Celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander
Heritage Month 2026
PBS HAWAIʻI – Featured Programs
Lucky Chow: Copenhagen: Scandinasian
Saturday, May 2 at 7:00 pm
Saturday, May 2 at 8:00 pm
This documentary explores how the uniquely talented actor revolutionized Hollywood, an industry filled with racial stereotypes.
Saturday, May 2 at 9:00 pm
In the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 that imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans in WW II, families still grapple with the legacy of their experience.
Saturday, May 2 at 10:00 pm
Part history, part travelogue, part memoir, this documentary tells the story of a deceased Japanese soldier who is honored by an American who finds him with his diary
Monday, May 4
Part 1: Breaking Ground – 9:00 pm | Part 2: A Question of Loyalty – 10:00 pm
Tuesday, May 5
Part 3: Good Americans – 8:00 pm | Part 4: A Generation Rising – 9:00 pm | Part 5: Breaking Through – 10:00 pm
Told through intimate personal stories, this five part series casts a new lens on U.S. history and the ongoing role that Asian Americans have played.
Lucky Chow: Italy: Chinese Italia
Saturday, May 9 at 7:00 pm
Danielle Chang travels through Italy to experience the deep, lived fusion between Chinese and Italian cultures.
Saturday, May 9 at 8:00 pm
Restaurateur Billy Dec travels through bustling Philippine metropolitan cities, tiny remote islands, and cloud-scraping mountain villages to find family members.
Saturday, May 9 at 9:00 pm
In 1971 a small group of U.S. table tennis players made history, by traveling to a then-isolated China.
Saturday, May 9 at 10:00 pm
Minnesota was home to a little-known military intelligence school during WWII that trained Japanese Americans to be to translators.
Tuesday, May 12 at 9:00 pm
Lucky Chow: Berlin: Edible Art
Saturday, May 16 at 7:00 pm
Danielle Chang spends time with multihyphenated Asian creatives in Berlin who cook, perform, sing, and dance—sometimes all at once.
Saturday, May 16 at 9:30 pm
A Special Forces veteran goes on a father-son journey to Vietnam in search of healing.
Lucky Chow: London: Empire on the Plate
Saturday, May 23 at 7:00 pm
Danielle Chang moves through Chinatown, Brick Lane, and beyond to trace how tea, curry spices, and peppers arrived through trade and colonial rule, and how migrants adapted those ingredients into everyday food.
Saturday, May 23 at 9:00 pm
John Godinet is an ultra-runner living in Maryland. He’s outrun abuse as a teenager and discrimination as an adult but now has a new adversary: ALS.
Saturday, May 23 at 10:00 pm
An intimate look at inequality in San Francisco through the lives of Single Room Occupancy residents.
Monday, May 25 at 9:00 pm
Filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura chronicles his father Robert A. Nakamura’s life, from WWII incarceration to becoming a pioneer of Asian American cinema.
Friday, May 29 at 9:00 pm
Behind the Strings presents the story of a group of young Chinese musicians moved to the West when Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution ended.
Lucky Chow: Paris: By Way of Vietnam
Saturday, May 30 at 7:00 pm
Danielle Chang explores how Vietnamese cooking took root in France through colonial history and continued resettlement.
ENDURING DEMOCRACY: THE MONTEREY PETITION
Saturday, May 30 at 10:00 pm
Led by John Steinbeck’s editor, a group of women activists protest Japanese American incarceration and resist racism in WW II California.