From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration Act of 1924to Japanese American internment during World War II, the United Stateshas a long history of anti-Asian policies. But Lon Kurashige demonstratesthat despite widespread racism, Asian exclusion was not the product of anongoing national consensus it was a subject of fierce debate. This book complicatesthe exclusion story by examining the organised and well-fundedopposition to discrimination that involved some of the most powerful publicfigures in American politics, business, religion, and academia. In recoveringthis opposition, Kurashige explains the rise and fall of exclusionist policiesthrough an unstable and protracted political rivalry that began in the 1850swith the coming of Asian immigrants, extended to the age of exclusion fromthe 1880s until the 1960s, and since then has shaped the memory of past discrimination.

In this first book-length analysis of both sides of the debate, Kurashigeargues that exclusion-era policies were more than just enactments of racismthey were also catalysts for U.S.-Asian cooperation and the basis for thetwenty-first century's tightly integrated Pacific world.