Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month - a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. 

In 1977 Representative Frank Horton of New York introduced a bill to proclaim the first ten days in May as Pacific/Asian American Heritage Week. In the same year, Senator Daniel Inouye introduced a similar resolution. On October 5, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the bill.

During the next decades, presidents passed annual proclamations for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week until 1990 when Congress expanded the observance to a month in 1990. In 1992, Congress designated May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the track were Chinese immigrants. 

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