[News] Spying on the Asian American Movement: The FBI files 1960s and 1970s
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Sat Feb 27 13:18:12 EST 2021
Spying on the Asian American Movement: The FBI files 1960s and 1970s
By Eddie Wong.
https://eastwindezine.com/spying-on-the-asian-american-movement-the-fbi-files-1960s-and-1970s/
<https://eastwindezine.com/spying-on-the-asian-american-movement-the-fbi-files-1960s-and-1970s/>
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” a drama directed by Shaka King, and
“MLK/FBI,” a documentary directed by Sam Pollard, both recently
released and available online, shed light on the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) and local police tactics to monitor,
disrupt, and destroy organizations dedicated to the liberation
of Black people. The FBI threatened to destroy the reputation
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, by releasing wiretapped conversations
that revealed aspects of his private life and political
affiliations with leftists . In the case of Fred Hampton,
chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, an
FBI informant provided a blueprint of Hampton’s apartment that
was used in a Chicago Police Department raid on Dec. 4, 1969 in
which Hampton and Mark Clark, a Panther member, were shot
multiple times and killed.
Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
News about the FBI’S Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)
broke in March 1971 after activists broke into the FBI office in
Media, Pennsylvania and liberated 1,000 pages of memos and
reports, which were widely circulated to the press. The
/Washington Post/ published a front-page story revealing the
FBI’s covert operations against progressive organizations. In
1975, Sen. Frank Church convened hearings to review the work of
the FBI, CIA, IRS and other agencies which were involved on
spying upon U.S. citizens. By then, the FBI had amassed
thousands of pages on the anti-war movement and civil rights and
national liberation movements. Feminist organizations and the
nascent environmental movement also faced FBI scrutiny.
_Roots of the FBI’s interest in the Asian American Movement_
The FBI’s monitoring of the Asian American movement was noted by
William Wei in “The Asian American Movement” (Temple University
Press, 1993), Chapter Seven: The Emergence and Eclipse of Maoist
Organizations. However, interest heightened with the
publication of “Subversives: the FBI’s War on Student Radicals
and the Reagan’s Rise to Power” by Seth Rosenfeld in 2012. Ten
pages of the book are devoted to Richard Aoki, a leader in the
Asian American Political Alliance at UC Berkeley and a member of
the Black Panther Party. Rosenfeld said that Aoki had been an
FBI informant since the early 1960s. The subsequent release of
212 pages of FBI memos on Aoki by author Rosenfeld dispelled any
doubt that this revered Asian American activist had been
reporting on the Socialist Workers Party, Black Panther Party,
the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), which was founded
at UC Berkeley in 1968, and the Third World Liberation Front,
which led the UC Berkeley student strike to establish ethnic
studies departments.
Rosenfeld’s book, however, did not focus much on Aoki’s service
to the FBI vis a vis the Asian American movement. A partial look
at the FBI’s spying on the Asian American movement is now
available online at vault.fbi.gov <http://vault.fbi.gov> under
the file “Asian American Political Alliance.” The 1,663 pages of
memos are broken out haphazardly in four pdfs with some
documents repeated several times with minor marking changes. The
memos are not in chronological order and jump from city to city.
Richard Aoki holding Yellow Peril sign at Free Huey rally, Oakland, CA.
The FBI describes the files in the following manner: “The Asian
American Political Alliance was a protest group formed at the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. This release covers
the FBI investigation of the group and its leaders from 1969
through 1972. The FBI was especially interested in the contact
the group or its members had with Chinese communists abroad.”
This description dovetails with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s
obsession with radical leftist movements that dates back to 1919
when he headed the Palmer Raids for the Department of Justice.
Those raids in 33 cities targeted 4,000 anarchists, radicals,
socialists, and communists who were gaining support in the
post-WWI era of skyrocketing prices, worker exploitation, and
racial unrest. Over 300 radicals were deported, and thousands
were arrested.
Monitoring of Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans by local
police red squads and federal immigration and security agencies
dates back to the 1930s. Most notably lists of Japanese
community leaders compiled by the Office of Naval Intelligence
and the War Department’s Intelligence Division were used by the
FBI to round up the Issei leaders immediately after the bombing
of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Historian H.M. Lai wrote about
the harassment of progressives in the Chinese American community
as the Korean War began and on through the McCarthy era in his
1972 essay, A Historical Survey of Organizations of the Left
Among the Chinese in America.
<http://hiaw.org/defcon1/leftchineseamerica.html>
_In the wake of COINTELPRO_
The FBI’s preface fails to mention the other key reason AAPA was
being monitored, i.e., the support Asian American groups were
giving to the Black Panther Party. The FBI’s extensive
monitoring of the Black liberation Movement via the COINTELPRO
was spelled out in this August 25, 1967 memo to all field offices:
/The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to
expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize
the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and
groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and
supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and
civil disorder. . . The pernicious background of such groups,
their duplicity, and devious maneuvers must be exposed to public
scrutiny where such publicity will have a neutralizing effect.
Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to
recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated. . . Many
individuals currently active in black nationalist organizations
have backgrounds of immorality, subversive activity, and
criminal records. Through your investigation of key agitators,
you should endeavor to establish their unsavory backgrounds./
When I looked at the list of organizations on the FBI’s list, I
gasped at the broad strokes the FBI used. Any group advocating
for civil rights was placed under the “Black nationalist-Hate
Groups/Internal Security” category. “Intensified attention under
this program should be afforded to the activities of such groups
as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement,
the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial
Equality, and the Nation of Islam,” said the FBI.
The FBI’s fixation on identifying leaders of movements of racial
justice was delineated as Goal #2 in the memo: “Prevent the rise
of a “messiah” who could unify and electrify the militant black
nationalist movement…King could be a very real contender for
this position should he abandon his supposed “obedience” to
“white, liberal doctrines” (nonviolence) and embrace black
nationalism. “ Less than a year later, Dr. King would be
assassinated in Memphis after speaking on behalf of striking
Black sanitation workers.
Poster of the MLK/FBI documentary by Sam Pollard.
The late 1960s were certainly a volatile time. It’s hard to
describe to my daughter, who is now in her early 30s, what it
felt like to be young in 1967 and 1968 when so many truisms and
norms about obedience to the status quo were being challenged.
There was a sense of rebellion but also a joyous exuberance
towards breaking the chains. Millions of people were in the
streets in 1967 and 1968 protesting the Vietnam War and fighting
against racist oppression. The feminist movement challenged
sexism. Pop culture energized pro-Black liberation and “peace,
love, and happiness” mantras. As much as we embraced the new
songs of freedom, the authorities saw this uprising as a threat
to white supremacy and capitalist rule. The FBI would serve as
the hammer to smash the insurgence.
Marchers surround the Pentagon. WDC 1967.
_The FBI focus on AAPA_
These files, located at
vault.fbi.gov/asian-american-political-alliance
<http://vault.fbi.gov/asian-american-political-alliance>, just
cover a fraction of the FBI monitoring of the Asian American
Movement. There are separate files on individuals and
organizations that can only be accessed by a Freedom of
Information Act and Privacy Act requests. I’ll leave it to other
researchers and writers to look into the FBI files on the Red
Guard Party, I Wor Kuen, Chinese Progressive Association, Asian
Community Center, Wei Min She, Kalayaan Collective, Katipunan ng
mga Demokratikong Pilipino/Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP),
East Wind Collective, Asian Americans for Action, Asian Study
Group, Workers’ Viewpoint Organization, Asian Americans for
Equality and other groups.
The FBI saw AAPA-UC Berkeley as the prime driver in spreading
radical ideas among the Asian American communities. AAPA
convened several Asian American Movement conferences and sent
speakers to colleges throughout California and to New York.
Other groups such as the Intercollegiate Chinese for Student
Action, the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor, and
AAPA-SF, which formed the Asian wing of the 1968 San Francisco
State Strike, also energized Asian American students and
community members. But it was AAPA-Berkeley and its extensive
work among colleges and in San Francisco Chinatown that are the
focus of this collection of FBI files.
Identifying AAPA’s leaders and tracking the organization’s work
was mostly accomplished through the use of informants and
citations from AAPA’s newsletters and press coverage of forums
and events. The files also mention electronic surveillance and
personal surveillance, but in the main, the FBI used several
informants, citing their separate observations, as a means to
corroborate information on AAPA.
AAPA members L. Ling-chi Wang, Harvey Dong, and Lillian Fabros
wrote eloquently about AAPA’s work in “Mountain Movers –
Student Activism & The Emergence of Asian American Studies,”
(2019 UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press). Lillian Fabros
recalled that “during the summer of 1968,Yuji (Ichioka) was
spearheading an effort to repeal the 1950 McCarran Internal
Security Act and wanted AAPA members to sit out in Sproul Plaza
on campus to collect signatures. Yuji and I had intense
discussions about the Japanese American concentration camps. I
said to him, ‘The Japanese invaded the Philippines and had real
concentration camps, not at all what Japanese Americans
experienced in America. ‘ We talked about the differences
between Japanese Americans and the Japanese, and about the
common struggles of Asian Americans. If Japanese Americans
could be incarcerated, maybe other Asian Americans could too.
Ultimately, I wound up sitting at the table in Sproul Plaza,
encouraging people to support repealing the McCarran Act.”
AAPA’s numerous projects are described in those personal
reflections. Quite unintentionally, the FBI files provide an
archive of AAPA’s statements via flyers, newsletters and press
coverage. The direct and passionate declarations displayed in
AAPA’s October 1969 newspaper speak to AAPA’s appeal to
thousands of students. I count myself as one of them. At the
time, I was a freshman at UCLA and active with others to fight
for an Asian American Studies program and protest the Vietnam
War. Going to UC Berkeley to attend AAPA conferences was
thrilling. There was that powerful realization of oneness that
comes with forging a collective identity fused around common
principles. Thus, AAPA’s principles resonated deeply. The
following excerpts were cited in the FBI files:
/The Asian American Political Alliance is people. It is a
people’s alliance to effect social //and political changes. We
believe that the American society is historically racist and one
//which has systematically employed social discrimination and
economic imperialism, both domestically and internationally,
exploiting all non-white people in the process of building up
their affluent society…/
/The goal of AAPA is political education and advancement of the
movement among Asian //people, so that they may make all
decisions that affect their own lives, in a society that// never
asks people to do so… AAPA is only a transition for developing
our own social //identity, a multiplication of efforts. In fact,
AAPA itself Is not the important link but the //ideas generated
into action from it – that we Asian Americans are no longer
going to //kowtow to white America in order to gain an ounce of
respect; that we must begin to //build our own society alongside
our black, brown and red brothers as well as with //whites
willing to effect fundamental social, economic, political
changes; that we have //the right for determining our own lives
and asserting our yellow identity as a positive //force in a new
life based on human relationships and cooperation. /
//
Flyer for Asian American conference at UC Berkeley, Jan. 11, 1969. Photo
from Asian American Movement Blog, 1968.
These words are still powerful today. It’s the social critique
in the service of a humanistic vision for an equitable society
that aroused people’s passions. In the late 1960s, Asian
Americans were struggling with a basic question: Which side are
you on? Are you with the white majority as a silent, junior
partner or are you with our black, brown, red brothers and
sisters striving for equality and respect?
Aside from the power of the words, the AAPA leaders were an
impressive bunch. Meeting Yuji Ichioka, Emma Gee, Floyd Huen,
Wai-kit Quon, Bing Tom and others at those AAPA conferences
exposed me to politicos who spoke in complete sentences, even
paragraphs, while a simple “yeah, right on” would suffice both
as the opening and closing of a conversation in laid-back LA.
We, too, would soon grow in political sophistication.
I talked with Floyd recently about how they developed such
direct, evocative language to convey politics effectively. He
replied, “We (the founding group) were a small group – Yuji,
Emma, Richard Aoki, Vicci Wong, Jean Quan, Victor Ichioka,
myself – and we were united politically, heavily influenced by
the Peace and Freedom Party platform. Yuji and Emma were active
in the Peace and Freedom Party and wanted all of us be in an
Asian contingent. Our basic anti-imperialist stance came from
Peace and Freedom politics.”
_The FBI Monitoring of AAPA’s Growth_
The bulk of the FBI memos center on discussions among AAPA
members on strategies to use in confronting the UC Berkeley
administration, which was dragging its heels on implementing
ethnic studies departments in the wake of the January to March
1969 Third World Liberation Front strike. Detailed accounts of
the meetings and those with the TWLF were made possible by
informant SF 2496-R/Richard Aoki, AAPA’s second chairperson and
representative to the TWLF, and he was reporting to the FBI on
meetings in which he was a leading participant.
After reading the memos, there’s nothing earthshaking in Aoki’s
reports on AAPA. Anyone who has been in the Movement knows that
it is filled with strong personalities and conflicting agendas.
In Aoki’s September 26, 1969 report to the FBI, he divided the
AAPA leadership into three camps: militants, moderates, and
conservatives. This may have burnished his insider credentials,
but in the end this information was probably was of little value
to the FBI. AAPA resolved its differences and continued
functioning.
Aoki was not the only informant reporting on AAPA. Informant T-2
whose identity was redacted but is described as “YMCA Director
of College Youth Work in San Francisco Bay Area.” He observed
that there are no officers or formal membership, which
dovetailed with Aoki’s assessment. Informant T-3, who is
described as a youth worker, identified Floyd Huen and Wai Kit
Quon as two main leaders of AAPA-Berkeley. This was hardly news
as both Huen and Quon had been quoted in the campus newspaper as
spokespersons for AAPA.
AAPA leaders spoke at meetings and smaller conferences organized
in Oakland, Hayward, Sacramento, San Jose, and Los Angeles.
This spurred the growth of new student organizations under the
AAPA name. “There was just an explosion of Asian American
consciousness in 1968-1969,” said Floyd Huen. “It was
unbelievable…the number of people who got involved.” The FBI
certainly took note of it by employing people to monitor Asian
American meetings and rallies.
Five informants were used to monitor the AAPA chapter at
Columbia University according to the FBI memo of July 31, 1970.
None of the informants are described, although New York Police
Department detectives are cited in a few other memos. It’s
almost certain that a student reported on the April 23, 1970
AAPA meeting which focused on the need for a Chinese curriculum
at Columbia University. This informant would also report that
“Getting Together,” the newspaper of I Wor Kuen, was being sold
on campus by unidentified young people. AAPA leader Chang
Han-hua was also noted as an attendee of a rally sponsored by I
Wor Kuen in New York Chinatown on April 19, 1970. The police
and FBI took pictures of the attendees and identified several
other participants including members of Asian Americans for Action.
In Los Angeles, the fledgling chapter of AAPA was graced with
the presence of an informant at a meeting on Feb. 17, 1969 at
the Universal Methodist Church. The informant reported that 50
people listened to Frank Wilkinson, a lawyer and civil
libertarian who was on the FBI’s Security Index, Priority I due
to his purported membership in the Communist Party USA. He
spoke about the possible return of concentration camps in the
U.S. via the McCarran Internal Security Act.
The FBI also interviewed officials at 15 Japanese American
community organizations and businesses in December 1969. I
highly doubt folks at the LA Bureau of /Saudai Shimbun /(A
Tokyo-based daily newspaper), Gardena Buddhist Church, Japanese
Art and Cultural Institute or Sumitomo Bank knew that their
names would be redacted in an FBI memo declaring them to be
sources. The FBI noted that “in contacts with above sources, no
information was obtained regarding possible infiltration of
Japanese aliens as suspected Chinese Intelligence sources. Los
Angeles (office of the FBI) will remain alert for development of
additional sources in this program.” (FBI, pdf #2, pg. 134-139)
In some cases, the informants were hilariously uninformed. At
the July 1970 meeting of Asian Americans for Action, which was
founded by Nisei activists, the informant remarked on one agenda
item. The informant wrote, “At the meeting, mention was made of
a JACL convention to be held in Chicago, Ill., from 7/14-18/70.
JACL was identified either as the Japanese American Citizens
League or the Japanese Americans for Confrontation and
Liberation.” I burst out laughing because JACL was certainly not
known for its confrontation and liberation mojo in those days.
The bulk of the monitoring was done by people who could fit in
the public and private meetings. Thus, informant T-4, who is
described as “of the Chinatown-North Beach Office of the EOC
(Economic Opportunity Commission); identity covered by request,”
reported that the first meeting of the AAPA chapter at
California State College at Hayward was held on Feb. 20, 1969 at
the home of Allan Fujita with 12 people present to formulate
demands to be presented to the administration through a Third
World Liberation Front.
Even events such as “Asians in America, “ conference sponsored
by the Asian American Students Association at Yale University on
April 18, 1970 was noted by the FBI. Glenn Omatsu, a graduate
student in the Psychology Department at Yale, had attended a
public forum in New York Chinatown entitled “Dilemma of the
Asian in America” sponsored by AAPA-Columbia University and
Asian Americans for Action. Thus, the Asian American Students
Association at Yale was tagged “IS -Misc” (Internal Security
Miscellaneous File).
The FBI often worked with campus police as in the case with UC
Davis’ Asian American Concern and Sangha Club, an association of
young Buddhists. Members of both organizations attended the AAPA
conference on Jan. 11, 1969 in Berkeley. They followed up with
several meetings on campus to “go beyond the myths and explore
the Asians real identity.” The informant advised that “he is not
aware of any subversive purposes of the Asian American Concern.”
The FBI proceeded to close the case but put the names of the
officers of Asian American Concern and the Sangha Club in its
security index. (FBI, pdf#1, pg. 145-152)
Asian American Movement publications were analyzed by the FBI to
track AAPA’s progression. /Gidra,/ the Asian American community
newspaper started by UCLA students in April 1969, was described
in a Nov. 6, 1969 memo as “mildly militant and sometimes obscene
in nature and espouses all yellow power issues.” The Los
Angeles FBI office “has obtained a subscription under a
fictitious name and is currently preparing a communication
suitable for dissemination based on the first eight issues.” In
a hearty endorsement of /Gidra’/s value, the Special Agent In
Charge of the LA office wrote, “It (/Gidra/) reports regularly
on Asian American activities on the California campuses as well
as other areas of the country and has proved to be a wealth of
information concerning the identities of organizations and
individuals devoted to these causes.” At the end of the 58-page
memo on the Asian American organizations mentioned in /Gidra/,
there is a list of staff members and contributors with short
descriptions about their work. (FBI pdf #1, page 1-58).
The FBI also expressed interest in /Aion/, a journal published
in April 1970 in San Francisco. Informant T-2, who is described
as “working with college youth for the San Francisco Bay Area
YMCA”, reported that he knew Janice Mirikitani, who was
affiliated with AAPA and also the editor for /Aion/. T-2
reported that Janice told him that the publication would
represent a wide spectrum of Asian American interests and was
not an AAPA journal.
/Aion/ indeed presented a rich mixture of political analysis,
e.g. “The Need for a United Asian American Front” by Alex Hing,
Minister of Education of the Red Guard Party; poetry by Lawson
Inada, George Leong, Janice Mirikitani and Francis Oka; artwork;
and photography by actor/photographer Victor Wong in a simple
but beautifully designed chapbook. The informant, who also
taught at SF State College, furnished a copy of /Aion/ to the
FBI and provided detailed information on all the contributors,
artists, and editors of the publication many of whom attended SF
State College. (See FBI file, pdf#1, pages 317-327.)
Aion, photographs by Victor Wong and poem by Janice Mirikitani.
_Follow the Leaders – the FBI’s modus operandi_
We all know that leaders play an important role as public
speakers and key organizers for the activist core of groups.
Thus, the FBI wanted to know as much as possible about the
movers and shakers in AAPA and associated groups.
Yuji Ichioka is widely acknowledged as a founder of AAPA and for
coining the term “Asian American” to replace the much-despised
term “oriental,” i.e., we are not rugs or vases. Informant T-1
(Richard Aoki) reported to the FBI that “a Yellow Power” group
had been newly formed by a group of Orientals at Berkeley,
California, which would be known as the Asian- American
Political Alliance. The Source identified the head of this
group as Yuji Ichioka, a graduate student of Japanese ethnic
descent, studying in the field of Agricultural Economics.” This
was hardly breaking news since /The Berkeley Barb, /an
alternative newspaper, announced that the planning meeting to
form AAPA on June 2, 1968 would take place at 2005 Hearst St,
Berkeley and to contact Yuji Ichioka, telephone number 845-7156.
In the /Barb /article, Yuji Ichioka declared that AAPA needed to
be formed because “all existing organizations in the Asian
American community are too committed to the status quo.” “We
must redefine our relationship to the Black, Mexican-American
and Indian liberation movements,” said Ichioka. The FBI report
includes Yuji’s comment about the U.S. “which now shows every
evidence of liquidating Black people” and which is “waging the
politically and morally insane war in Vietnam.”
The nine-page profile of Yuji Ichioka written on March 28, 1969
consists mainly of informant reports on Yuji’s attendance at
public meetings about the Black Panther Party, participation at
a Free Huey rally at Oakland’s DeFremery Park, and his articles
calling for the repeal of Title II of the McCarran Act which
could be “invoked against Black militants and white radicals”
and against Chinese Americans if a major war would break out
between China and the U.S. Yuji left Berkeley for New York in
late 1968 and later settled in Los Angeles where he taught the
first courses at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Program.
(FBI/AAPA file, pdf #1, pg. 133-141.)
I wish someone would write a book about Yuji and Emma. Many of
us young students admired Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee as role
models of a hip, politically committed couple. In addition to
their politics, they loved jazz and rhythm ‘n blues and good
food. I remember staying at their house once and Yuji told me,
“You gotta to listen to this!” and Swamp Dogg’s “Total
Destruction of Your Mind” came blasting out of the stereo
shaking up the house. Many friends will recall Yuji as an
serious poker player, street baller, elbows flying hoopster,
avid drinker and scholar. Very little mention of Emma Gee
appears in the FBI files, but she certainly was a political
leader in her own right. She was known for teaching the first
course on Asian American women at UC Berkeley and as the editor
of /Counterpoint – Perspectives on Asian America (/UCLA Asian
American Studies Center 1976) .
Yuji Ichioka, on the right, at AAPA demonstration.
Floyd Huen was noted by T-1 as AAPA’s “second in command.”
Numerous pages in the FBI AAPA collection are devoted to Floyd’s
appearances at conferences and rallies, especially his
participation along with other AAPA leaders at the Hemispheric
Conference to End the War in Vietnam held in Montreal on Nov. 28
– Dec. 1, 1968. The conference, which was sponsored by many
organizations including the Communist Parties of Canada and the
U.S., featured representatives of the National Liberation Front
and the government of North Vietnam. The fact that AAPA
representatives along with leaders from the Black Panther Party
met with “the enemy” alarmed the FBI. Nearly 2,000 people
attended the conference including noted Mexican artist David
Siqueiros and African American actor/writer Ossie Davis.
Floyd’s family was interviewed by the FBI several times and in
those conversations, his parents and siblings reaffirmed Floyd’s
belief in non-violence. Informant and fellow activist Richard
Aoki concurred with this assessment. Yet, the FBI continued to
interview family members over the years. “It got to the point
where my father would just tell the FBI, ‘you’re wasting my
taxpayer money’ and slam the door on them,” said Floyd.
After many years, the FBI finally had a phone conversation with
Floyd during which he was “superficially friendly but
uncooperative” and offered “nothing of security value.” The FBI
hoped that Floyd would provide information on other AAPA
leaders, one of whom had gone to Cuba with the Venceremos
Brigade and met activists in the Weathermen.
Shoshana Arai became an activist while she was in high school in
Chicago in the early to mid 1960s. She helped start a Chicago
high school area Friends SNCC (the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee) chapter and worked with the Congress for
Racial Equality (CORE) Metropolitan Chicago on tenant
organizing that led to a rent strike in 1964. The FBI
highlighted records of Shoshana’s arrests in August 1963 at a
civil rights demonstration and in June 1965 at a march for
better housing for minority groups. By 1968/1969, Shoshana was
starting an AAPA chapter at the University of Illinois, Chicago
Circle. The FBI began questioning her neighbors about her
associates and her whereabouts; Shoshana had traveled many times
to the SF Bay Area in 1968. The neighbors told Shoshana about
the FBI visits, and she told them, “Just make up whatever you
want.” When I asked her recently about the surveillance,
Shoshana dismissed it: “the FBI and Chicago Task Force shadowy
surveillance, at best, afforded them with only a keyhole vision
of the world.”
Women in the Black Panther Party contingent at WDC protest march 1969.
The FBI’s myopic view of the Asian American Movement was often
reinforced by the conjecture of the informants. AAPA members
worked with the Red Guard Party on a May 4^th Movement rally
held on May 14, 1969 in Portsmouth Square. The May 4^th
Movement was an anti-imperialist uprising led by Chinese
student to protest Japan’s retention of Shandong as part of the
terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Informant SF T-3, who
was described as “of Youth Work for the Human Rights Commission
of San Francisco and Organizer of the Chinatown North Beach
Youth Council,” noted “growing concern about the possibility
that leaders of the AAPA may have an interest in the development
of the Red Guard.” The informant singled out the role of Alex
Hing, Minister of Education of the Red Guard Party. T-3 wrote,
“Because of the friendship that exists between Alex Hing and
some of the leaders of the AAPA, there is a danger that the
latter could make use of the Red Guard as the open or surface
element of a revolutionary movement.” T-3 added that “he is sure
that with the exception of Alex Hing, there are no Red Guard
leaders who would have been capable of organizing and sustaining
a revolutionary program.” The informant added that “the
possibility that with AAPA leadership, the Red Guard could
become a possible threat to the peace of San Francisco
Chinatown.” Perhaps this conspiratorial view of how a group of
college students and Chinatown street kids could wreak havoc in
SF Chinatown was merely a ploy to “add value” to this
informant’s work, or maybe it was playing to the crowd, which in
this case was the paranoid FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In any
case, there is dubious intelligence at work here, not only
myopic but wrong. (FBI, pdf #2, pg. 63-73)
Professor Isao Fujimoto, who taught in the Applied Behavior
Sciences Dept. at U.C. Davis, was monitored by the FBI both
because of his involvement with AAPA-Berkeley – he attended a
meeting on Sept. 22, 1968 and spoke on “Asians in the Melting
Pot” at the AAPA conference on Jan. 11, 1969 – but also because
of his participation in the anti-war movement. The Davis
Police Department provided information that Isao and his wife
Linda were members of a local anti-war groups the Resistance and
Davis Women for Peace.
An FBI source in San Francisco also alerted the Sacramento FBI
office that Isao and Linda had registered to attend the National
Conference for New Politics in Chicago on Aug. 31 to Sept. 1,
1967. The FBI does not indicate the purpose of the conference,
but a quick internet search revealed that this little-remembered
conference brought 3,000 people from 350 organizations to
discuss a strategy towards the 1968 elections. Participants
included Julian Bond and Maria Varela from SNCC, Paul Booth and
Tom Hayden from SDS, Fannie Lou Hamer from the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party, Dr. Benjamin Spock of SANE, the
Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, Reies Tijerina/La
Alianza Federal de Mercedes, members of the Socialist Workers
Party and Communist Party USA and others. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. spoke on the opening night of the conference.
Unfortunately, the diverse gathering had not built the ties
needed for ongoing work and participants left without a
coordinated strategy for the 1968 elections. Groups continued
local organizing and/or work in progressive electoral
campaigns. There’s no mention of an Asian American presence at
this conference but these efforts at forging multi-racial unity
among radical across diverse movements represented danger in the
eyes of the FBI.
Alex Hing on right at pro-China demonstration in San Francisco.
As AAPA organizers graduated and left campus, the FBI followed
them as they became community organizers. Pam Tau Lee, who had
organized an AAPA chapter at California State University,
Hayward, became an Asian history and reading teacher at Oakland
Technical High School and helped establish the East Bay Asian
Legal Services in the summer of 1972. An informant noted Pam’s
attendance at a community meeting at the Lincoln Elementary
School auditorium and reported that “the speakers usually extoll
the virtues of the People’s Republic of China.” An FBI agent
interviewed Pam’s supervisor at Oakland Tech for details of her
employment. Another informant who was conducting surveillance at
the Kearny St. office of I Wor Kuen observed Pam entering the
office on July 24, 1972. All of this resulted in the FBI
labelling Pam as “potentially dangerous because of background,
emotional instability or activity in a group engaged in
activities inimical to U.S.” in a December 12, 1973 memo. As you
can see, the FBI spent a lot of time and money to track the
activities of one activist, who has since been widely acclaimed
for her work in the community, labor and environmental movement.
(see Environmental Justice is Rooted in the Community
<https://eastwindezine.com/environmental-justice-is-rooted-in-community/>)
_Alliance Building Among Radicals_
The FBI also focused on AAPA’s efforts to coordinate with the
Red Guard Party, the Black Panthers, SDS and other
organizations. These efforts turned out to be one-off events
that have receded into obscurity. However, at the time, they
held interesting potential. The summer and fall of 1969 was rife
with opportunities for joint work.
Informant T-1 reported on meetings at which the Red Guard and
AAPA coordinated plans to participate in the Black Panther
Party’s United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland on
July 18-20, 1969. Ten delegates from AAPA-Berkeley, ten from
AAPA-SF, and seven from the Red Guard would form the Asian
Contingent. Penny Nakatsu of AAPA-SF would be featured on the
panel “Role of Women Against Fascism.”
Members of the Asian Contingent also participated in the SDS
Regional Conference on Aug. 2-3, 1969 where protest plans for
Japan Week and the International Industrial Conference both
occurring in September in San Francisco were discussed.
On Sept. 5, 1969, the arrival of the /Amatsukaze/, a Japanese
warship with envoys from the Japanese Imperial Family, provided
an opportunity to protest the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security
Treaty, which would take place days later with Vice-President
Spiro Agnew present for the ceremonies. An informant reported on
the Aug. 27, 1969 press conference where representatives of the
Red Guard announced that they would be leading the
demonstration and would be joined by AAPA, the SDS, the
Revolutionary Union, the Independent Socialist Club and Los
Siete de la Raza, which had been formed in SF’s Mission District
to defend seven Latinos who had been arrested and charged with
murder of a SF police officer. Protesters cited Japan as the
staging area for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and activists in
Japan did not want US military bases based there any longer.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Union Square on Sept. 18
while President Nixon addressed the International Industrial
Conference, which was organized by the Stanford Research
Institute, to advance the goals of corporate America.
_SF and New York Chinatown: A Focal Point for the FBI_
As mentioned earlier, the U.S. government kept a close watch on
Chinatown activists since the 1920s. Anti-imperialists,
socialists and social reformers were active both in support of a
free China but also for improved working conditions in the U.S.
Activism increased in the late 1960s as recent immigrants from
Hong Kong and China swelled the population of Chinatown. They
faced crowded, decrepit housing, inadequate education, and few
job opportunities. For decades, the Chinatown establishment had
done little to pressure the City for improvements in housing,
health care and job development. It was into this cauldron that
a mix of Chinese American liberals, radicals from the streets
and campuses, and foreign-born youth forged an alliance to
demand change.
Ling-chi Wang, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and AAPA
supporter, described what led to the groundbreaking march on
August 17, 1968: “On that day, a forum on Chinatown problems,
sponsored and organized the Summer Youth Program, an
anti-poverty summer program, was held in the basement of
Cumberland Chinese Presbyterian Church. For the first time,
college students from AAPA Bay Area, Intercollegiate Chinese for
Social Action (ICSA) at SF State, and other organizations around
the Bay Area met to learn about the myriad of problems in
Chinatown and discuss what needed to be done about them. With
prior planning, the all-day session ended with the students
joining forces with a newly formed group, Concerned Chinese for
Action and Change (CCAC), made up of young Chinese American
professionals led by attorney Gordon J. Lau; together, they
embarked on a provocative and noisy march down Grant Ave during
the height of Chinatown’s tourist season. The march ended with a
mass rally in historic Portsmouth Square in the heart of
Chinatown. Speaker after speaker denounced slumlords, sweatshop
operators, greedy restaurant owners, the deplorable conditions
in Chinatown, racism, and City Hall.” (/Mountain Movers/ – UCLA
Asian American Studies Press 2019, pg. 98).
Marchers filled Chinatown streets on Aug. 17, 1968.
Three FBI informants focused on the AAPA’s participation that
day with T-1 listing the AAPA marchers; T-2 citing the many
people who wore AAPA’s button “Yellow Peril;” and T-4 commenting
on “the almost professional ability in protest activity” of the
students. T-4 speculated on AAPA’s communist proclivities:
“…some of the AAPA members who participated in the Chinatown
march used terms and phrases which were quite derogatory
concerning white Americans and American society in general.” He
wondered “whether it (AAPA) might have been influenced by some
communist movement action, although he has no facts to prove
such influence.” It boggles the mind to think that the FBI paid
for this level of intelligence gathering.
Perhaps the most vibrant view of this historic march comes from
the Chinese section of /East-West/ newspaper. The FBI ordered
full translations of the Chinese section after noting that
Maurice Chuck, longtime pro-China activist, was the Managing
Editor. The FBI added, “Security Index Subject, Mark Lai (SF
file 105-1494) has both an English language and a Chinese
language article in the issue for 7/31/68. Both articles appear
to deal with the same phase of overseas Chinese history in
California, but it is requested that the Chinese version be
closely scanned for any evidence of pro-Chicom sentiment.” (FBI,
pdf. #2, page 184).
Several writers in the Chinese section of /East-West/ newspaper
marked the significance of the Aug. 17, 1968 march.
“Demonstration is something very common in the United States,
but for it to happen in Chinatown is quite unprecedented. No
wonder it caused such a stir for a while…The demonstrators were
well-behaved, but their voices were rather boisterous. These are
the ‘new voices’ of Chinatown. They want to accomplish
something; to abolish Chinatown’s ‘Monroe Doctrine;’ and to make
the derelict leaders vacate their ‘chairs.’… The young
intellectuals were born and brought up here. They have been
exposed to the problems of Chinatown with personal
experience…They dare to say things that fame and profit seekers
dare not say and they are willing to do what do-nothing talkers
are not willing to do.” The signs carried by the demonstrators
included: “Low salary and extra- long working hours in
Chinatown.” “Rice Tubs, we are human beings too!” I have never
heard the Chinatown establishment being referred to as tubs, but
it certainly is apt in the way that they hoard wealth for
themselves.
This march was just the beginning of the social reform movement
in SF Chinatown. AAPA leaders transitioned to leading the Asian
American Studies Program at UC Berkeley and instituted a
Chinatown Project in 1969 that led to a two-nights per week
tutorial program where college students worked with Chinatown
youth. This vibrant period of organizing and subsequent
campaigns for public housing in the 1970s and 1980s in Chinatown
are captured in Harry and Josh Chuck’s excellent film “Chinatown
Rising.”
In the early 1970s, the Asian Studies Field office, staffed by
UC Berkeley students and community volunteers, would spin off a
garment workers cooperative, a bookstore, childcare programs, a
draft counseling and legal aid service and the screening of
films from the People’s Republic of China. In fact, when members
of the Asian Community Center staff went to Ottawa, Canada to
meet with the China News Agency about obtaining more films, they
were photographed surreptitiously, and their names placed in the
FBI Security Index.
The FBI files on AAPA mention the intervention of the Chinese
Nationalist government, whose operatives offered information to
the FBI on the leftists in Chinatown. The Chinese National
Ambassador (name withheld) sent a letter to the FBI on May 12,
1970 stating that they planned to infiltrate the “local public
bookshop, 840 Kearny St.” The ambassador also noted that an
“Information Service for Youth” has been set up at 852-854
Kearny St. for draft counseling and alleged that financial
support for AAPA “originates with Chicom Embassy in Cuba.” (FBI,
pdf #1, pg. 328). One can file this nugget under “lies by
spies,” because AAPA’s main source of income seems to be
proceeds from sales of the “Yellow Peril” and AAPA buttons.
Photos of Everybody’s Bookstore from Asian American Movement Blog 1968.
In New York, Chinese Nationalist Ambassador Chow Shu-kai met
with the FBI on Feb. 4, 1970 to report from his sources that
“since Autumn, 1969, (the) AAPA movement has spread to New York
City where 30 individuals are active at Columbia University.” He
added that “a splinter group of the AAPA has recently formed in
New York and has been identified as captioned organization (I
Work Kuen) and that they contend that the yellow race is
oppressed and should fight for equality.” (FBI, pdf #1, pg.
193-195).
By 1972, I Wor Kuen, which had merged with the SF-based Red
Guard Party, moved most of its organization to San Francisco.
The FBI initiated tower surveillance (phone tower monitoring)
from Feb. 27, 1972 to May 27, 1972 to aid the process of
identifying “likely members of IWK.” Five informants contributed
information to the ongoing monitoring of IWK’s activities with a
particular emphasis on its leaders and its pro-China advocacy.
(FBI, pdf #2, pgs. 271-285)
The FBI files on AAPA began to wind up at this point. AAPA had
ceased to be a functioning political organization as many people
went directly into the Asian American Studies Program and joined
revolutionary organizations in the community. The primary
informant, Richard Aoki, told the FBI that he wanted to
concentrate on getting his Master’s degree in Sociology and
furnished little information after April 1970. In September
1977, the FBI contacted Aoki who expressed his desire to
discontinue “seeking information for the FBI because he believed
that this was inconsistent with his present career and
objectives as a student counselor and instructor at a junior
college in Oakland, California.”
The FBI and San Francisco Police Department’s Intelligence
Division very likely continued to monitor the revolutionary
organizations housed at the I-Hotel on Kearny Street. There was
certainly a huge amount of left organizing throughout San
Francisco in the mid to late 1970s to fight the eviction of
elderly Pilipino and Chinese tenants at the I-Hotel.
_FBI monitoring of Chinese scientists in San Francisco_
On a parallel track with the monitoring of SF Chinatown
activists was the FBI’s surveillance of Chinese scientists in
the U.S. Many of them were foreign-born but had studied and
worked at U.S colleges and universities. After the People’s
Republic of China tested a hydrogen bomb in 1967, the U.S.
government did not believe that China could have developed the
advanced technology needed on its own. The memo stated the
following: “We have long suspected that Chicom collection of
needed information is accomplished through contacts with ethnic
Chinese scientists and technicians in this country.” Mara
Hvistendahl, author of /The Scientist and the Spy /(Riverhead
Books, 2021), reported that the FBI monitored 4,000 Chinese
scientists in the U.S. over the next several years.
One of those scientists was Professor Chang-lin Tien, who was
Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley
from 1974 to 1981. He became Chancellor of U.C. Berkeley in
1990 making him the first Asian American to head a major
university. Known to have pro-China sentiments, the FBI began to
monitor his travels to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of
China. At a meeting with the FBI in 1975, Tien refused the FBI’s
request to inform on visiting Chinese scholars to U.C. Berkeley.
On May 8, 1970 he was once again asked about a visiting
delegation from the People’s Republic of China. The FBI memo
states: Professor Tien stated he did not desire to have any
contact with the FBI and questioned the FBI’s right to ask
questions about PRC scholars, stating they were all legitimate
scholars involved in purely academic pursuits. He expressed his
belief that the FBI was continuing to harass Chinese
academicians like himself just as was done during the 1950s.”
(Chang-linTien FBI file, pg. 247-248) .
Tien was one of the people noted at the January 26, 1977
reception in San Francisco for the Han T-ang Murals, which were
being exhibited at the Chinese Culture Center on Kearny St. FBI
agents followed officials from China from the moment they landed
at SF International Airport until the time they went to bed. In
typical FBI fashion, the agents focused on naming the pro-China
sympathizers at the reception, which besides Tien, included Dr.
Rolland Lowe (his name was redacted but the descriptor is “a
prominent Chinese physician in San Francisco and former officer
of the Chinese Culture Center.”) Several elected officials and
SF business leaders also attended the event. Once more, a large
amount of taxpayer resources was spent to provide information
that could be found in press coverage of a community and
cultural event. Tien was never accused of any subversive
activities, but the FBI never seemed to stop monitoring him.
Unfortunately, the accusation that Chinese scientists were
selling information to China continued with the famous case of
Wen Ho Lee, who was imprisoned for nine months until his release
on September 13, 2000. The charge of selling nuclear secrets was
dropped and the U.S. paid Wen Ho Lee $895,000 for violation of
his privacy.
_Conclusion_
As I look back on the weeks spent poring over these files, I
come away with a deeper appreciation of the many hours of hard
work activists put in to create programs with lasting impact.
The FBI informants focused solely on who was at which meeting
and not why they were there in the first place. In addition to
having the events described in these FBI memos noted for the
historical record and contextualized, we need to tell the full
stories of people who gave so much of their time and energy to
create the Asian American Movement. Two profiles were posted
earlier this year: A Wei Min Sister Speaks: Then and Now
<https://eastwindezine.com/a-wei-min-sister-speaks-then-and-now-with-jean-dere/> and
Memories of the I-Hotel
<https://eastwindezine.com/memories-of-the-i-hotel/> and I plan
to interview more activists later this year.
As one reads these files, please do not treat what is presented
as true. In many cases, the information is wrong and unverified
by the historical record. FBI officials also sometimes admit
that they were uncertain of certain people’s identities.
Perhaps, one day people who were active in the organizations
under surveillance will set the record straight on their goals,
accomplishments, and shortcomings.
It’s a natural part of human nature to wonder about the
informants. Much has already been written about Richard Aoki, so
I won’t rehash all of that. Suffice it to say that his
experience among activists most likely changed him and made him
more reluctant to inform on his comrades. Yet, he continued to
do so and was compensated to the tune of $175/month plus
expenses at the height of his work. (FBI, Aoki files, pdf #15,
pg. 46)
The descriptors provided in the FBI memos have led people to
guess the identify of other informants, but until those files
are released, one can’t be certain. It came as a bit of a
surprise to learn that several social/youth workers in Chinatown
and a professor of Asian history at San Fernando Valley College
(renamed to California State University at Northridge) would be
so willing to report on a social reform movement in which they
participated. Rather than infiltrating the movement, these
individuals saw themselves as allies but also most likely held
deep anti-communist views that led them to cooperate with the
FBI. Rather than speculate on their identities, I’ve chosen to
focus more on what kinds of information these informants
provided and whether or not it was of any value. In most cases,
the information was insignificant and not particularly revelatory.
SF Police attack the human barricade at the I-Hotel on Aug. 6, 1977.
Lastly, I come away from these files with the realization that
the FBI could barely keep up with the developments of the Asian
American movement in the 1968-1977 period. They failed to
realize that leaders are nothing without followers. People were
rallying to the cause because of unjust conditions that they
could no longer tolerate. Leaders surely galvanized people to
act, but these movements succeeded in winning reforms through
collective pressure.
There was so much more happening among radical circles and among
liberals, i.e., activist groups such as Chinese for Affirmative
Action were also forming during this time period and their
efforts led to victories in bilingual educational rights. The
FBI was looking in the rear-view mirror while the Movement was
pushing ahead breaking new ground, winning new allies, and
making social change. It is no exaggeration to say that the
people’s movement was a big factor in ending the Vietnam War.
Rather than subverting society, Asian Americans and other
activists from the Black Panther Party to SDS were pushing for a
society that is more equitable, more just, and more peaceful
than the white supremacist order that FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover sought to maintain.
/Author’s Bio: Eddie Wong is the editor/publisher of East Wind
ezine. He has a long history in the Asian American Movement
starting with co-editing Roots: An Asian American Reader (UCLA
AA Studies Center 1971) to co-founding Visual Communications,
the nation’s first Asian American non-profit media production
company. /
Cover Photo:
AAPA at 1969 SF Anti-War Demonstration. Wai-kit Quon on left and Roy
Takai in white jacket. Photo by Ray Okamura, printed in Gidra newspaper.
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