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The following is not an exhaustive list, and is provided here to give examples of Asian Pacific American firsts in their field.
Arts
Civics & Government
Education
Journalism
Military
Nobel Prize Winners
Sciences
Sports
ARTS
Anna May Wong
Mako
Toshiko Akiyoshi 1921 Chinese American Anna May Wong - first Asian American movie star with the movie Bits of Life
1957, 1963 Chinese American James Wong Howe - first Asian American to win two Academy Awards in cinematography
1965 Japanese American Mako - founded East West Players, the first Asian American theater in the U.S.
1973 Japanese American Seiji Ozawa - first person of Asian ancestry and youngest person to serve as director and conductor of Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of America's major orchestras
1978-1981 Japanese American Toshiko Akiyoshi - first woman in jazz history to be awarded the Best Arranger and Best Big Jazz Band by Down Beat Reader's Poll; received award for four consecutive years
1985 Cambodian American Haing Ngor - first Asian American to win an Academy Award for his role in the Killing Fields
1988 Chinese American Bradley Darryl Wong - first Asian American actor to receive awards from Actor's Equity, Theatre World, Outer Critics, and Drama Desk; won a Tony Award as best featured actor for his performance in M Butterfly
1994 Korean American and comedian Margaret Cho - first Asian American to star in her own television show, All-American Girl, a sitcom about a Korean American family
CIVICS & GOVERNMENT
Dalip Singh Saund
Wing Luke 1956 South Asian American Dalip Singh Saund - first Asian American to be elected to the U.S. Congress; forged a measure through Congress that allowed Indians to become U.S. citizens
1959 Chinese American Hiram Fong - first American of Asian descent to be elected to the U.S. Senate when he was chosen as Hawaii's first senator
1962 Benjamin Menor - first Filipino to serve in the U.S. legislature (Hawaii State Senate)
1962 Chinese American Wing Luke - first Asian American elected official in the Pacific Northwest when he became a Seattle City Council member
1965 Hawaiian and Japanese American Patsy Takemoto Mink - first Asian Pacific American woman elected to the U.S. Congress
1971 Korean American Herbert Choy - first Asian Pacific American appointed to be a judge in a federal court; first lawyer of Korean descent to practice law in the U.S.
1974 Japanese American George R. Ariyoshi - first American of Japanese descent to become governor or any state (Hawaii)
1985 Filipina American Irene Natividad - first Asian American woman to head a national women's organization (National Women's Political Caucus)
1987 South Asian American Joy Cherian - first Asian American appointed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Urvashi Vaid
Rep. Velma Veloria
Gov. Gary Locke
Sen. Paull Shin
Norm Mineta
1989 Chinese American Julia Chang Bloch - first Asian American ambassador in the history of the U.S. diplomatic core
1989 South Asian American Urvashi Vaid becomes the first lesbian of color to serve as Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
1990 Indian American Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli - first Asian American and Muslim ambassador to represent the U.S. at the United Nations; first Muslim senior government official appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate
1990 Daniel K. Akaka - first native Hawaiian to serve the U.S. Congress; 1993, worked to get a congressional joint resolution that formally apologized to Hawaiians for the 1893 overthrow of the islands' native government
1993 Filipina American Velma Veloria - first Asian American woman in the Washington State legislature
1995 Filipina American Sumi Sevilla Haru - first Asian American to head an international union (AFL-CIO)
1996 Chinese American Gary Locke - first Asian American governor on the U.S. mainland; 1993, first Asian American to head a county (King County, Washington) government in the U.S. mainland
1998 Japanese American Paul M. Igasaki was confirmed for a second term as Vice Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first Asian American to serve in this position.
1999 Korean America Paull Shin - first Asian American senator in Washington State
2000 Japanese American Norman Yoshio Mineta - first Asian American member of the U.S. presidential cabinet
2000 Chinese American Bill Lann Lee - first Asian American to head the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division
EDUCATION
1967 Japanese American Ron Takaki - joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to teach the school's first African American history course; helped found UCLA's centers for African American, Asian American, Chicano, and Native American studies
1989 Japanese American Alan Sugiyama - first Asian American elected to the Seattle Public School Board, governing the largest school district in Washington State
1990 Chinese American Chang-Lin Tien - first Asian American to head a major university when named the Chancellor of University of California, Berkeley
Aki Kurose
2000 Japanese American Aki Kurose - first Asian American woman to have a Seattle Public School, Washington State, named in her honor
2001 Japanese American Stephen H. Sumida of the University of Washington - first Asian American to become President-elect of the American Studies Association, a major organization that promotes the study of cultures, past and present
JOURNALISM
Huynh Cong Ut 1972 Huynh Cong Ut - first Vietnamese American to win the Pulitzer Prize for photography, the World Press Award, and gained recognition from the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, and Sigma Delta Chi, for his picture during the Vietnam War of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running down a dirt road-her naked body seared by napalm (incendiary chemical) accidentally dropped on her home in Tran Bang, Vietnam
1974 Japanese American Ken Kashiwahara and Connie Chung - first Asian Americans on the air in network news; 1993, Chung - first Asian American to bea nightly news anchor at a major network, CBS Evening News
1989 Filipino American Emil Guillermo - first Asian American to anchor a national radio program in the nation; 1989-1991 hosted National Public Radio's "All Things Considered"
MILITARY
1863 Chinese American William Ah Hang - one of the first Asian Americans to enlist in the U.S. Navy during Civil War
1942 U.S. War Department authorizes the first Filipino infantry battalion from among Filipino Americans
1942 Filipino Army Sgt. Jose Calugas - earns a Medal of Honor for heroism in the Philippines during World War II, among the first Filipinos to do so for services in World War II
1943 Korean American Colonel Young Oak Kim - first Asian American to command a combat battalion; to date, the most highly decorated Asian American soldier
1943 Wilbur Carl Sze - first Chinese American officer in U.S. Marine Corps
World War II 442nd Regimental Combat Team - made up of Japanese Americans who came out of the mainland concentration camps, was the most decorated unit of its size with seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations, 18,000 individual decorations, including a Congressional Medal of Honor, 47 distinguished Service Crosses, 350 Silver Stars, 810 Bronze Stars, and more than 3,600 Purple Hearts
General Shinseki 1984 Major General John Liu Fugh - first Chinese American to attain general officer status in the U.S. army
1993 Major General John R. D'Araujo, Jr. - the first Filipino American to be hold the rank of major general and the position of director of the Army National Guard Bureau
1998 Japanese American General Eric K. Shinseki assumes duties as the 28th ViceChief of Staff, to date the highest ranking Asian in the U.S. armed forces
NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
1957 Chinese Americans Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang - received the Nobel Prize for their work in particle physics
1968 Indian American and biochemist Har Gobind Khorana - shared the Nobel Prize for physiology/medicine for deciphering the genetic code and its role in the control of protein synthesis
1976 Chinese American Samuel C.C. Ting - shared the Nobel Prize for physics for discovering the existence of a new particle called j/psi
1983 Indian/Pakistani American and astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - shared the Nobel Prize for physics for his groundbreaking work that led to the discovery of black holes
1986 Taiwanese American Yuan T. Lee - shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work in the nature of chemical reactions
SCIENCES
1888 Philip Jaisohn - first Korean to become an American citizen; 1892 first Korean American to receive an American medical degree
1901 Japanese American and chemist Jokichi Takamine - isolated epinephrine (adrenaline), the first of the gland hormones to be discovered in pure form, from the suprarenal gland; this discovery advanced medicine and surgery in fundamental ways
1944 Chinese American An Wang - invented the magnetic core memory, which revolutionized computing and served as the standard method for memory retrieval and storage until the invention of the microchip in the 1960s
Dr. David Ho
Eugene Huu-Chau Trinh
Arati Prabhakar
1984 Chinese American Flossie Wong-Staal - first to clone an AIDS virus and work out its anatomy
1984 Taiwanese American Dr. David D. Ho - reported for the first time the "healthy carrier state" of HIV infection, which identified otherwise healthy individuals who tested positive for the virus but did not show any physical signs of the disease
1985 Japanese American and astronaut Ellison Onizuka - first Asian American in space
1992 Filipina American Dr. Lillian Gonzalez-Pardo - first Asian American woman to serve as president of the American Medical Woman's Association
1992 Astronaut Eugene Huu-Chau Trinh - first Vietnamese American to be on NASA's microgravity laboratory space shuttle mission, NASA's first long-duration flight
1993 South Asian American Arati Prabhakar - first Asian American director of The National Institute of Standards and Technology when appointed by President Clinton
SPORTS
Duke Kahanamoku
Sammy Lee
1912, 1920, 1924 Hawaiian American Duke Kahanamoku - dominated swimming events in three Olympic games, winning three gold and two silver medals; singularly popularized surfing world-wide during the 1920's
1948 Filipina American diver Victoria Manalo Draves - first woman to win Olympic gold medals in both the ten-meter platform and three-meter springboard events
1948, 1952 Korean American diver Dr. Sammy Lee - first male athlete to win two Olympic gold medals in the platform diving event
1984 Samoan American Greg Efthimios Louganis - first diver to break the 700-point mark; first man in 56 years to win Olympic springboard and platform diving titles at the same Olympics
1987 Samoan and Hawaiian American Salevaa Atisanoe "Konishiki" - first non-Japanese Sumo wrestler to reach the rank of ozeki (champion)
1989 Chinese American Michael Chang - at age 17, is the youngest male tennis player in the world to win the Grand Slam tournament and the first American man in 34 years to win the French Open
1990 Japanese American Tomia "Tommy" T. Kono - a three-time Olympic medallist, two of them gold, in weight-lifting, is inducted, (along with Sammy Lee), into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame
1992 Korean American Eugene Y. Chung - first Asian American drafted in the first round and the third Asian American to play the National Football League
National Organizations
Asha for Education
Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
Asian Pacific American Women's Leadership Institute
Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations
Committee of 100
Environmental Protection Agency's National Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative home page
Korean American Coalition
Leadership Education For Asian Pacifics
National Asian American Telecommunications Association
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC)
National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum
National Asian Women's Health Organization
National Federation of Filipino American Association
Organization of Chinese Americans
Southeast Asian Resource Action Center
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