In its original meaning, an Amerasian is a person born in Asia, to a U.S. military father and an Asian mother. Colloquially, the term has sometimes been considered synonymous with Asian American, or to describe a person in the United States of mixed Asian and non-Asian ancestry, regardless of the circumstances.
Several countries have significant populations of Amerasians, including the islands that dot the Pacific Ocean. These countries include Japan (Okinawa), Thailand (Phuket and Pattaya Beach), South Korea, the former South Vietnam, and most notably, the Philippines, where the Largest U.S. air and naval bases outside the U.S. mainland were situated.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), an Amerasian is: "[A]n alien who was born in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, or Thailand after December 31, 1950, and before October 22, 1982, and was fathered by a U.S. citizen." The Amerasian Foundation (AF) and Amerasian Family Finder (AFF) define an Amerasian as: "Any person who was fathered by a citizen of the United States (an American servicemen, American expatriate, or U.S. Government Employee (Regular or Contract)) and whose mother is, or was, an Asian National Asian."
The term is commonly applied to half Japanese children fathered by a U.S. serviceman in Japan on the island of Okinawa, as well as half-Korean children fathered by veterans of the Korean War, most notably seen on the 1960s soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing. The term is also applied to children of Filipinos and American rulers during the U.S. colonial period of the Philippines (but is still used until today) and children of Thais and U.S. soldiers during World War II and the Vietnam War (the reference to Thailand stems from the U.S. military stationing their military bases during the Vietnam War). Since there are large Overseas Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia, an Amerasian could be a child born to American and ethnic Chinese parents. Children born to mainland U.S. and native Pacific Islander parents in U.S.-controlled Pacific Islands are also sometimes considered Amerasian.
Although the term Amerasian is originally referred to children fathered by white Americans, it should not be interpreted as a fixed racial term relating to a specific mixture of races (such as Mestizo, Mulatto, Eurasian or Afro-Asian). The racial strain of the American parent of one Amerasian may be different from that of another Amerasian; it may be White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, or even Asian. In the latter case, it is conceivable that the Amerasian could be fathered by a person who shares the same racial background but not the same nationality.
In certain case, it could apply to American females, who engage professional field such as military nurse, pursue relationship, and as few had eventually got married, with Asian males. Mixed blood children, whatever the reality of the occupations of their parents, have inherited this social stigma. In poor countries where impoverished women have little choice but to consider prostitution as a means of survival, the resulting sense of disempowerment among men and women alike can bring seething resentment. Additional resentment may be fueled by the common knowledge that many servicemen fathers made promises to support the children, and simply left for the U.S., never to be seen again.
In April 1975, Operation Babylift was initiated in South Vietnam, to relocate Vietnamese children, many orphans and those of mixed American-Vietnamese parentage (mostly American serviceman father and Vietnamese mother), to the United States and adopting American families who would take them in.
Category:Ethnic groups in the United States Category:Multiracial affairs in the United States Category:Philippine society Category:American people of Asian descent Category:Filipino people of American descent Category:Aftermath of the Vietnam War
ja:アメラジアンThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.