Amerasian is not a synonym for Asian American. An Amerasian is a person of mixed Asian and American parentage, especially the child of an Asian mother and an American father. The term, which dates to the Korean War in the early 1950s, came into wider use during the Vietnam War, when the prolonged presence of American servicemen in South Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries resulted in an increased number of such children. Since American servicemen are of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds, there is no fixed racial connotation to Amerasian apart from a supposition that one parent, generally the mother, is an ethnic Asian.
