Currently accepting clients for...

• Family History Research
• Speaking / Presenting
• Writing /Publishing

I have conducted genealogical research for over forty years, focusing on West Coast and Asian immigrants. My specialties include Asian Americans, with particular knowledge about "paper sons" and "paper daughters" and other Chinese immigrants, the World War II Japanese American experience and Japanese immigration, and the development of Asian American communities. I've spent many days researching at National Archives offices and obtaining information from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I have also explored the history of Asian immigrants to the California Gold Rush and the southern U.S., and other locations.
 

I have spoken to genealogical societies, museums, colleges, and libraries in California as well as online around the U.S. including to the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. In 2025, I coordinated and taught in the first 18-class course on Chinese American genealogy in the National Genealogical Society's GRIP institute. My topics which I presented at the 2022 NGS conference in Sacramento were "Angel Island and Its Immigrants from Over 80 countries," "Chinese Railroad Worker Files of the Mid-1800s," and (online) "An Introduction to the World of Asian American Genealogy." In the late 2010s, I was part of the research team for a film about the Chinese seamen who survived the wreck of the Titanic, called The Six. It was released in 2021 and can now be streamed.

I have greatly enjoyed working with my own family members to learn about our ancestors and with clients to help them learn about their own stories. I also have worked in the nonprofit sector, including exploring stories of Angel Island and other West Coast immigrants through past and current volunteer and staff work with the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. In 2022, an exhibit I researched and served as co-curator for opened on Angel Island State Park. The title is "Taken From Their Families," and it is about the internment of "enemy alien" Japanese immigrants from Hawai`i and the West Coast who were detained on the island. The online version is at aiisf.org/taken. In 2025 I received the "Spirit of Angel Island Award" from AIISF. I am also the lead author of the Chinese American Historic Context Statement for the San Francisco Planning Department.

I live in Northern California with my family and cats, and enjoy bicycling and the outdoors. I'm happy to work with people from all over the world, even if I might not meet you in person right away.

Services

I provide extensive general genealogy research on information such as development of ancestor and relative charts, identification of ancestors, descendants, and other relatives, families' immigration and historic experiences in America including during World War II, and much more. My clients have included individuals, families, attorneys, and filmmakers. I can often determine the location of one's home villages or regions. Particularly relevant to Chinese immigrants, where families have had to use "paper names," I can try to research families' "real" names where necessary. I also work with a network of experts who can help do legwork in locations such as China and Japan. You can see some of my own research at www.tonaidin.net (not yet mobile friendly).

Geographic Specialties

CA, HI, OR, WA, West, San Francisco Bay Area, US

Testimonials
An example of how genealogical research can have an impact beyond the personal.

For AANHPI Heritage Month, The Asian American Foundation released V2 of the AAPI History Hub—a free, online resource that now brings over 300 lesson plans and interactive tools into one centralized site for educators. For me, heritage and history are not just about learning names and dates, facts and figures. They are about understanding who and whose I am, that I’m part of a long legacy of struggle, survival, and resilience.

This past year, thanks to the generous support of Grant Din, I learned my grandfather was a “paper son,” part of a generation of Chinese men who entered the U.S. by claiming false family ties, because that was the only path allowed under the Chinese Exclusion Act. We found a 200+ page FBI file on my grandfather including his confession and naturalization in 1966. As a teenager he came to the U.S. to work in a hand laundry in Cleveland. To avoid jail for an altercation with a paper brother, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and fought in WWII. After the war, under the 1945 War Brides Act, he was able to bring my grandmother into this country - one of only 5,132 war brides from China.

For years, I didn’t know this history. Now, it explains so much about my family: the fear, the isolation, the pressure to assimilate, and the silence. This knowledge gives me a stronger sense of pride in what it means to be a 3rd generation Chinese American. It also gives me a stronger sense of solidarity with all immigrant families, knowing that my grandfather was one of the first undocumented immigrants in our country. I am part of a historical arc that is bigger than me – and bigger than the dark political moment we are living in. No matter the storms that blow, my heritage and history allow me to stay grounded because I know what I’m made of and what my ancestors weathered before me. They tenaciously survived so I could tenderly thrive.

That’s why the AAPI History Hub matters to me. It’s not just a collection of lesson plans. It’s a tool for healing, for discovering truth, for rooting ourselves in stories that were always ours—but never fully told. And now we get to tell them, and to teach them to the next generation. www.aapihistoryhub.org hashtag#AAPIHistoryHub hashtag#AANHPIHeritageMonth

(Excerpt re-posted from LinkedIn by permission from the writer. Original is at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7328021346314059777/)


Testimonial #2
Good day Grant: Many thanks for the research you did for me. I should say that I had "no luck" in researching my father who passed when I was 13 years old. I have for many years thought about who my father was(I really didn't know him or had no information) and my mother only told me he was from China. I had no connection with the Chinese part of my heritage except that my father was from China. Even with my little snooping around, I did learn a little about my father, and some of his past life that only confirmed the mystery of the man who married my mother. I was talking to a friend of mine who knew that I wanted more information about my father and she hooked me up with you. With my trepidation, fear, and wanting to find out more about my father, I enlisted Grant to do some investigation, and in the end a "big surprise" but relief that I now know so much. Grant was so clear in stating the "facts" with so much documentation that he found for me. What was so helpful was that Grant had a summary of valuable information he found about my father. This information written in this was so helpful as it told me what I needed to know (the documentation was extensive to read) and again was so happy that my new valuable information was like a "time-line" on my father's "journey" and some experiences when he came to the United States. For me, I am relieved and thankful for this information, as I now have some peace of mind of my "roots" and the many hardships my father had to overcome. I know so many more secrets that my mother and father carried with them(when they passed) and now I have to think about how Ii might share this information with my other sibling. I was honored when Grant asked permission if some of my father's history could be published in the NGS Magazine) if I would allow and I said yes. I know that sharing my father's story would be so valuable to so many. As I said earlier that I had some "trepidation" in going forward with finding out more about my father, but deeply feel more of a connection and understanding of my father's journey to the United States, the hardships, the life of not sharing the "truth", but since my father had died when I was young, maybe I would have known more now? I can't go back but my father's past leads me to understand more about the "life and times" and struggles my father and his family experienced. Who would have known that I too am the son of an immigrant who came to the US for a better life? I could only talk for myself that taking this step in contacting Grant was the best thing I could do for myself (a goal that I put off for years) to "know" my father's past and now I could die happy (I'm in good health now.) and continue to read more about the Asian culture, history, and now I do happy to be apart of the "melting pot" of America for my father coming to America. Sincerely, MKW

Additional specialities or search keywords
Angel Island, Asian American, Chinese American, Japanese American

Publications/Media
I have been published in NGS (National Genealogical Society) Newsletter, The California Nugget (California Genealogical Society - cover story Winter 2017) and Chinese American History and Perspectives 2019, and written extensive articles on the Immigrant Voices website of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (www.aiisf.org/immigrant-voices). These are detailed stories combining historical documents and often interviews with immigrants and their descendants. I've also been published in the Amerasia Journal, Nichi Bei Times, The Repeal and Its Legacy: Proceedings of the Conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Repeal of the Exclusion Acts, and Echoes from Gold Mountain on non-genealogical topics.

Lectures
I have lectured to organizations such as the National Genealogical Society (2022 conference), Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (2024 Virtual Conference), California Genealogical Society, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Legacy Family Tree Webinars, many local libraries and genealogical societies, San Francisco Historical Society's History Day, Chinese American Family History Conference, U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Association of Asian American Studies, programs at Angel Island State Park, Locke Foundation, and to numerous other organizations. In 2025, I coordinated and taught in the first 18-class GRIP course on Chinese American Genealogy for the National Genealogical Society.

Repositories
National Archives at San Francisco, Chinese Exclusion Act files at the National Archives-Seattle Branch, University of California, Berkeley

Research Time Periods

• 21st Century
• 20th Century
• 19th Century

Certificates
Certificate in Genealogical Research (Boston University)

Affiliations
Member, APG Diversity Equity, and Inclusion committee from 2022-24. Besides APG, my memberships include the National Genealogical Society and the California Genealogical Society, where I joined the board of directors in 2020 and was chair of the outreach committee from 2020-2024 and corresponding secretary in 2025. I serve as board treasurer for Mu Films, which has made films about the Korean adoptee experience, am board treasurer of the Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation, and am a former member of the board of the Marcus Foster Educational Fund in Oakland, CA, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, and the Asian Law Caucus (now Asian Americans Advancing Justice/ALC).

Degrees
M.A. (Public Policy Analysis), Claremont Graduate University; B.A. (Sociology/Urban Studies), Yale University