60 free AAPI Heritage trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free AAPI Heritage trivia questions with answers. AAPI trivia for Heritage Month events, classrooms and team quizzes. The questions cover why May was chosen (Manjirō's arrival in 1843 and the golden spike in 1869), the laws that shaped Asian American life (the Chinese Exclusion Act, Executive Order 9066, Wong Kim Ark, Thind, Hart-Celler and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988), and the people who broke barriers: Dalip Singh Saund, Hiram Fong, Patsy Mink, Daniel Inouye, Norman Mineta, Elaine Chao and Kamala Harris. It also takes in activists Fred Korematsu, Yuri Kochiyama and Larry Itliong, Native Hawaiian Olympian Duke Kahanamoku, astronauts Ellison Onizuka and Kalpana Chawla, and cultural firsts from Anna May Wong and Bruce Lee to Michelle Yeoh, Chloé Zhao and Ang Lee. Easy questions come first; the harder ones will stretch history teachers. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the people, laws and events, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which month is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month observed in the United States?
May
It began as a ten-day week in 1978, was stretched to a full month in 1990 and formally designated in 1992.
Q 02What event on May 10, 1869 is one of the two reasons May was chosen for the heritage month?
Completion of the transcontinental railroad
The golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit on a line built largely with Chinese labour.
Q 03The first Japanese immigrant, Nakahama Manjirō, arrived in the US on May 7 of which year?
1843
He was a shipwrecked teenage fisherman rescued by a New England whaling captain who took him home to Massachusetts.
Q 04Which president signed the 1978 joint resolution creating the original Asian-Pacific Heritage Week?
Jimmy Carter
The idea came from congressional staffer Jeanie Jew; Frank Horton and Norman Mineta introduced the House resolution.
Q 05Which president signed the 1990 bill extending the heritage week to a full month?
George H. W. Bush
May was officially designated Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month two years later.
Q 06The first Asians documented in the Americas arrived in 1587 in California. Where were they from?
Philippines
The Philippines later became a US possession from 1898 to 1946.
Q 07How was teenage fisherman Manjirō rescued in 1841 before becoming the first Japanese person in the US?
By an American whaling ship
Captain William Whitfield of the John Howland took 'John Mung' back to Massachusetts and enrolled him in school.
Q 08The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was signed by which president?
Chester A. Arthur
It was the first major US law to bar an entire national group from immigrating, and it stayed on the books for six decades.
Q 09In what year was the Chinese Exclusion Act finally repealed?
1943
The repeal, passed while China was a wartime ally, allowed just 105 Chinese immigrants a year.
Q 10Which 1898 Supreme Court case established that a child born in the US to Chinese parents was a citizen?
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
It was the first Supreme Court ruling on children born in the US to alien parents, and it still anchors birthright citizenship.
Q 11The 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind denied naturalisation to which group?
Indian Americans
Thind, a WWI Army veteran, argued he was 'Caucasian'; the court ruled he did not meet the definition of a 'white person'.
Q 12Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans, was signed in which year?
1942
Two-thirds of the roughly 125,000 people displaced were US citizens.
Q 13Roughly how many people were displaced under Executive Order 9066?
125,000
Far more Asian Americans were interned than German or Italian Americans, both in total and proportionally.
Q 21Senator Daniel Inouye lost his right arm serving in which famed WWII unit?
The 442nd Infantry Regiment
He served in the Senate from 1963 until his death in 2012 and never lost an election in 58 years.
Q 22Which airport was renamed in Daniel Inouye's memory?
Honolulu International
He was the second-longest-serving senator in US history and a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
Q 23Who became the first Asian American vice president of the United States in 2021?
Kamala Harris
Of Indian and Jamaican parentage, she was also the first woman and first African American in the office.
Q 14Who defied the internment order, lost his 1944 Supreme Court case, and was vindicated decades later?
Fred Korematsu
His conviction was overturned in 1983 after evidence emerged that the government had withheld information from the courts.
Q 15Which president gave the internment resister who lost his 1944 Supreme Court case the Medal of Freedom in 1998?
Bill Clinton
Clinton placed his name alongside Plessy, Brown and Parks in the country's 'constant search for justice'.
Q 16Which president signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, apologising for internment and paying reparations?
Ronald Reagan
A 1983 commission report titled Personal Justice Denied had recommended $20,000 for each surviving detainee.
Q 17What was the 1983 federal commission report condemning the internment as unjust titled?
Personal Justice Denied
It found the incarceration was motivated by racism and xenophobia rather than military necessity.
Q 18Who was the first Asian American elected to the US Congress, taking his House seat in 1957?
Dalip Singh Saund
Born in Punjab, he was also the first Sikh and first Indian American in Congress and only became a citizen in 1949.
Q 19Who was the first Asian American US senator, elected from the 50th state in 1959?
Hiram Fong
The son of a Cantonese sugar-plantation worker, he remains the only Republican senator Hawaii has ever sent to Washington.
Q 20Patsy Mink was the first woman of color in Congress. Which landmark law did she co-author?
Title IX
It bans gender discrimination in federally funded education; she had been rejected by all 12 medical schools she applied to.
Q 24Who was the first Asian American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, as Labor Secretary in 2001?
Elaine Chao
Born in Taipei, she later served as Transportation Secretary and is married to Senator Mitch McConnell.
Q 25Norman Mineta, the first East Asian American cabinet secretary, had earlier been mayor of which city?
San Jose
He served in the cabinets of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; San Jose's airport now bears his name.
Q 26Activist Yuri Kochiyama was famously photographed cradling which dying leader in 1965?
Malcolm X
She had been interned at Jerome, Arkansas, during the war and later worked with Black nationalist groups in Harlem.
Q 27Larry Itliong led Filipino farmworkers out on strike in 1965 against which crop's producers?
Delano table grapes
Cesar Chavez's mostly Mexican union joined a week later, and the two merged into the United Farm Workers.
Q 28How long did the Delano grape strike last?
Five years
A consumer boycott of non-union grapes forced a collective bargaining agreement in July 1970.
Q 29What was Larry Itliong's nickname?
Seven Fingers
He immigrated at 15 with a sixth-grade education and organised cannery workers in Alaska before California's fields.
Q 30Native Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku won Olympic gold in which event at Stockholm in 1912?
100-metre freestyle
He collected five Olympic medals across three Games and did more than anyone to popularise surfing worldwide.