Hawaiians

The Pacific Ocean surrounds the Hawaiian archipelago. There are eight major and 124 minor islands, volcanic in origin, with a total land mass of 6,425 square miles (16,641 square kilometers).

Hmong Americans

Social scientists estimate that there are between six and seven million Hmong in the world. Until recently, almost all Hmong lived in the mountains of southern China, Laos, Thailand, and northern Vietnam.

Honduran Americans

Honduras is a Central American country bordered on the northwest by Guatemala, on the southwest by El Salvador, and on the southeast by Nicaragua. It has a population of 5.8 million and an area of 43,277 square miles, about the size of Virginia.

Hopis

The westernmost of the Pueblo Indian tribes, the independent Hopi (HO-pee) Nation is the only Pueblo tribe that speaks a Shoshonean language of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family. "Hopi" is a shortened form of the original term Hopituh-Shi-nu-mu, for which the most common meaning given is "peaceful people." The Hopis have also been referred to as the Moqui, based on what the Spanish called them.

Hungarian Americans

Hungary is a small landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe. It is about the size of Indiana (35,919 square miles, or 93,030 square kilometers) with twice the latter's population.

Icelandic Americans

Iceland is the most westerly nation of Europe, the least populated, and was the last to be settled. A volcanic island, it touches the Arctic circle with its northernmost edge.

Indonesian Americans

The Republic of Indonesia is located in Southeast Asia, on an archipelago of more than 17,508 islands near the equator. The total land area is 782,665 square miles, and the sea area covers 1,222,466 square miles; altogether, the nation is approximately the size of Mexico.

Inuit

Once known as Eskimos, the Inuit inhabit the Arctic region, one of the most forbidding territories on earth. Occupying lands that stretch 12,000 miles from parts of Siberia, along the Alaskan coast, across Canada, and on to Greenland, the Inuit are one of the most widely dispersed people in the world, but number only about 60,000 in population.

Iranian Americans

The Islamic Republic of Iran occupies 635,932 square miles (1,648,000 square kilometers) on the Asian continent. The country is bounded on the north by the Transcaucasian and Turkistan territories of the former Soviet Union (along with the Caspian Sea), on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the west by Iraq and Turkey, and on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Iraqi Americans

Iraq lies the furthest east of all the Arab nations. It has a total area of 167,975 square miles (435,055 square kilometers), which is comparable to the size of California.

Irish Americans

The island of Ireland lies west of Great Britain across the Irish Sea and St. George's Channel.

Iroquois Confederacy

The Iroquois Confederacy, an association of six linguistically related tribes in the northeastern woodlands, was a sophisticated society of some 5,500 people when the first white explorers encountered it at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The 1990 Census counted 49,038 Iroquois living in the United States, making them the country's eighth most populous Native American group.

Israeli Americans

Located in the Middle East and slightly larger than the state of Massachusetts, Israel measures 7,992 miles (20,700 square kilometers). It is bordered to the north by Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to the east, Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.

Italian Americans

Moored by Alpine mountains in the north, the boot-shaped Italian peninsula juts into the central Mediterranean Sea. Along its European frontier, Italy shares borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia.

Jamaican Americans

One of the four large islands of the Caribbean archipelago, Jamaica measures 4,441 square miles, slightly smaller than the size of Connecticut. Its mountainous terrain, which exceeds 7,400 feet at its Blue Mountain peak, makes traveling from one end of the island to another more interesting than one would expect.

Japanese Americans

A country slightly larger than the United Kingdom (about the size of California), Japan lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent. An archipelago, Japan consists of four main islands—Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, and Shikoku—as well as 3,900 smaller islands.

Jewish Americans

Jews represent a group of people rather than a distinct race or ethnicity. Although Jews originally came from the Middle East, many races and peoples have mixed together in Jewish communities over the centuries, especially after the Jews were forced out of Palestine in the second century C.E.

Jordanian Americans

Jordan is a kingdom near the Mediterranean Sea in the Southwest Asia area known as the Middle East or Near East. Its neighbors are Israel to the west, with which it shares the Dead Sea; Syria to the north; Iraq to the northeast; and Saudi Arabia to the east and south.

Kenyan Americans

Located in East Africa near the equator, the Republic of Kenya measures 224,960 square miles (582,650 square kilometers). It is bordered to the north by Ethiopia and Sudan, the Indian Ocean to the east, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, and Uganda to the west.

Korean Americans

Known to its people as Choson (Land of Morning Calm), Korea occupies a mountainous peninsula in eastern Asia. Stretching southward from Manchuria and Siberia for close to 600 miles (966 kilometers), it extends down to the Korea Strait.

Laotian Americans

Located in Southeast Asia, Laos measures approximately 91,400 square miles (236,800 square kilometers), making it slightly larger than the state of Utah. The country shares its borders with Thailand in the southwest, Cambodia in the south, Burma in the west, China in the north, and Vietnam in the east.

Latvian Americans

Latvia is situated in Eastern Europe on the Baltic Sea, bordered by Estonia to the north, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and Lithuania to the south. With a population in 1993 of about 2.6 million and a surface area of 24,903 square miles (64,600 square kilometers), Latvia—one of the three Baltic nations—is larger than Estonia but smaller than Lithuania.