Portrait of William Wong, who grew up in Oakland's Chinatown and has written a book about its history:

"Oakland's Chinese began to assimilate into American life in the mid-20th century, with the growth of schools, social organizations and churches. The churches of Chinatown played an especially important role, as Wong highlights in a photo of Episcopal Deaconess Emma Drant watching her flock of children at the True Sunshine Mission in the early 1900s and a portrait of the Rev. Edward Lee, the first American-born Chinese to become a Methodist minister.

World War II accelerated the process of assimilation. With China an American ally during World War II, Congress lifted the Chinese Exclusion Act. A new Chinese middle class emerged, realizing the promise sought by early Cantonese-speaking immigrants who called California "Gum Saan," or Gold Mountain."