The Fortune Cookie Archive chronicles race-based murders of AAPI in the U.S. since its founding.
Though the fortune cookie is as American as baseball, its cultural birth was one of institutional racism and trauma. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942 to incarcerate all Japanese Americans on the West Coast of the United States. Unconstitutionally, 120,000 Japanese Americans, 70% of whom were natural born citizens, were sent to incarceration camps. Homes, businesses and property were unloaded hastily before the indefinite detention. Omikuji cookie makers in California sold their companies to Chinese families and fortune cookies began to appear in American Chinese restaurants. Lucky numbers and fortunes were marketable messages due to the exoticism and othering of AAPI which made its way into everyday U.S. culture.