in the former French colonies of Cambodia and Laos, ended with the withdrawal of US forces and the reunification of Vietnam.
