Historic and Cultural Sites — RESILIENT PANDA -Discovering Asian American History with Kids

Asian American and Pacific Islander Historic and Cultural Sites

Sites are listed by US State or Territory

We wanted to compile a list of sites to make it easy to get out and discover Asian American and Pacific Islander history with kids!

This list is very much still a work in progress -please let us know if there is a site in your area that is not on this list!

Even if it is a local museum that has a small permanent exhibit on local AANHPI history, we want to know about to include it in this list. It shows how widespread AANHPI Americans have been in the US’s history and we want to help these stories be seen!

Alabama

Alaska

Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park - Skagway

Arizona

Arizona Heritage Center at Papago Park - Tempe - Permanent exhibit about the Japanese American incarceration camps in Arizona.

Arizona Historical Society - Tucson - Small exhibit with artifacts on the history of Chinese in Southern Arizona.

Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, Tucson - local history displays

Rose Tree Museum, Tombstone - Chinese artifacts

Poston Memorial Monument and Museum of the Colorado River Indian Tribes - Parker. Poston was one of the largest Japanese American incarceration sites, and like others was on Native land.

Gordon Hirabayashi Campground, Mt. Lemmon - Campground and hiking trails on the site of a WWII prisoner work camp where conscientious objectors were imprisoned. Dr. Hirabayashi was one of them, a Christian pacifist who defied the curfews and relocation order for Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

Arkansas

WWII Japanese American Internment Museum - McGehee. Nearby you can visit the site of the Rohwer Incarceration Center.

California

Vietnamese Heritage Museum - Garden Grove

Tule Lake National Monument - Northern California. The largest incarceration site for Japanese Americans in WWII.

Angel Island Immigration Station State Park - San Fransisco

The Chinese Laundry Building, near Yosemite’s Pioneer History Center - Yosemite

Presidio - San Fransisco. The Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center at the Presidio has exhibits about the secret WWII Japanese Language school for Japanese American soldiers, and about their incarcerated families. The Presidio was also the headquarters of the Western Defense Command, from which the evacuation orders came.

Chinese Historical Society of America - San Fransisco

History San Jose - San Jose. Migrant worker housing for Filipino, Chinese, Japanese Americans from the early 20th Century can be seen.

Chinese American Historical Museum at the Ng Shing Gung - San Jose.

Manzanar National Historic Site - like most incarceration camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, it is in the middle of nowhere. Mazanar is about equidistant between Los Angles, Reno, and Las Vegas.

First Landing of Filipinos in the Continental United States historic marker - 1587 - Moro Bay.

Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho statue at the site of the Pachappa Camp, the first Koreatown - Riverside

Fresno County Historical Museum - Fresno - Hmong American and Sikh American exhibits

Vietnamese Heritage Museum - Santa Ana

Filipino American National Historical Society Museum - Stockton

Locke Historic District - Sacramento County - Largest and most intact historic remnants of a rural Chinatown in the United States.

Japanese American National Museum - Los Angeles

Chinese American Museum - Los Angles

Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum - Long Beach

San Diego Chinese Historical Museum - San Diego

Colorado

Amache National Historic Site/ Granada Relocation Center - Granada. There are original and reconstructed building from this WWII incarceration site for Japanese Americans in SE Colorado. There is also a museum which is open by appointment only.

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Morikami Museum and Gradens - Delray Beach. The permanent collection contains items from Yamato Colony, an experimental farming community of Japanese Americans started in 1903 near Boca Raton. One member of the colony, George Morikami, donated the land for this museum.

Lue Lim Gong Memorial Grove at the West Volusia Historical Society - DeLand. - Gong developed a new variety of cold-resistant orange that greatly helped the Florida orange industry.

Georgia

Hawai’i

Hawai’i Plantation Village -Oahu

Bishop Museum - Oahu

Honolulu Museum of Art - Oahu

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Heritage Center - Oahu

Iolani Palace - Oahu. The only official Royal Residence in the United States, this was the home of the Kingdom of Hawai’i’s monarchs.

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Park - Maui

Haleakalā National Park - Maui

Kalalupapa National Historical Park - Molokai

Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail - Hawai’i Island (the “Big Island”)

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park - Hawai’i Island

Lyman Museum and Mission House - Hilo, Hawai’i Island. The Island Heritage Gallery has Native Hawai’ian history, along with the stories of Asian and European immigrant groups. There is an interactive center where children (and adults) can have fun!

Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site - Hawai’i Island, Kona side.

Idaho

Pon Yom House, Idaho City

Minidoka National Historic Site- between Jerome and Twin Falls. Incarceration camp for Japanese Americans in WWII.

Illinois

National Indo-American Museum -Lombard (near Chicago)

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Manila Village- Jean Lafitte (near New Orleans)

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Peabody Essex Museum’s Yin Yu Tang House -Salem A 200-year old Chinese home was moved to Massachusetts. There is a children’s book set here, Piece by Piece by Susan Tan and Justine Wong

Whitefield Manjiro Friendship House - Where the first Japanese immigrant lived with the whaling captain who rescued him from a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean in the mid 1800’s.

Montana

Michigan

Minnesota

Hmong Cultural Center - St. Paul

Mississippi

MS Delta Chinese Heritage Museum - Cleveland

Missouri

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

Filipino American Museum - New York City

Lower East Side Tenement Museum - New York City. They are recreating the homes of many immigrants in NYC, including Chinese families.

Museum of Chinese in America - New York City

North Carolina

Eng and Chang Bunker exhibit - Mount Airy

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Ohio

Oregon

Pendelton Underground- Pendelton -19th Century Chinese Americans built and underground “city” to shield them from anti-Chinese sentiment related problems.

Portland Chinatown Museum - Portland

Japanese American Museum of Oregon - Portland

Kam Wah Chung and Co. State Heritage Site - near John Day, Oregon

Pennsylvania

The American Chinese Museum - Philadelphia

The Philip Jaisohn House - Dr. Philip Jaisohn was the first Korean to become a US Citizen, the first Korean American to graduate from a US medical school, and a major figure in the quest for Korean democracy and independence.

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Elmwood Cemetery - Memphis. Hundreds of tombstones inscribed in Chinese characters are in a special section of this old cemetery.

Texas

Asian American Resource Center Exhibits -Austin

The Lung House - Austin. Founded in 1899, Joe Lung’s Cafe operated for decades, and it also served an unofficial community bank, especially for minority communities.

Utah

Golden Spike National Historic Park - Corinne - where the Transcontinental railroad was completed. Chinese American workers built much of the difficult Western section.

Topaz Museum -Delta. Tell the story of the Topaz incarceration site for Japanese Americans in WWII.

Central Utah Relocation Site (Topaz) - Delta (140 miles SW of Salt Lake City).

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

The Panama Hotel and Japanese American Museum of Seattle-The chapter book Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is set here.

Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park - A contemplative park to promote racial reconciliation near the site of the 1885 expulsion of Chinese from Tacoma.

The Wing Luke Museum - Seattle

Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial -Pritchard Park on Bainbridge Island