Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, in 1973, Brendan Ly was one of seven children. Because his father fought with the Americans, the family was in danger daily. They escaped by boat in 1978-79 to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, then to Raleigh, North Carolina, for one year and finally to San Jose, California, where Brendan grew up. From the time he was eight years old, Brendan contributed to the family income picking fruit and vegetables in the summers and doing back-of-the-house labor in catering and retail.

Jazz musician and restaurateur Gene Nakanishi is a second-generation native-born Las Vegan. In the 1920s, Gene's paternal grandfather worked on the Union Pacific railroad between what is now Zyzzx, California, and Las Vegas. After his oldest child died from lack of available medical care, the elder Nakanishi moved his family to Las Vegas and commuted to his work site. During WWII, when Gene's father was 17, the Nakanishi family was interned at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center, near Cody, Wyoming.

Elaine Mariko Okamura was the sixth of seven children born to her parents in Honolulu, Hawai'i. She tells of her father, who left Japan to find his father in Hawai'i, and her mother who was born in Kauai but was sent to Japan as a five-year-old to care for her grandmother. Her father owned the only grocery store in their area, and she recalls him doing his calculations on the abacus. Elaine's knowledge of Japanese helped her to become a stewardess for the Pacific Rim for Pan American Airlines.

Born in India and raised in Zambia, Africa, Zia U. Khan is a cardiologist, philanthropist, and AAPI advocate. Khan's father was one of three sons who were left fatherless at an early age when their father died and who were raised by their widowed mother. As a young boy Khan's father did odd jobs to help support the family and, with no birth certificate, made up a birthdate so he could go to school.

Second-generation physician Kochy Tang arrived in Las Vegas in 1999 to complete her Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) residency; she stayed because she became part of a congenial medical community. Tang's father, Y. Y. Tang, M.D., left China in the early 1940s to go to France and then to Boston to attend Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1945. He was drafted into the U.S. Army for the Korean War and served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) unit. After the war, he practiced alternative medicine in San Francisco and Reno.

Born in 1934 in Lahaina, Maui, Hawai'i as the seventh of seven daughters of a sugar plantation crew boss, Rozita Villanueva Lee recalls a privileged life, because when her father became a boss, the family got electricity, a telephone, indoor plumbing, and fluorescent lighting in their house. The camps were organized by nationality: the Filipino workers and their families lived in one camp, and the Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and "haole" workers and their families each lived in their own.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Maila Aganon emigrated with her parents in 1992, after she completed her first semester of college. She describes as "typical" her youth as the youngest child (with brothers 5 and 7 years older) of a teacher who worked in another village and a father who worked out of the country. Although independent, she was part of a tightly knit village. The household spoke three languages: her mother's dialect, her father's dialect, and Tagalog.