The First Amerasians tells the powerful, oftentimes heartbreaking story of how Americans created and used the concept of the Amerasian to remove thousands of mixed race children from their Korean mothers in US-occupied South Korea to adoptive American homes during the 1950s and 1960s. It explores the Cold War ideologies undergirding this so-called rescue and shows how the process of child removal and placement via US refugee and adoption laws profoundly shaped the lives of mixed race Koreans and their mothers.

Yuri W. Doolan is Assistant Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and inaugural Chair of Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans from Camptowns to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).