In Asian Tragedies in the Americas: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Stories, Won K. Yoon takes a comparative diasporic approach to explain the tragic experiences of Asian migration to America during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese migration to the Americas was an outcome of Western colonial incursions that led to transnational labor migration. The book looks at the socio-political-economic disruptions that took place in the home countries that caused this migration to the Americas. Using secondary and primary sources, Yoon underscores tragic stories of the oppression and resistance that these Asian pioneers faced.

Yoon wants Asian Tragedies to correct the historical erasure that has taken hold and provides a number of reasons why this history has been missing: That the suffering of East Asian laborers during this time was less than that of Black and Indigenous people. That the stories of Asian tragedies have been eclipsed by the model-minority stories of Asian success. That the economic ascension of Asian nations has led to a downplaying of tragedies. That the “silent minority symptom” within the Asian community has left the past unspoken. The unspoken past remains hidden.

As a result, stories of suffering by the earlier generation become missing in history. Yoon attempts to reinvigorate these stories to provide readers an understanding of the complex reasons for what took place. Knowledge about this history would provide a better understanding of migration and the contributions that Asian immigrants made to the Americas. East Asian indentured laborers were recruited to work on sugarcane plantations (Hawai‘i and Cuba), in guano mining (Peru) and in henequen fields (Yucatan, Mexico). Their passage on ships resulted in high mortality rates. They held “3 D” jobs—dangerous, difficult, and dirty. They were denied normal family lives because of measures to prevent family settlement. Suffering from institutionalized racism reinforced a sojourner mentality. Scapegoated for economic problems, they often fell prey to divide-and-rule government policies. Despite the obstacles, there were numerous cases of resistance. Despite efforts to exclude them, their descendants became integral parts of the populations in these locations.

The backdrop for their migration was the phase-out of slavery; Asian indentured laborers were then recruited to work as replacements. The tragedies begin with the Chinese, whose mistreatment and sufferings became a pattern for the mistreatment of succeeding East Asian migrant groups. Close comparisons are made between the Chinese coolie trade and the African slave trade, in which former replaced the latter. Following the end of slavery, former African barracoon ships continued as coolie ships. Abysmal conditions of travel resulted in sickness and death rates similar to the African slave transport mortality rates. Treatment as prisoners resulted in ship mutinies that took place on one out of ten passages.

The economics of the coolie trade is presented in the context of a rising international demand for sugar. Great Britain was the largest importer of sugar, purchasing one-third of the world supply. In 1886, Black slaves and Chinese coolies worked the cane fields side by side. Black slaves were three times the price of Chinese coolies, which led to the large-scale recruitment of 130,000 Chinese coolies. In the plantation hierarchy, Chinese were at the bottom, below whites and Blacks. Suicide rates for the Chinese plantation workers were fourteen times higher than Blacks and eighty-eight times higher than whites. As a result of harsh working conditions, the mortality rate was 40 percent, and only 5 percent were able to return home after their contract was over. Similarly, the mortality rate for Chinese guano fertilizer gatherers, who worked in the Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, was similar at 42 percent.

The circumstances for Korean migrant groups differed from the Chinese in the voyage overseas. They were recruited as free laborers to work on the henequen plantations of Yucatan. Similar to sugarcane, henequen, a cactus plant used in the production of ropes and sacks, was in high international demand. Upon the arrival, however, the 1,000 Korean laborers found themselves tricked into a quasi-slavery indentureship in which they were treated not much better than the Indigenous indentured laborers whom they worked alongside as fellow laborers.

The migrants were recruited to meet the demands of world markets. The sugar and guano trade was among the most difficult of work. Their production required a highly regimented and oppressive labor system. In the case of the Japanese population in Peru, the migrants were free immigrants, not indentured laborers, as in the case of the Chinese and Koreans. Japan was a rising industrial and military power and had influence over the treatment of the overseas Japanese diasporic community. Nevertheless, the Japanese in Peru were still subjected to scapegoating and institutional racism. Their economic success and presence in Peru was viewed as a national security threat. With the rise of imperial Japan in the 1930s and the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, Peru suspected disloyalty and took measures to deny naturalization rights to Japanese aliens, going so far as to denaturalize second-generation Japanese of their Peruvian citizenship. In the worst case, 2,118 Japanese Latin Americans—84 percent Japanese Peruvians—were uprooted and deported to the United States for hostage exchanges with Japan for American prisoners of war. At the war's end, they became stateless persons, denied return entry to Peru and declared illegal aliens in the United States. About 900 took the one-way ticket to war-torn Japan, a country they were unfamiliar with; many who moved there did not speak the Japanese language.

The book details many such Asian tragedies that occurred during this time. It raises the question about how racist ideology and stereotyping triggered actions targeting Asian populations in the Americas. Today, the conditions for scapegoating and repeating Asian tragedies remain. The economies and technological innovations of the East Asian nations are surpassing those of the United States. The United States and other Western nations are mindful of this, and in particular of the technological advances of China, which are viewed as existential threats. US-China relations are now at an all-time low. The emerging cold war between the West and China, blaming China for the pandemic, and rising anti-immigrant sentiments serve as the backdrop for anti-Asian hate in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Asian Tragedies in the Americas provides cautionary narratives and understanding that may help stem their repetition.