♪
Few people know when they
take the cross-town freeway
through Stockton, California,
they're passing through
the remnants of a
once-bustling community.
All roads in America, with
Filipinos, led to Stockton.
It was home to the largest
Filipino population
outside of the Philippines,
a neighborhood whose
little-known history was
integral to the development
of Central California.
Filipinos had garages, cafes,
restaurants, and laundries.
There were just so many
businesses that you as a
Filipino could frequent,
because they had the things
that you needed.
Like many immigrants before
them, Filipinos faced
backbreaking work, low wages,
and at times, extreme racism.
Yet they still referred
to Stockton as  El Dorado
or the  City of Gold and (they)
sought this place to fulfill
their dreams.
When the Philippines
became a territory of the U.S.
in 1898, Filipinos could freely
enter the country.
Recruited by the thousands as
cheap labor to work
the Hawaiian sugar plantations,
they quickly began to migrate
to the U.S. mainland.
So Filipinos basically were not
occupying the upper levels
of the socioeconomic sectors.
They weren't the
high-end workers.
They were agricultural workers
(or) domestic service workers
which is what the economy needed
at that time.
Following the seasons,
they traveled up and down the
West Coast harvesting crops
from California to Washington
and working the fishing
canneries in Alaska during
the winter season.
Stockton provided a hub where
Filipinos could always return.
Filipinos arrived in
Stockton mainly because
they were recruited to Stockton.
Stockton was the center of
agricultural activity in the
central valley of California.
And of course, many labor
contractors that were
responsible for hiring Filipinos
attracted them specifically
to Stockton.
Little Manila at its height
was a lively four-block
area pocketed next to
Chinatown and Japantown.
To some Stocktonians, this area
south of Main Street was
the notorious  skid row.
For Filipinos however, it was
the closest thing they had
to a hometown.
From the late 19th century
on it was known as
the oriental quarter.
And this is where Chinatown was,
and as Japanese immigrants
start to come into the central
valley, into Stockton,
that started establishing
  Nihon Macchi nearby.
And this was anywhere from six
to ten block area south of
Main Street, and when Filipinos
come to the United States,
they find (found) that the only
places that will welcome them
are the people of
the oriental quarter.
It's an extremely
diverse neighborhood.
From the outside, though, most
white Stocktonians just kind of
generalize the area as
Chinatown.
My dad came from
Loboc, Bohol in the Philippines.
People told him to go to
California to a place called
Stockton because there were
a lot of Filipinos there.
So we came down by train, and
they brought us up and dropped
us off at the Lincoln hotel.
And I looked out the window onto
Main Street, and I could see
so (many) Filipinos in my life!
From Main Street to Lafayette
Street you could see and smell
all kinds of food in that town:
Filipino, Chinese, Japanese....
They were making biko there.
Lafayette and El Dorado Streets
becomes this cross roads of not
just Filipino community in
Stockton, but in a sense,
the Filipino community
on the west coast.
If you were looking for your
cousin and you've recently
arrived, you would come
to El Dorado Street,
because you knew there were
thousands of Filipinos,
especially during asparagus
season, lining the streets.
In Stockton Filipino workers
in particular became
synonymous with asparagus
cutting, considered one of the
toughest crops to harvest.
The hardest work that I ever
done (did) was asparagus.
You had to get the asparagus out
of the field, because during the
hot days that sun would soak
up the liquid in the grass,
the asparagus.
We called (asparagus)
grass in those days.
And if you got it to the  wash
  house, (you'd) dry it,(since)
they weighed it, see, (and)
you get paid by the weight.
And they want to make sure
you got that grass into
the wash house, but if it was
late, the guys going to get mad,
because you didn't
pick it up right away.
When working in the grass,
the wind was blowing up
the peat dust.
You couldn't see your hand
in front of your face.
I wore two pairs of pants, three
shirts, a bandanna over my head,
and (a) scarf.
And goggles. Yeah, goggles.
And you had to tie your shoe
strings around your shoes,
because if the peat dirt would
get up into your pant leg,
you're going to itch like
crazy when you sweat.
After you finished work in the
fields and get into
the bunkhouse, you'd have to
sweep down the bunkhouse.
So you'd get all that
dust outta there.
That was miserable.
There are very racist arguments
that farmers make
about Filipinos do (doing)
this work, because they're
(Filipinos were) shorter,
and therefore they're closer
to the ground.
But I'd like to think that,
you know, the ways that workers
were organized in terms of
home towns and in terms of
provinces and the relationships
that these men had
with each other and the
obligations that they had to
each other, (they) really
contributed to the efficiency
they had in their work.
And they had a reputation for
being extremely skilled workers.
For picking 100 pounds
of asparagus picked (in) a day,
Filipino workers
received just 90 cents,
less than half the amount paid
to their white counterparts.
This hard-earned cash was often
sent to waiting parents
and family members back
in the Philippines.
Filipinos and Filipinas,
come to the United States with
the intent of bringing their
family out of poverty.
And their American colonial
teachers tell them that they're
going to come to
the United States,
that this is such a
land of opportunity,
that they're going to pick up
gold up off of the streets,
and the irony is that Little
Manila is centered around
El Dorado street.
They're going to return in a
few months as these extremely,
wealthy men, who are coming back
to save their families and bring
their provinces and their
barrios out of poverty.
And that doesn't
necessarily happen.
The early groups of
Filipinos who arrived in
Stockton were mostly young
single bachelors eager to liven
up Little Manila and
ready to show some style.
But who were these guys
who arrived in America?
And, this is not my imagination,
they arrived, you know.
You would think they were
movie stars, seriously.
The way they dressed.
The way they smiled and
...their mustaches.
They really prided
themselves in the way
they looked, and that was
combing their hair,
making that straight line down
the center or the side of their
scalp just so they
would look dashing.
The Filipino men dressed...
whether they were from Chicago,
New York, Seattle...they all
dressed the way they dressed
in Stockton.
They all were flashy.
They wore suits that
were just unbelievable.
They would never go into a store
and buy a $20 suit
and hit the streets.
These guys came out
looking like movie actors.
And yet they were common
laborers working in the
agricultural industry.
Pinoys, as Filipinos are
sometimes called, sought out
the American dream
in new cars, gambling dens,
and dance hall girls.
You also have stories of
Filipinos with the
best intentions of saving money
end up losing all their money in
the gambling halls or
in the taxi dance halls,
(or) on clothes and on cars.
And one of the things you have
to remember is that when these
young men and women are coming
to the United States,
they're in their late teens,
(or) they're in the early 20's.
This is the first money
they're ever earning in their
entire lives.
And this is also, you know, the
birth of the consumer culture
in the United States.
My father opened
the Rizal Social Club.
Now they had someplace to go.
It was some kind of
entertainment for them.
My dad got girls from
San Francisco, Los Angeles,
(and) Sacramento: about 20-25
girls working there.
But they were all
Caucasian girls.
And these pinoys, they were all
young guys from the islands,
they had never danced
with a Caucasian woman.
It was something for them.
And they'd come in the dance
hall dressed up like peacocks.
Taxi dance:
you'd grab one girl, (and) go
from one girl to another.
It's like a taxi cab,
and then here in Stockton
we'd call 'em  dime jigs .
10 cents a dance.
A jig was the dance.
They loved to dance.
They would do the fox trot, the
jitterbug, the swing, the tango,
any of that, and they prided
themselves in being dancers.
I appreciated the role of
the taxi dancers and the ladies
of the evening, because
they took the sexual drive
of the Filipino men and
kept it away from us.
They (the Filipino men) treated
us like relatives.
They would feel that our
family was their family.
And so these gals
did us a favor.
They saved our souls
from damnation.
Because migrant farm
working was not conducive
to family life, Filipina women
and children were not encouraged
to immigrate.
Limited to a ratio
of 14 Filipino males
to every 1 female, Filipino
men instead often found
relationships with women
of other races.
Though many states prohibited
Filipinos from marrying whites,
a new generation of mestizos,
mixed-race Filipinos, was born.
My father came from
Luzon, and my mother is white.
So they were not able to get
married in Arizona,
'cause in 1931 Arizona had
an anti-miscegenation law.
My mother and father
had to go to Lordsburg,
New Mexico to get married,
because they allowed Filipinos
to marry whites.
On my mom's side it's black,
Irish and native American.
And on my father's side it's
Ilocano from the Philippines.
When I stop to think about
it, at our family reunions
and different family gatherings,
it's every color of the rainbow.
Whites in Stockton are
absolutely shocked and
angered that Filipinos
would  dare date white women.
My god, the affront these young
Filipino men wearing these
incredible suits that they
worked so hard in the fields
to buy.
You know, walking around
downtown Stockton
with these white women on
their arms, really incited
a lot of racist anger.
These boiling racial
tensions along with
fierce competition for
jobs during the Depression
culminated into race riots and
clashes between whites
and Filipinos all over
the West Coast.
On January 29th, 1930, a bomb
shattered the front of
the Filipino Federation Building
in Stockton.
Well, during those days
that (type of) racism
was something that
wasn't against the law.
We were never allowed to
go beyond Main Street,
north of Main Street,
where you could be spotted
because you were dark skinned.
My father would never go into
town unless he had his brother
or his cousin or some of
his town mates with him.
And that was mainly
for protection.
If anybody wanted to come up to
you and just make a derogatory
remark, then they would do
it, and there was no recourse.
It would only make things worse.
Back in the 30's early 40's
there was a feeling of
discrimination back then.
I remember one time
this guy, Johnny Mokado,
and I we went to some hotel.
And right there on the steps:
  No Filipinos Allowed .
Man, I was shocked to see that.
That really amazed me.
But it just didn't
dawn on me at that time
of being discrimination.
We just said you don't want us,
you don't want us.
So we just took off.
But later on you found out
that you couldn't go the
other side of Main Street, or
you couldn't own property.
In the Fox Theater, which
is the main theater in Stockton,
we were not allowed.
Filipinos were not allowed to
sit in the center part
of the movie theater.
They were relegated to the
side aisles against the walls.
And that went on through
probably the 40's
and maybe even the 50's.
Well, to understand
racism and to understand
the ways that Filipinos were
treated, you have to really
understand racism and the
construction of race relations
in the United States at the
turn of the century.
Filipinos are essentially the
only Asian immigrants entering
at this time in which the
U.S. essentially said,
we are closing our doors to
anybody who does not fit this
racial stock that we imagine
Americans should be made up of,
which is white Anglo Saxon
protestant racial stock.
And so Filipinos are also coming
into an area that is populated
by people who have migrated
from the Midwest and the South,
and brought with them
(Midwesterners and southerners)
to California their ideas of
racial superiority (and) rigid
segregation, and so Stockton is
an extremely segregated city.
Why do they (the Filipinos) feel
they can wear these suits
and drive these cars
and date anybody they want to?
Well, that's what their American
teachers tell(ing) them
(what) they can do (as American
residents) in the Philippines.
It's important to remember that
they grew up in an American
colonial culture, and they
come to the United States
in part because of the extreme
poverty that capitalism in
American colonialism
brings, that's for sure.
But they also come to the United
States because of the movies
they see; because of
stories that they hear;
because of the teachers who
tell them that America is this
land of opportunity.
They don't tell them about the
racism in the United Sates.
They don't tell them they're not
allowed to go to certain places;
that they're not going to
be able to become citizens.
In 1934, motivated
by anti-Filipino sentiments,
Congress passed the
Tydings McDuffie Act
which later granted
independence to the Philippines,
but restricted immigration of
Filipinos to America
to just 50 per year.
(The) 1934, Tydings-McDuffie Act
changed the status of Filipinos
from nationals, which was this
kind of in between status of
colonial subjects, to aliens.
One year later, Congress
attempted to deport
Filipinos from the U.S.
with the Repatriation Act:
a one-way ticket back
to the Philippines.
For many of these Filipinos to
go back home on this
one-way ticket and to have to
promise to never come back
was really seen
as a slap in face from
the American government.
Filipinos knew
what was happening.
They knew that congress was
essentially trying to stop
Filipino immigrants
from coming to the U.S.
And then with the repatriation
act, they saw that Filipinos
were essentially
being told to get out.
And this becomes a
rallying point for Filipinos
to come around and another
reason why Filipinos feel
they need to create community
organizations in order
to give themselves, you know,
give each other support.
There was a Masonic Order
brought over from
the Philippines called
the Gran Oriente.
There was the
Legionarios del Trabajo,
there was the
Caballeros de Masalan,
and there was the Filipino
Federation of America.
And so Filipinos from Stockton
could choose from any number of
these fraternal orders to find
companionship, to find support,
(and) to find family.
Stockton leaders like
Claro Candelario sought out
justice for the
Filipino community.
He spoke against racism,
the gambling halls and other
businesses taking
advantage of Filipinos,
as well as the unfair labor
practices against farm workers.
I think, really and truly, my
dad felt that there has to be
something better from the
Filipinos, also.
But when he came to Stockton,
he found out how these
agricultural workers were really
treated, (and) where they lived.
And, well, he just got involved
in the movement.
In 1939, Filipino labor leaders
organized an asparagus strike
in Stockton demanding the
restoration of higher wages.
Their strike was so successful
that all but two growers agreed
to their terms.
I'm happy to say that my dad was
able, in some way, to help
the Filipinos, and if his dream
of the Filipino having
a better image than what it was
then, that is his legacy.
World War II was a
turning point for Filipinos.
Eager to prove their patriotism,
Filipinos volunteered en masse
to fight against the Japanese.
The 1st and 2nd Filipino
Infantry regiments were formed,
and these wartime efforts led to
improved status for Filipinos.
My grandfather, Delvin Bohulano,
he volunteered, and he was in
the Filipino infantry regiment.
And he was involved in that mass
nationalization ceremony
that you see pictures of
thousands, of Filipinos lined up
taking their citizenship oath.
With citizenship,
now you can buy land,
(and) now you vote.
This is an incredible
change for Filipinos.
After World War II, the Filipino
community, like the rest
of the nation, flourished
and took new shape.
A larger number of Filipinas
start coming in because
they are (were) war brides.
Men who fought overseas in
the 1st and 2nd Filipino
regiments, when they go back
to the Philippines there is an
opportunity for them to
meet and marry young Pinays.
Young families,
better financial possibilities
and a new identity as American
citizens all created a sense of
community and belonging
that hadn't existed before.
Little Manila was no
longer a bachelor society.
It became a gathering place
for Filipino families.
Well, the sports that
the Filipinos had back
in those days, was very few.
So we decided to get
our own team up.
And so each town would get their
own basketball team: Livingston,
Sacramento, Vallejo,
San Francisco, (and) L.A.
We'd get together and have a
tournament: all of us guys.
It was we'd get to know each
other, (and) meet new girls,
you know?
My dad had this queen contest
going on for a Miss Philippines.
The queen contests were
popularity contests:
you had to sell votes, and they
were a dollar a piece.
The fraternal organizations
would use this as a fundraiser.
Actually that was a big
moneymaker at that time.
Anita was one
of the most beautiful mestizas
that I have met, and Anita was
one of the candidates.
And she won.
What did I do with the money?
I actually bought
furniture for our home.
I bought a stove, a dining room
set, and a living room set
with the 800 dollars.
The work of thousands
of Filipinos went into making
California's heartland
what it is today,
a multi-billion dollar
agricultural industry that makes
California the fifth largest
economy in the world.
Yet few people are aware that
Filipino farm workers played a
crucial part in one of the great
labor movements of American
history: collaborating
with Cesar Chavez.
The conditions in
the fields were amazing
(for) what these
guys put up with.
A gentlemen by the name of Larry
Itliong was in Stockton,
and he was part of the labor
movement to get Filipinos
involved in this whole issue of
unfair labor in the fields.
(In) 1965 where (when) people
think, wow, United Farm Workers,
Chicanos, started this movement.
But actually it was the
Filipinos that dragged
the Mexicans into
the labor movement.
Filipinos from Sacramento,
Stockton, (and) the central
valley are basically following
the crop rotation.
They're down in
Coachella Valley.
They get to Delano.
And so the workers
were kind of upset already about
what's happening, considering
that they came from Coachella,
and they were
getting $1.40 there.
And here in Delano
it was $1.10.
(If) Filipinos go
out on strike,
(then) big problem.
The Mexicans are going to
become the strike breakers,
So Itliong goes up to
Chavez and says,
"Look, we need your support."
And Chavez says, "No, I
can't give you my support."
Itliong says, "Why not?"
Chavez says "I'm not ready.
We'll wait 2-3 more years."
Itliong says, "No.
We go on strike now, and you
join us. Or when you go on
strike in 1968, we're going to
break your strike."
Larry Itliong joined
his group of Filipinos with
Cesar Chavez's group of
Chicanos, and together
they created the
United Farm Workers,
the most successful farm
labor union known today.
By the 1960's, the Filipino
community in Stockton began
to move away from
the downtown area.
City officials started to clear
out the ethnic neighborhoods
for urban redevelopment.
A few years later the
cross-town freeway construction
destroyed most of Little Manila.
The freeway construction
and demolition started in 1967.
And then when federal money for
freeway construction dried up in
the 1970's, it became
the freeway to nowhere.
And so it was this monument to
the ways that people of color
in Stockton who had been really
pushed aside in favor of
freeway construction
and redevelopment.
Right down here was a store.
Right here was a garage where a
lot of the guys in the 50's
used to hang out and
make their hot rods.
Right down here?
Mrs. Segundo Reyes' beauty shop.
Little Manila was devastated.
They cleared almost everything
but the Mariposa hotel and the
Rizal Social Club and the what
was once the AFL-CIO Union Hall,
which is now the
Emerald Restaurant.
I couldn't believe
what happened.
The Manongs, the older Filipino
men, and others who resided
in the hotels of Little Manila
were relocated by the city.
Some stayed here at,
they called it  they'd go to the
  Daguhoy Lodge .
They had their own clubs:
the Demasalan, the
Legionarios, (and)
the Iloilo Circle.
The last few remnants
of this important community are
barely apparent, but its
significance lives on.
Filipino organizations are
fighting to preserve the
remaining buildings now deemed
an endangered historical site.
What you are standing in
front of is the
Filipino Plaza.
The Filipino Plaza
was dedicated in 1972.
And a group of Filipino
activists and a group of
Filipino organizations in
Stockton realized that thousands
of manongs, thousands of
old-timers, were losing their
homes because of redevelopment.
So these Filipinos got together
(and) they called themselves
the Associated Filipino
Organizations.
And this is the nation's first
Filipino-American planned
and inspired affordable housing
project in the nation.
My feelings about preserving
Little Manila are real strong.
It (Little Manila)
represents a part of history
that will forever be
a part of California.
Do you really want (to show)
your grandchildren and point to
an empty lot and say, "This was
where this important strike
was planned."
Or point to a dilapidated
building that is about to be
torn down and say, "This was
where this organization met."
Because what does that say
about how we value our history?
That if we allow our historic
places to become parking lots
and to become empty lots,
what does that say about what
we think about ourselves as
Filipino Americans and how much
we value our long history
in the U.S.?
California's history is so
entrenched in the
things that happened in
the Little Manila area.
I seriously feel that I'm
standing on Manongs' shoulders.
Whether they're a
child of an immigrant who came
in the 1980's or the great
grandchild of a Filipino couple
who came in the 1920's, it's my
hope that when students leave
the tour they have this
connection to Stockton and
really think about the struggle
of Filipinos to survive.
And so to preserve these
buildings, to preserve
this history, that's our  utang
  ng loob , that's our debt
for what they've done for us.
♪♪
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♪
