Jew’s great-grandfather, M.Y. Lee, played a key role in American history, helping to build the transcontinental railroad. To unite the eastern and western sections of the railroad, Central Pacific hired roughly 15,000 Chinese laborers who each shoveled 20 pounds of rock over 400 times a day to complete the Summit Tunnel at Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Despite their backbreaking labor, when the two great railroads were united at Promontory Point, Utah, M.Y. Lee and his compatriots were excluded from the historic ceremony commemorating the union of East and West. When Jew witnessed the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, she identified a lack of recognition for Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. She believes that not only should these communities understand their own heritage, but that all Americans should have an awareness of their contributions and histories in the U.S. Signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, the commemorative month honors the arrival of the first known Japanese immigrant to the U.S. on May 7, 1843, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.