THE VOYAGE TO AMERICA
(Excerpted from The Filipino Americans (1763): Their History, Culture, and Traditions by Veltisezar Bautista, 2nd Edition, Copyright 2002)

In the early 1900s, Filipinos came to the United States by ship, whether through Honolulu, Hawaii, or the California ports of Seattle and San Francisco. The immigrants were on the bottom part of the boat. Usually, the trip took one month.

First, the Trip to Hawaii. Let’s see in our imagination how the immigrants managed to reach Hawaii.

About two hundred or so, Filipino emigrants are brought to the very bottom of the ship. See how recruits and several families, with their bedding and new clothing for the trip, sleep on the floor on mats in one big room.
The workers and their families talk with each other: retelling rumors and tales about Hawaii and how laborers work in the fields. They also wonder if the stories in letters from their townmates working in Hawaii, telling about the good life, are true or not. Almost all of them are excited and they are somewhat nervous. They don’t know what their life will be on the islands of Hawaii. Many of them become seasick for lack of pure air on the ship. But they can’t go upstairs on the deck; it’s prohibited.

As they are about to reach Honolulu, the boat people are a little bit apprehensive; they are wondering about the outcome of going to Hawaii. Upon disembarking from their ship, you see them being assigned to plantations in Hawaii. A new life begins.

The Trip to the Mainland. The early Filipinos reached the continental United States by ships. The ships had laborers, pensionados, and nonsponsored workers. Usually, it took the ships one month to reach the Seattle or San Francisco ports.

How Does It Feel to Be Going to America? Here’s a typical reaction or feeling of a Filipino going to America in the years past.
(Excerpts from America Is In the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. Copyright 1943, 1946):

I found the dark hole of the steerage and lay on my bunk for days without food, seasick and lonely. I was restless at night and many disturbing thoughts came to my mind. Why had I left home? What would I do in America? I looked into the faces of my companions for a comforting answer, but they were as young and bewildered as I, and my only consolation was their proximity and the familiarity of their dialects. It was not until we had left Japan that I began to feel better.

One day in mid-ocean, I climbed through the narrow passageway to the deck where other steerage passengers were sunning themselves. Most of them were Ilocanos, who were fishermen in the northern coastal regions of Luzon. They were talking easily and eating rice with salted fish with their bare hands, and some of them were walking, barefoot and unconcerned, in their homemade cotton shorts. The first-class passengers were annoyed, and an official of the boat came down and drove us back into the dark haven below. The small opening at the top of the iron ladder was shut tight, and we did not see the sun again until we had passed Hawaii.

Airports, Not Seaports. Today, Filipino Americans enter the United States through airports. In 1976, when my wife and I arrived here, we disembarked from a Pan Am plane in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was quite surprised to see several American women driving buses. Moreover, I had the opportunity to see American workingmen doing street repairs. My first impulse was that I saw in my imagination images of American soldiers during the war, when we used to greet them, “Hello Joe!” “Hello Joe!” “Victory Joe!”

Moreover, I felt we were like herds of cattle to be branded when we were in line to be documented as immigrants to America. It was really a strange feeling in a strange new land.

II. THEIR WAY OF LIFE

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Filipinos were a mobile people. They were always on the go. Like birds, they moved according to seasons. They moved from city to city, state to state, in search of jobs, when certain crops were grown to be picked up or harvested.

In the 1930s, Filipinos concentrated in large West Coast cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, where they had large “Little Manilas.” Most of them lived in the San Francisco and Seattle areas because it was there where the ships brought them from Manila. While some worked in California and Washington cities, many worked as stoop laborers in agricultural fields: planting, cultivating, and harvesting seasonal crops, from California to Washington to Minnesota.

Little Manilas. The population in the “Little Manilas’ increased and dwindled according to seasons. For instance, in the summer of 1931, the population in Seattle was only a few hundred. In the winter, it usually would increase to 3,500, living in almost ghetto areas near centers of vice and entertainment.

In the San Francisco winter, they were on the Kearney Street area, along the northern part of Chinatown. In Stockton, during the summer months, the Filipino population numbered over 6,000. but in the winter it had only 1,000 Filipinos. In Los Angeles, they first created a Little Manila next to “Little Tokyo.” Later, however, they moved Little Manila to the neighborhood of Figueroa and Temple Streets, where they had Filipino barbershops, restaurants, grocery stores, pool and dance halls, and other centers of vice and entertainment.

There were also Little Manilas in New York City and Washington, D.C. Some of the Filipinos in New York City were described as well-to-do while others were considered as bums. The early immigrants to New York City were the Tagalogs. They settled on 6th Street, where there were pool halls, a barbershop, and small restaurants. Those who lived in Washington, D.C., were said to have a more organized social life.

There were also Filipinos in the Detroit, Michigan, area. Some of them worked at the Ford plants in Dearborn and River Rouge, Michigan.

In the 1960s, California’s agriculture continued to attract Filipino workers. In the 1960s in Hawaii, Filipinos were the majority of workers on plantations, about 40 percent of the employed males.

In the early 1970s, the Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay areas continued to attract large numbers of Filipinos. Other Filipino immigrants then moved towards Illinois, (most of them in the Chicago area), New York, Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states.

Where Do They Live Today? Today, Filipinos live all over the United States. But the majority of Filipino Americans, who came in large groups since 1965 after the approval of the amendment to the 1924 Immigration Act, live mostly in metropolitan areas, such as Honolulu, Chicago, New York, Jersey City, and Seattle, and in the suburbs of other large cities of America. Of course, some Filipinos stay in the confines of a major city, such as Detroit.

When the Filipino immigrant and his family arrive, they first rent an apartment. When they are able to save enough money for down payment on a house, they buy it, being their first house. When they make more money, then they move to the suburbs.

Normally, when a Filipino immigrant or naturalized U.S. citizen is already in the suburbs, he invites his relatives or friends whose families are still in a metropolitan city, such as Detroit, to come to the suburbs.

For instance, when we first arrived in the United States in 1976, my family and I rented an apartment in the western part of Detroit, Michigan. In that apartment, when it rained, it poured. When the children of my wife’s brother came to Detroit for a visit in the 1980s, one of them asked, “You lived here?” He was shocked.

When my wife became a medical resident of a hospital in Harperwoods, Michigan, we moved to another apartment in that city. When we had some money saved, we bought a three-bedroom bungalow in East Detroit (now Eastpointe), Michigan.

After living there for eight years, our relatives in the suburbs always said, “Come over here in the suburbs. You’ve been left behind there!”

“Here’ we come!” my wife and I answered in 1990. We decided to construct a detached condominium home here in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

This always happens to Filipino families: They move and move to a better place if the financial situation warrants it. By the time they reach retirement age, when all the children are grown and gone and on their own, some couples sell their house and live in an apartment again. Those who have enough money buy a small house. Those doing this are mostly in winter states who move to the sunbelt areas, particularly Florida, Nevada, Washington State, Texas, or where their savings or retirement benefits can take them. All they want is the sunshine. Of course, some retirees go back home to the Philippines where they want to spend the rest of their lives.

(End of Excerpt from The Filipino Americans).

For detailed info about the Filipino immigration to the United States, see the book The Filipino Americans (1763-Present): Their History, Culture, and Traditions. Second Edition, Click here.

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