The Nation’s Storyteller: The National Park Service, the Mystery of Japanese Bellboys, and the Making of the Model Minority

Abstract: The National Park Service (NPS) plays a vital role in shaping the United States’ identity and collective memory through its storytelling efforts. This article examines the impact of NPS storytelling, focusing on which stories are shared and which are left untold, as well as their consequences. Specifically, I analyze the NPS story “Japanese Americans at Grand Canyon: Bellboys and WWII Heroes” to identify NPS storytelling gaps, examine its impact on racialized Asian American cultural narratives, and consider the settler colonial implications of these narratives. Drawing from U.S. Census data, NPS websites, and historical newspapers, this research asks: What history emerges when we delve deeper beyond the current NPS representations of Japanese American contributions? How does the NPS’s narrative of Japanese bellboys as exemplary hospitality workers connect to the racialization of Asian Americans within the ongoing structure of U.S. settler colonialism? I argue that by moving beyond the limited NPS cultural narrative surrounding Japanese “bellboys and WWII heroes,” this article uncovers not only the fundamentals of being racially “Asian” in the United States but also a more complex story about the evolution of a racialized Asian American identity and the ongoing function behind its persistent, troubling legacy.