[0:00-10:00]
Welga Project background – Working with educators from the Philip Vera Cruz –Larry Itliong Middle School– growing up on the Yamaka Indian Reservation – Student Movement at Indonesia – early involvement with farm labor activism – meeting international activists and representatives
[10:01-20:00]
Cal-Indo Project – Post-baccalaureate experiences – science revolution – increase importance of activism and civil rights –attending Howard University and connection with civil rights – rural sociology work at Cornell and the Philippines – field work in the Philippines (Mindoro, Initao, Laguna, Cotabato)
[20:01-30:00]
American Friends Service Committee – joining the picket line during the 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike –picketing the Giumarra Winery– association with Pancho Botello – farmworker activism in Northern California (Davis, Marysville) – assisting the UFW in Northern California– Yuba City school board stops bussing in children from farm labor camps – collaboration between social justice groups (Peace Corps, United Farm Workers, student organizations, UC Davis Faculty) – grassroots bussing programs for rural school children – Grape growers swift response to UC Davis Chancellor Emil Mrak – the firing Molly Freeman – Discussing the farmworker movement at UC Davis College of Agriculture – hate mail for bussing rural school children – creating the Community Development course
[30:01-40:00]
UC Davis’ response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy – Asian American Conference in California – organizing UFW Filipino leaders to attend lectures (Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong) – UC Davis Asian American Studies and the United Farm Workers – the farmworker movement and Asian American studies curriculum –
[40:01-50:00]
Cesar Chavez visit to UC Davis – Fujimoto’s involvement with the United Farm Workers – the origins of the Delano Grape Strike – Illocano and Pangasinan members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee – Arabic boycott signs during the grape strike – disagreements between Filipino leaders and other UFW leaders
[50:01-01:00:00]
Relationship between AFSC and UFW – Filipino farmworker involvement and the creation of the UC Davis Asian American studies curriculum.
[01:00:01-01:10:00]
Supporting Filipino-American Farmworker History – Assembly Bill 123 Legacy in Filipino-American Farmworker History – Fujimoto’s tenure situation
Welga! Filipino American Farmworker Oral History Project
Oral History Interview
With
LILLIAN GALEDO
June 5, 2015
Oakland, California
By Alaina Kyra Cagalingan and Miggy Cruz
Welga! Filipino American Labor Archives
UC Davis Asian American Studies Department
[June 5, 2015]
[Begin Audio File]
CRUZ: Starting now is the interview for the oral history of Ms. Lillian Galedo. I’m Miggy Cruz.
CAGALINGAN: I’m Alaina [Cagalingan].
GALEDO: I am Lillian Galedo.
CRUZ: Can you tell us where and when were you born?
GALEDO: I was born in Stockton California in 1948 so I was a post world war 2 baby, part of the baby boom.
CRUZ: Can you tell us where were your parents born?
GALEDO: Both my parents are from Bohol. They are from a town by the name of Garcia-Hernandez, Bohol, which are two priests. The city was named after a priest. Well, it’s more like a village. My father first left in about 1922 to look for work.
He ended up on the West Coast of United States, and was sort of a migrant farmworker like most Filipinos were at the time. Because the Philippines was a colony of the US, they were considered nationals of the US. And so they could travel back and forth without any problems. He continued to work in the US until about 1939.
He went back to the Philippines to find somebody to marry because there were anti-miscegenation laws here in the United States that prevented Filipinos from marrying outside of their race. He was introduced to my mom. She was 16 years younger than him. So I think when he left, she probably, was she even born? [laughs] Anyway, they got married and she got pregnant pretty much right away. So he left to come back to the United States to get ready for her and the baby. Because the plan was she was going to have the baby and at a point go take a boat. Because the boat took over a month, and join him. But World War II broke out and nobody was allowed to leave the Philippines because it was very dangerous. They didn’t get back together until 1947, and my sister was already 6 years old. Then the rest of us was born one after the other. I was born ‘48, my sister was ’49, and my brother was born in 1950. But by that time, my father was 50 years old already. Because by the time he got married, he was 40, I think.
CAGALINGAN: And so, your father stayed here all throughout the war separated from your mom, and after the war, she came to the US. So the rest of your siblings were born here?
GALEDO: Yes, so except for my sister, we were all born here in the United States. All in Stockton California, where he had pretty much settled and plan to raise his family there.
CRUZ: Is there a specific reason why Stockton?
GALEDO: Well, it’s an agriculture place. You can almost find work year round in Stockton. Because during winter, you can get a job at pruning, which is something he was able to do. He got pretty good at pruning and so he got employment in the winter, and then the rest of the year is some kind of crop was growing or needed to be harvested.
He actually tried not to be a farmworker and tried to get out of farm working because it was hard and also he was already 50 years old. He had worked since about 22 as a farm worker, so he tried different things. When my mother arrived, he had a what was called candy store. And, we moved into a house right across the street, and this is kind of in downtown Stockton, which was sort of an extension of Chinatown. So, Chinatown and Manilatown were pretty much the same place [laughs]. And he had this candy store, but he didn’t make much money in this candy store.
[5:09 – 9:39]
GALEDO: We thought of it as our neighborhood, but it was considered by the city as a [inaudible] neighborhood, ‘skidro” [inaudible], that kind of stuff. One of the things he did is he had people who sometimes stayed at the back of restaurant or the soda fountain candy store, which is what it's called. Maybe to make a little bit of money but also just to sort of give guys who were looking for work and sort of migrating down up and down the west coast a place to stay for a little while until they found some work. But we move out of there fairly soon after he lost the store.
We moved to what was the unincorporated part of Stockton. It’s just on the outskirts of Stockton before you cross a bridge into what’s called the Delta. So we were right out the edge of the Delta, living in an unincorporated part of Stockton. During my life in Stockton, that part of town finally got incorporated. But at the time we were living there didn’t have sidewalks and didn’t hook up to [the] city’s sewer systems so we had a septic tank in the back. And it was still so rural-like. But it was a like a quarter acre. He had a quarter acre of land so his idea was to build like a big garden. We have a huge garden in the backyard and a very little house.
It was a very racially mixed neighborhood. Well I shouldn’t say that because there were very few white people there. But a lot of Filipinos and especially Filipino mixed families: Filipino-Mexicans, Filipino-white; and mainly farm workers or people working in the agricultural industries, so as cannery workers. So I always went to school at places, well not just me but my whole family went to schools that were very integrated schools because south Stockton were pretty much one of the areas where people of color lived.
There was sort south and east Stockton. And Stockton was still somewhat segregated. North of main street was mainly white with some Asians. Then south of main street was Asian, Latinos, black and some white people. Especially white people in mixed marriages. It wasn’t ‘til I went to community college that I even went to north Stockton because that was where the community college is at. We grew up in a very mixed-raced kind of environment. Mainly, low income people.
CAGALINGAN: Its interesting because one of our required reading is Dawn Mabalon’s book and she talked about segregation of Stockton as a city. As you’ve mentioned earlier, there was that line. I believe it was the railroad that segregated the white from the people of color.
GALLEDO: Yes that was one of the benchmarks. There is a canal, which is near the main street. When you pass downtown, the city starts to become more and more white. And then housing development was happening more in north side of town. And eventually Asians, in particular, started moving out to north of Stockton. But now it's very mixed. People are everywhere. South and East Stockton are pretty much in low income people.
CAGALINGAN: Do you remember your experiences before your father left farm working?
[9:39 – 14:51]
GALEDO: His business failed, and so he went back to being a farmworker. He was a farmworker ‘til he was 75 years old, which was when he finally stopped working. So most of his life, he was a farm worker. Most of what we saw him do was farm work. As teenagers we also did farm work just to make money. We’d pick berries or tomatoes during the summer season to earn money for our school clothes or things like that. But when we were smaller, we’d also help our dad harvest sweet potatoes because he would have a contract with a particular grower. So the whole family would go early in the morning and start putting sweet potatoes and boxes. I think we did that for 3 or 4 years as kids.
There was couple of times when we also worked at the asparagus packing shed. So the workers would bring asparagus to the shed and then it would be put on to a conveyer belt, and we would pack it on boxes. But we have to be there at 6 o’clock in the morning because by the time it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon, it was too hot. So you have to work earlier.
CRUZ: So after your dad left farm working at 75, and you said, the candy shop..
GALEDO: Yes, the candy shop was something he tried during that time when my mom was still in the Philippines. He had this idea of getting the business going and when she came she could help with the business. They did that for a little while, but the business didn’t take off so he had to go back to farm working.
CRUZ: Can you talk about your educational life from when you learned about activist groups and how you got involved with that.
GALEDO: Okay, so I went to high school. And all my elementary, junior high school, which is what we used to call what is now middle school. In high school in South Stockton, and then I went directly to the community college which was in north Stockton, which is now delta. Junior college is what they call it then. It was there while I was at junior college that I got recruited to go to UC Davis. I had already been accepted to go to San Jose State.
My older sister who was born in the Philippines, she was 7 years older than me, she had already gone to San Jose state. She was already married and had kids by the time that I was getting ready to go to college. I decided to go to the same college as she did. I had really very few ambitions. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I just following her path.
Now, this recruiter came to Delta Junior College, that was what it was called at the time. This recruiter, an African American guy, came to our councilors and scheduled some appointments with some folks for him to talk to about going to UC Davis. I didn’t know it at the time, but Davis was embarking on it first major expansion of educational opportunity program. So his mission was to recruit about a hundred kids, minority students or low income, which is what we were called at the time to go to Davis.
I didn’t know what I was doing when I went to that appointment. Interestingly enough, I didn’t even know UC Davis existed. And if you have seen a map, Stockton and UC Davis are actually pretty close but we never got anywhere. I have never gone to Sacramento and that kind of, we have a very small university that we operate. The farthest side we’ve went is Livingston because my parents had a sort of a town organization that they belong to –The Sons and Daughters of Hernandez. They would meet periodically in Livingston at this farm.
[14:51 – 19:52]
GALEDO: Anyways, I didn’t know where Davis was and he had to tell me where Davis was. I was very skeptical because I had never heard about the place. But what was intriguing about it is that our education is going to be totally free. And that was EOP in the very beginning. Everything was going to be covered. And I was like “myehh, really?” He said, “Well come in and look at it first.” They hauled a bunch of us down there and luckily I knew some of the other people who were going. There was Laurena Cabanero who was a year younger than me but also from Edison high school. There was probably about 10 of us who went to Edison high school.
It was a rather intimidating experience because there was hardly any people of color. It was all white and the prospect of living in a dorm with all this white people was not something that I had planned on in my life. But you know, it was going to be free. It was hard to argue with that. I signed. My mom was skeptical about signing the papers because she says something must be wrong here. This doesn’t happen. I think she didn’t wanna sign it and so I think I faked her signature. But we went and they took pretty good care of us because they realize that it was going to be a difficult adjustment. There were support groups and tutoring.There weren’t really student organization that we were interested in or knew about or geared toward student of color. They made it possible for us to kind of band together.
They started talking to us about the issues of the day. This was 1968, and the UFW had already been created. And so, one of the issues that they were talking about were the farmworkers and how the UFW was created. They talked mainly about the Mexican farmworkers. But you know, one of the councilors, she’s half Filipina and Mexican. She pointed out the Filipinos. But there were no Filipino organizations on campus.
I did join a campus group. It was a Mexican Student Association because I identified with Mexican kids. I grew up around Mexican kids and Mexican farm workers. And that was the only group that was organized. I joined that and I think I was a member of it until Asian Americans started getting themselves together. But it was also because that organization was folded into a kind of a statewide organization of Mexican students, whose name I forgot now. But now you’d have to be Mexican to be part of it. And so I couldn’t be part of it anymore. It still exists. God, what is the name of that organization. Do you know of any Mexican or Latino organization on campus?
CRUZ: I’m not sure.
GALEDO: Its acronym had been blotted out of my mind and replaced by a gazillion other acronyms. But it was the birth the Chicano movement. And so, it was actually kind of an expression of the nationalism of the time where groups were organizing on narrow nationalism. And so, it wasn’t possible to a member of this organization anymore. So I gravitated towards Asian Americans. There was no Filipino group yet there either. But there were beginnings of Asian American studies. This is 1968, and this is the big year of student activism. I was very conservative, apolitical, and I just sort of walked into it. It happened around me and sort of just swept me up.
[19:52 – 24:42]
GALEDO: So in 1968 was the 3rd World Strike at SF state, and Filipinos were involved in that and I was like wow! They came to Davis to talk about the 3rd world strike. “Ohh these guys are so cool”, and they seemed that way. The student body president was half Filipino and very much identified as Filipino. He is Filipino Guamanian. He was part of a Filipino organization called PASE, which I think is still there. They made it a point talking to students of other campuses about the strike and getting support for the strike. So of course, you know, we supported the strike.
And then, 6 months later, the 3rd world strike at UC Berkeley happened. Because when I met with these guys in San Francisco state, the strike was coming to close. Then UC Berkeley happened [referring back to its 3rd world strike] where Asian Americans were part of a third world leadership of the strike. They were not only activist to starting ethnic studies but they were also anti-war activists. They also made a point of going to other campuses to talk about this and inviting us to go to their campus. I went with a bunch of students to UC Berkeley to soak in the political atmosphere.
It was very intoxicating. I was like, “ Oh I wanna be one of these people.” I remember Jing Huan (sp?), who is the recent past mayor of Oakland, coming to UC Davis to talk about the war. That girl was so informed and she must have been 18 years old. She was rattling on about the statistics of the war and the impact of the war. I was like, “Wow! I want to be like that!” So yes it was very contagious becoming a political person and being a part of the political organization. With the end of the 3rd world strike at Berkeley, the kind of movement to start ethnic studies program on campuses all over the country was going on.
At Davis, I got involved with the students who intent on starting Asian American Studies as part of the larger ethnic studies but we were rather [inaudible] we were looking at just Asian American studies. There were Chicano students are looking at Chicano studies, and black students looking at Black studies. It was in the process of starting these ethnic programs that people got very politicized.
For one thing, you started learning about your history. You started getting critical about the education system for not giving you the opportunity about learning about it till now. There was nothing written so we really had to dig hard to find anything. I was fortunate to be part of a research project that [inaudible] Isao Fujimoto , who is still there and somebody who I think of as my mentor, was instrumental in getting a grant. So he got a grant from the Ford Foundation. It wasn’t just him. Bryan Tom who was a little bit older than some of us, but in law school at the time help write the proposal. And they got this grant for students, undergraduates, to do community research. Because Isao Fujimoto was very big on community research and community empowerment especially in small communities along the Delta and the river communities. And so, we got this little grant to get work study positions to go out and research their own communities. Some of the Japanese students researched about rice growers in northern California.
[24:42 – 29:95]
GALEDO: Some of the Chinese students researched about China towns. What was the history of China towns. Me and my girlfriend from Stockton went to Stockton to research the development of the Filipino Center because that was kind of the big thing. But in the course of that, [we] were trying to learn about the history of the Filipinos from Stockton. It was hard for this student groups to finish this projects. Our project was one of the few that finally made it to the end and actually published a paper on it, which is something that inspired Dawn [Mabalon]. [The paper] was called Roadblocks of to Community Development. It was sort of the documentation of the struggle that the [inaudible] community who had wanted to do housing development with no background fought to get the what is now the Filipino Center.
CRUZ: Do you mean Ms. Dawn Mabalon?
GALEDO: Yes. So she read later on. Dawn is the daughter of somebody who graduated with me, Christine (sp?). We were in the same class and so Dawn is her daughter. Christine got married fairly soon after high school. We were like “What?! You are going to get married?” [laughs] And so she started her family pretty early. So Dawn is the product of that. She ended up very interested in Filipino history and wanting to know more. So Dawn ran across this paper that we wrote called Roadblocks to Community Development, which inspired Dawn to know more about the history of Filipinos and Stockton and their struggles. So, what was the question? [laughs]
CRUZ: Oh, it’s your political activism
GALEDO: Oh, my political activism. It was something that was really a product of the times. There was so much of it happening. You could get involved in multiple things at the same time. One of the big things at the time was the war in Vietnam. Almost everybody who got involved in any kind of organizing as a student were also part of the anti-war movement. So we went to demonstrations in San Francisco. Asians were trying to assert themselves in that because this is a war in Asia after all. So we would get recruited to go to the Asian delegation of these major mobilizations in San Francisco.
I should say that the other thing that was a big political issue was iHotel. And so, we got recruited from Davis to go do work at this these work parties to fix the walls, repaint, and resurface to bring the iHotel up to code so it would not be demolished, which in the end we lost. But it was a huge politicizing experience. So much so that when I graduate, I wanted to be in San Francisco. That was where I wanted to be. I took a federal job and worked for the federal government in an employment program, processing invoices, and got myself into a house on commercial street, which is in San Francisco Chinatown and 2 blocks away from the iHotel. I worked there for a little while.
CRUZ: You mentioned that there were very little organizations for minorities at UC Davis.
GALEDO: None, I think [laughs]
CRUZ: Well through the years, you said the 3rd world movement happened, were you part of any organization that created and can you mention the name of those organizations?
[29:25 – 34:39]
GALEDO: Well we helped create Asian American Studies. We had to research what there was already published on Asian Americans. One of the by products of that research project we worked on was the bibliography of research on most Asian Americans. Most of those research was doctoral thesis or master's papers or things like that that were on the archives of Bancroft library. There was nothing at UC Davis. There were only some at the Bancroft library.
We created some of the early primary resource material upon which Asian American Studies would be built, upon which the Filipino curriculum would be built. There was nothing to begin with. I was only there [Davis] for two years because I came after junior college. And so, I graduated on time even though I had a D in… What was that D in? Because I boycotted classes for the invasion of Cambodia and stuff like that, so I didn’t learn anything from this class. I tried to talk to him [referring to her professor] in giving me a C but he still gave me a D, which meant I still passed and get my degree.
Actually, a lot of students had dropped out of school. They have decided they wanted to get involved in the movement and didn’t finish. I, at least, decided to finish college and get my degree even though I knew absolutely nothing what to do afterwards, except go to San Francisco and get involved.
And so, when I got to San Francisco, I got involved in the iHotel, which was really a student-run. It was students from state and Berkeley who made up these work teams and organized the tenants. [They] tried to address all these concerns that the city had about it being out of code. They had to learn a lot about housing development. People really did a lot from scratch, absolute scratch.
iHotel turned out to be one of the premier community housing development issues of the day of which other examples would happen, like in Stockton, the Filipino Center was a similar thing; in Seattle and Little Tokyo in L.A., that kind of stuff. People were learning from the iHotel and were getting involved in other cities around low-income housing.
But I only hung around, when you’re a young person, you don’t hang out very long in any one place. I was in San Francisco for only about 2 years. And then, I had to go back to Davis to finish my report, to write-up the report and to actually have a product for the research that we did. And so, I did that.
Then I got hired to a research project about farmworkers. I wanted to do that because my own farm working history. The premise of that is can the next generation of farmworker families get out of farm work, or do they continue to become farm workers. And so, we interviewed people at random and there were lots of people, including white people, who had been a farmworker sometime in their life that had successfully got out of their farm work. But of course there were some people, like Mexicans, who stayed in farm work, but maybe the next generation got out of farm work. It was a federal project to do door-to-door interviews with people.
CRUZ: Yes, that’s actually a good lead into the next question. You said that a lot of things happened in the 1960’s: the creation of the American Studies at UC Davis, the 3rd World Strike that lead to the creation. UFW is also created at 1965, can you talk about how the farmworker related to your student activist group?
[34:39 – 38:54]
GALEDO: In 1965, I was a high school student at Edison high school. I knew absolutely nothing about the formation of the UFW. I didn’t learn about the UFW until I went to Davis, which was already 1968. People who were involved in EOP and student recruitment were very inspired by the formation of the UFW and basically the Chicano movement because they were very closely related. While I was in my Mexican-American mode [laughs], I learned a lot about it, but through the lens of Cesar Chavez because the Mexican organizations were very focused in Cesar Chavez.
When I was already a college graduate and I had gone back to Stockton to work on this research project, I got involved in one of UFW’s campaigns, which was Prop 14. Now I don’t remember what Prop 14 was about anymore, but it was something that would strengthen the union. Then I met Pete Velasco. So Pete Velasco was assigned to Stockton. But I think he was actually the head of the Stockton office of the UFW to recruit people in the community to work on Prop 14.
And so, I learned more about the union and its struggles to exist and to stay alive. The growers had a lot of power and they constantly try to weaken the union through the legislation, undermining the agriculture relations board. Well actually, I don’t think the Agriculture board did not even existed till later that decade. So this was one measure [referring to prop 14] that they were trying to defeat or win? [laughs] I have to go back in history. But I got to learn more about the union through that campaign.
And, simultaneously around that time was Agbayani village. Agbayani Village was sort of a [inaudible] for Filipinos in particular. Asians, in particular, sent work teams to Agbayani Village to help build the place. I went a couple of times, but this was not as a student but already in my post graduate life, more of a community person. [I] came to support the union that way. It was also around that time when the tension between Filipinos and Mexican leadership was at the tipping point. I forget exactly when Philip [Vera Cruz] left. Then eventually, Larry [Itliong] would leave. But Pete remained [inaudible] member of the UFW until his death. We actually did a memorial for Pete. We did a memorial for Philip as well, but I think Larry died before Philip. Then Pete died after Philip. I also joined late in 1970s the KDP.
[38:54 - 43:26]
CRUZ: What is the KDP?
GALEDO: The KDP stood for Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino. And it was an organization that started in the early 70s, I wasn't a member of it then, partly in reaction to martial law in the Philippines. I think that the formation of the KDP and the anti-martial law movement, especially the left wing of the anti-martial law movement, happened right around the same time, I think even in the same year because martial law was declared in 1972. And, there was an initial formation called, NCLP (sp?), National Coalition for the Restoration of Democracy in the Philippines, or something like that, which I was not a part of but it would become, sort of the seeds, of the KDP. Because the NCLDLP (sp?) was formed by, kind of exiled from martial law in the United States, particularly young people, particularly students whose parents forced them to leave the country because they were afraid they were going to get arrested or jailed by Marcos, who were in New York, in San Francisco, places like that who found each other here in the United States around the issue of martial law. They began hooking up with Filipinos who self-identified as leftists and were involved in things like the iHotel and support for the farm workers, and that kind of stuff. They formed, together, the KDP, which was an organization of U.S. Filipinos as well as Philippine Nationals. Half of their work was around bringing down the Marcos dictatorship and the other half of their work was around civil rights issues here in the United States.
My sister got involved in it fairly soon after it started but I didn't get involved in it 'til I returned to the Bay Area because I was working for a while in Santa Barbara at a program that helped minority students. I came back to the Bay Area in the mid-1970s and that's where I got involved in this education task force and then I got involved in the iHotel again, and started working at UC Berkeley, running their Asian American Studies Library and met all the Asian left at UC Berkeley [laughs], which just propelled by leftist development because they were all over you, and eventually got recruited into the KDP in the late 70s.
CRUZ: You said earlier that you [did] two years at UC Davis and that's when you learned about, just going back to the strike, that's when you learned more about [the] UFW and what they were.
GALEDO: I think EOP taught me about UFW because the UFW in 1968 was the main struggle in the Mexican-American community, that was off-campus because a lot of the other stuff was happening on campus like the anti-war movement was happening on campus and the fight for ethnic studies was an on-campus thing, but the UFW was a community issue. The UFW and the iHotel and things like that were community issues that students got involved with at the time.
[43:26 - 48:39]
GALEDO: And the other thing about it was the whole logic and the theory of change upon which ethnic studies was founded was that there be a direct link between campus and community. That the reason why people of color in particular were even in the University was that so they could create social change in the communities where they were from, particularly in minority communities. There were classes that encouraged you and even gave you credit for getting involved in the community. There were, for instance at UC Berkeley, community classes where you could do work at the iHotel, or you could do a volunteer health program. Here in Oakland, there's a handful of organizations that started as a result of student activism in the community. So, our organization [Filipino Advocates for Justice] was started by a collaboration between UC Berkeley students and Filipino community leaders. Asian health services, Asian community mental health services, Asian Law Caucus, and a little bit further down the line the Korean community center of the East Bay. They were all started by student activists bringing their knowledge to the community to set up services and begin doing more scientific advocacy for the community through grassroots community organizations.
Personally, I think the ethnic studies programs lost that over the last, say ten, fifteen years, but it was really very ingrained, and if you look at the documents from the Third World Strike, it's all about community. That's why some of the students left school and didn't finish their degrees. They just went into the communities to do their political work. Over the years, I don't know if UC Berkeley even has community courses anymore where they give students credit to do volunteer work in the community.
CAGALINGAN: I was wondering was your father part of the strike?
GALEDO: No. I mean I think that in general Filipinos didn't support the unionization, in terms of the vast majority of Filipino farm workers. It was the leadership that really brought the vision of farm workers like Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, and Pete Velasco that bring Filipinos into the formation. Well, Filipinos started, they already had a union [referring to AWOC]. Chavez's group wasn't a union, it was an association.
Larry Itliong comes from a history of unionization. Larry Itliong was kind of embedded in the decades long history of organizing and farm workers. He already had this unionization consciousness, and Filipinos did have strikes, Filipinos participated off and on in unions but they were also lots of Filipinos who didn't and my father was one of them.
My father was over 50 years old and he was afraid he was going to lose his job. As an older man there were very, very few options for somebody like him. We never ever talked about it because he never told us, when I was still at home, that this organize was going on. He might have participated in strikes before because Stockton had a number of strikes. But he never ever told us that history. It was something that he never spoke about. Actually I had uncles who were farm workers and their friends, a lot of them, I think, were never ever formally members of the union.
[48:39 - 53:00]
GALEDO: Part of that was the contract system that existed in farm work where there were Filipino contractors who had these crews that the contractor would bring to certain fields to do the work. I think that that's another reason why Filipinos, in mass, didn't necessarily initially join the UFW because there were still contractors, Filipino contractors, in place that the better of them served in some way as the negotiator for these workers, so they would, in some respects attempt to replicate what a union would do for this set of people that they represented, which is not to say that it was a good thing because the contracting system was very exploitative in itself and contractors made the kind of money that the farm workers never did. But I think that in terms of what the landscape looked like at the time, that was a barrier for lots of Filipinos to get recruited in mass.
Not to mention the tension that became apparent, relatively early on, with the kind of inter-racial dynamics within the union. I think part of that is because the developing, growing Mexican-American movement and Chicano movement really embraced the UFW and made it their main national campaign. Plus it attracted all kinds of people who volunteered to be part of the movement for the organization of farm workers. I mean, my husband eventually went to work for the UFW, and so it became a possibility that lots of people went to support. People like, my husband is white, there were a lot of white activists who went to support the UFW. If you study the history of the UFW, it has spawned tons and tons and tons of people who went on to be labor activists, or consumer activists, environmental activists, all of whom, at one point, went through the UFW. They went through the UFW without really recognizing what was happening between the Filipinos and the Mexicans in the UFW. They were getting indoctrinated around this sort of revisionist history of how the union started.
It wasn't until later, when the Filipino community starts protesting that and forcing that history on them that some of it begins to filter out to this huge network of activists that still see their politicization as having originated with the UFW. It's pretty amazing. But there's a lot of self-destructive things happening within the union that people also have really bad experiences about, but it is what it is. It was kind of the phenomena you have to deal with when you're trying to build an institution. you're trying to create a union that's going to have some level of sustainability when it's being attacked by all forces around it.
[53:00 - 59:37]
GALEDO: I think to our discredit, Filipino community people didn't necessarily jump in there and protect the interests of the Filipinos that were there. I know that Philip [Vera Cruz] spent a lot of time, after he left the UFW, educating young people about labor organizing, about the broader movement, the left movement, all [of] that because I think he recognized that there wasn't that base in the Filipino community at the time to have helped that leadership when they were struggling within the union to try to have equality and get recognition there. But a lot of that is in hindsight, I mean, I didn't recognize it really at the time myself, and there were all these different things that you could be a part of in the UFW.
I think that if we really examine the UFW, to wring out from it, all these institution building lessons, I think that's what our job is now. It's not like we want to bring down the UFW, we have to have unions and unions, [who] are totally under attack, but I think that we have to look at something like the UFW to learn how to build institutions that are multiracial, in an environment where legislatively, growers associations, and trade agreements, and undocumented, and all those issues bisect the UFW. It's a very complicate situation, so rather than write it off, I think we should study it, and learn from it because it's not like that's going to reproduce itself in multiple other forms and I think that there's a lot to learn about it… Maybe when I retire I’ll [laughs] some attention.
CRUZ: When you said that your husband actually took part of the UFW, and you said earlier that there were different sections within the UFW, what did he work in specifically?
GALEDO: Well one of the amazing things that the UFW did which was use the tactic of boycotts. Through the boycotts they built this huge network and in some ways, international network, of boycott volunteers. I remember I supported the boycott too, I would picket, in my tiny little piece of whatever. But, there were people who organized the boycott [for example] in England, or organized the boycott operation in Berkeley, or ran the boycott operation in San Francisco, L.A., New York, whatever, and they used that boycott tactic, I think, better than anybody ever did before and after. Through that network they met tons of committed people, white people, African American people, Asian people, they had some way that they could contribute to the building of the UFW and they were loyal and they are still loyal to the UFW to this day.
My husband got involved in the boycott, and you might also want to talk to Vangie Buell, she's Filipino, and she was very, very instrumental in the boycott here in the Berkeley area because she was on the board of the co-op, Berkeley once had a food co-op, which is also another amazing institution, but they closed at some point. She [Buell] can tell you what it took to run the boycott. But it politicized her and brought her into the movement. He [her husband] was very active in the boycott and he went to Cuba, and that's another story where you get your international inspiration, and then he came back from Cuba and got a job working as an organizer for the UFW.
The UFW, in a lot of ways, because of Cesar, was run like a church. I mean he expected people to basically volunteer their time for very little monetary compensation, and so the wage, he was probably violating all kinds of waging hour laws [laughs], the wage was five dollars a week and you [the worker] were working for the union, you’re getting paid five dollars a week. But you developed these stone dedicated people to the cause. I swear to god. And they [the UFW] asked a lot from you, you got up early in the morning, you visited workers at their homes, you wed yourselves to the union and that was the culture of the union, and they burn people out left and right, but they had so much attention on the union that the union got somewhat paranoid about all these people and how to control all these people, and to not allow some of these people to take control of some of these parts in the union and what not.
[59:37 - 1:05:11]
GALEDO: There was a certain about of red bading (sp?) that went on within the union, and people had to really watch their P's and Q's (sp?) in terms of who else they were associated with. He [her husband] stuck it out there for quite a few years and he met people that he's life-long friends with, all over the country now because, like I said, they went off to do other things. They went off to work for the unions, they learned a lot about union organizing at the UFW and took that and went to work in unions whose membership also began to be very Mexican, Central American, and what not, as migration continued into the Unites States. These people are very instrumental organizers these days in some of these unions. Like the SEIU [laughs].
CRUZ: The what?
GALEDO: The Service Employees International Union. There's a lot of folks that at one point in their lives did something for the UFW who went on to be other organizers for other unions like the SEIU.
CAGALINGAN: I was wondering have you heard of the grape strike when you were at Davis? Oh no, since it was in 1965 you were in high school, but had you heard...
GALEDO: Well the grape strike went on for many, many years, and yes I had hear about it, I promoted it. I think it was two decades before I ever bought any grapes again. My husband still has trouble buying grapes, we'll only buy grapes at the farmer's market or something like that. It was ingrained in us, anybody who was progressive at the time, “don't buy table grapes.” Everybody I knew was participating, at least in the boycott, not necessarily organizing the boycott but popularizing the boycott and made you feel bad if there were grapes at an event, “where did these grapes come from?” “let's look at the box, is there a union label on the box?” But like I said, that boycott, that model was so successful that I'm like one of millions of people who supported the grape boycott.
CAGALINGAN: Would you mind describing how you were able to support it, what were the ways you did that?
GALEDO: Well, the main way was not to buy grapes and to talk it up among your friends and to picket at places that were selling nonunion grapes. The union would organize the picket and random supporters would just come and do their one hour walking around the line holding a sign, “don't buy nonunion grapes.” It was a broadly supported tactic, and one that people became very committed to, to the point where they look at the boxes before they’ll buy any grapes at stores.
CRUZ: Can you recall that experience that you felt though when you were boycotting or picketing, aside [from] “yes I'm doing this for the UFW, for the union,” can you just describe your own experience and feeling when you went and saw the other people doing it?
GALEDO: It's like the feeling you have with like a lot of issues that you're not personally organizing, but you're a supporter and you go an do your duty, basically, to contribute some small amount of time by volunteering to be on the picket line for awhile. It would be something that you learn and you use in other movements, and you get accustomed to it. You don't feel self conscious after awhile, you don't feel like you're going to get in trouble. It sort of neutralizes that intimidation that you might have felt like if you’re on the outside looking in at a group of people picketing at some place. It becomes sort of normal and natural, and you learn not to cross the picket line. So you approach something and there's a picket line and you go, “Oh, I'm not going to go to that place because I don't even know what those people are picketing about.” I wouldn't want anybody to cross the picket line when I was walking down the picket line. It transfers to all kinds of other struggles.
[1:05:11 - 1:11:51]
GALEDO: We picketed through the Free South Africa Movement over at the building on Grand Avenue where the owners of these major shipping lines had their offices. The campaign was to stop business from South Africa by making it really shameful and hard on these cargo companies to do their business, and so there was a weekly picket at the Maritime office building on Grand Avenue during the Free South Africa Movement. I would just go and do my lunch time circling for an hour there. It's something that you learn and you appreciate, and you understand can benefit if everybody puts in some time, and eventually a part tide was defeated in South Africa [chuckles]. You participate in things like that. We participated in pass burning, because in South Africa you had to carry some sort of internal passport to move from one part of the country to the other, which was really aimed at preventing blacks from going very far. We would have these symbolic pass burning demonstrations where lines of people would come and they set fire to this piece of paper and throw it into this garbage can and everybody would cheer [laughs], and it does something to emotionally cement your commitment to the movement.
CRUZ: Did you work with any older Filipino strikers during the time?
GALEDO: When we were working on Prop 14, Pete Velasco was the head of the office in Stockton, which was where I happened to be when we were working on that, and the grape boycott was still going on, and so you would do your campaigning about the boycott as well as Prop 14. They would just sort of mix these things all together.
CRUZ: When you finally heard about the 1970 contract signing, how did you feel that the UFW finally got the growers to recognize the UFW as a union?
GALEDO: I don't remember feeling anything at the time. But the struggle of the union was not over, so it began a whole set of other kinds of attacks against the union and on the whole concept of that contract. Even if you might win that one contract, you have to get a contract with every other grower, and so it was one after the other, after the other. The picketing never stopped, the campaigns never stopped, and so it would be the modus operandi of the union where you’re constantly going after the next contract and then trying to defend the contract that you had before because the growers would try to decertify that contract. Then, there were other problems where the teamsters came in and tried organizing farm workers, and so then you were at odds with the Teamsters, getting to the point where it was so complicated the you move onto other things. But it was a victory and I think that that's what cemented the Chicano movement, that they could win something like that. But I think people realized soon after that victories are not permanent and you have to constantly fight to protect your victories as your expanding them.
CRUZ: Can you describe who the teamsters were and what they did?
GALEDO: Oh dear, that means going into the whole labor movement [laughs].
CRUZ: Briefly [laughs].
GALEDO: The Teamsters were a kind of bad-a** union. A lot of the time, the Teamsters, were the reflection of the leadership of that era. The Teamsters were representing truck drivers. A lot of the truck drivers were people who transported agricultural products, so they decided they were going to start organizing on that end too, on the farm workers. So, that just created all these tension in the UFW, who was trying to expand to get more and more contracts, only to find that the Teamsters were trying to get contracts [inaudible]. It was a scandal within the labor movement, but the Teamsters was a very powerful organization, and in some circles, corrupt organization, but that, I think, was a barrier for the UFW in terms of growth because it had to spend so much time fending off the Teamsters and they were not situations where you sat down and negotiated. It was really very ugly in a lot of ways. I think it got to a point where they eventually could talk and organize, but many years were spent fighting among each other.
[1:11:51 - 1:14:50]
CRUZ: If you can just, for our closing, what can you say about what students can do now
GALEDO: With respect to the UFW in particular or…
CRUZ: In general, and then with respect to the UFW.
GALEDO: I think that the UFW in my life as well as most people who were my age was a sort of point of inspiration, like the civil rights movement of the 50's and early 60's. You actually take that inspiration and you apply it [to] all kinds of places; for me, anti-martial law. I think that we have to continue educating Filipinos, not only about the accurate history, but the role that this plays in movement building. Like my own development, moves into that arena of movement building. It's a way that, “yeah this is a great experience for me as a young person, and then now I'm going into my career and raise my family,” it really sort of opens the door to looking at the larger system and what needs to change, so that eventually you come to the conclusion, “well we have to have an alternative to capitalism,” “we have to build what seems like it should be socialism, and what is socialism?” It's a gateway, things like the struggle of farm workers, it's a gateway to a larger analysis of what's going on in the country, and what's going on in the world, and how they're connected.
CRUZ: That’s all the questions we have, I think. Some of the questions were answered when you were telling the story. Thank you Ms. Lillian for the interview
GALEDO: You’re welcome.
End
[Session 1, June 2nd, 2015]
[00:00]
[Logistics Discussion regarding the interview ensues]
Leslie Aniciete: Shall we begin? So I’m going to start asking you some questions about yourself, just basic questions, the first question is where and when were you born?
Mary Jane Galviso: I was born in 1950 in Imperial County and basically, known as the poorest county in the state, basically [for] agriculture and after the war, it attracted a very large number of Filipinos. It became one of the largest Filipino farming communities in this country. [It was] mostly tomatoes farmers, [we became pretty prosperous until of course, UC Davis [laughs]. And in cooperation with the big growers came out with the biogenetic tomato that completely ruined Filipino tomato farmers by early 60s. So today my town is one of very very deep poverty, you don’t see the farming, there’s no longer family farms per se, it’s all corporate farming now. Those are the last Filipino farmers that mainly were able to make agriculture commercially viable.
Miguel Bagsit: Okay, the next question going back a little bit as well, we asked you about when and where you were born, where were your parents born?
Mary Jane Galviso: My father is from Ilocos Norte Province from the village of Danao.
[5:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: He immigrated in the 20’s to this country. My family had come earlier, the uncle, this is actually kind of odd, I shouldn’t say odd, I was raised mostly by my father’s brothers, our uncles. After he [father] passed away and my mother moved back to where she was originally from, and that’s in New Mexico. So after she had left, we basically stayed on the farm and [were] basically raised by our uncle. We grew up in the farmers’ town and so on both sides I can say that my family has been farmers for hundreds of years. My mother is from the small village of Corrales, along the Rio Grande, and it’s interesting because Filipinos migrated throughout the southwest. My father and many many Filipinos worked for the Japanese in Arizona and New Mexico and began to intermarry even before the anti-miscegenation laws were passed. And it would be good to do it then, but Mexico was one of the common places where Filipinos would want to marry because they were not allowed to marry in California and Arizona.
Miguel Bagsit: Can you recall your first experiences with labor activism, [pause] so you’ve been able to talk about the background and we are now kind of moving into how you first got involved or when did you first realize that [labor activism] was something you were going to get involved in?
Mary Jane Galviso: I think that growing up with a very strong working class, we always worked on the farms, when all the harvest was over in the summer, when my father was still alive we would often pick onions for the Japanese growers, and after his death we remained with them and we basically spent the summer picking grapes. We would start off with a few days in the Coachella valley, that’s when we would start working Mecca, Thermal, Coachella, and Indio. I think that’s the greatest, best thing that I think the parents, those that raised[kids] , they can do is to share their life experiences with you, it’s not a matter of just telling you about what their life is like but that you become a part of that experience. Because it’s working alongside our uncles and working alongside other Filipinos, because there would be Filipinos from all over the state, particularly from Delano, because we have a chance to meet Filipinos from all over. We worked hard in the same work force.
And you know it’s still true today, the agricultural labor force is a highly racially stratified one. And the agribusiness does that purposely to keep workers divided, so today just as in, you know back in the late 50’s and 60’s when we began picking grapes as kids, there were Filipino crews and Mexican crews and rarely did they mix, and that’s the way the big growers made it. That’s what their hiring practices were and it remains true today. If you could go out to the vineyards, orchards, and talking to my cousin’s boyfriend yesterday and he’s picking blueberries, Filipino crews, Mexican crews...
[10:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: ...crews from Central America, all have different labor contractors, so nothing has changed in that regard at all. My uncles didn’t have to tell us what is was like to work in the field and how to work with the growers. We knew that from our experiences, and that’s important because too few children and youth maybe know what their parents do for a living, they haven’t experienced it. That’s the good thing about agriculture, we were able to work alongside our parents and other family members. We worked not only as a Filipino crew but we worked as a family, as a family unit, and I think that it’s a very life defining experience for me, to be able to work collectively and cooperatively within a family and among your own people.
Miguel Bagsit: I know that you mentioned going into that part of your life, were you a part of any Unions, or were you involved in Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee [AWOC] or the United Farm Workers [UFW]?
Leslie Aniciete: Or if your family was involved?
Miguel Bagsit: Any of those unions or organizations that you would like to mention?
Mary Jane Galviso: That was difficult, when we started picking grapes, there was no collective bargaining unit, there was no union, there were none. So, I think you probably know the background there, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee sent out the organizers to the Coachella Valley to begin organizing in response to a number of complaints and the abuses of growers. So everyone speaks about the 1965 Delano Grape strike of course, it was preceded by the strike in Coachella, the only reason why the strike in Delano gets much more attention is because that was the end of the season. That’s where the growers made the big money and that’s why that strike became so important. If we were going to get any changes in the way we got paid and the ways we were treated, it had to be done. The Coachella strike was just the beginning to let them know that we weren’t going to be treated in the way that they were treating us at that time. It came to a head in ‘65 and this is another interesting facet that people, that history completely ignores and [it’s] that’s those of us who work for farmers who are being wiped out by agribusiness at that time. We were losing our farms in the late 50’s and early 60’s and it forced us back into the same workforce as migrant workers. So, the Filipino crews were not all made up of those who were permanently migrant workers, it was also composed of poor farmers such as those of us who lived in imperial county,
[15:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: ...and there was a lot of anger over those conditions, we began, that we were facing during that time and that’s what was happening to workers. The big thing, this is a very little understood and documented [occurrence] at the same time, agribusiness is consolidating itself on becoming more international in its features and that’s why I spoke to you about that bio engineered tomato. This is agribusiness beginning to jump the borders, it ruined us right? And it began to cut, it began to grow huge plantations huge farms as far away as Florida and began its production in Mexico and that’s what we see now, today more and more agricultural goods coming from Mexico. That’s the US agricultural corporate interest. They began to do business outside of the US and I think that Filipino labor leadership realized that, they understood that, the local growers were getting rich off of us. These guys began to be international growers, they were in the world market already.
They could have paid us a lot more than the penny that they were paying. When I started working we got paid 89 cents an hour, an hour, and that work wasn’t just per hour. Those growers really worked you. They would have us work overtime and not pay us at all. And that was the grievances that the Filipino crews had. They forced us to pack and go down to the depot where the boxes were being shipped to the market and they wouldn’t pay us a penny once we left the fields to do that work. There were a lot of abuses that these big growers, nowadays [laughs] I’m pretty sure they’re doing the same practices to workers in Mexico.
Miguel Bagsit: As far as that goes, when you’re talking about the different kind of mistreatments that were happening, was that during the strike you mentioned in the very beginning or is this kind of encompassing the Delano Grape Strike, what was that like?
Mary Jane Galviso: I think what needs to be understood, is that Filipinos you know men, are married men, Filipino men came to this country through the Hawaii plantation like my family did, they came as colonial labor. In other words, they came unlike immigrants today. Their statuses that the US owned the Philippines, when I mean owned, they owned not only the land, minerals, and resources, they owned the people and they could dictate, and that’s exactly what agricultural resources did, they went to the poor villages in the Philippines they recruited with the help of the Catholic Church. They recruited very young men. My oldest uncle was barely 14, of course he lied about his age so he would be able to join other members of our family on the plantation in Maui.
[20:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: A lot of the Filipino men that came were actually teenagers, they were very young. They came as colonial labors, they came as wards of the state, basically that was their immigration status when they entered the United States and that territory. I point that out because classes and exploitation of workers and the class oppression that Filipinos faced was a reflection of our status in the world of the colonial nation and that carried through, certainly the Japanese were not treated the way we were, they did not come here for labor, the Filipinos did, the Puerto Ricans did, and that’s why you see the Puerto Ricans were also on the Hawaii plantations.
There was no question in our minds when we started working that the big growers, the employers, they had the upper hand. There was no government protection, they could pay us what they want, they can work us how many hours as we wanted, they had all the rights and we had no right. Based on this situation, this was the condition that Filipinos lived under from the very first moment they entered this country. So organizing was hard and in part of the Filipino labor working class in this country. Filipinos had been organizing, unionizing, striking [laughs], from the very time they entered. This is happening in Hawaii in the plantations, this is happening in Alaska in the canneries, this is happening in the west coasts on the fields.
The Filipinos, because we were such a huge part of the agricultural labor force in this country, we were in the vanguard, we were in the leadership of many of the struggles and many of the strides because our conditions were so much [a part of] the immigrant and the colonial labor [movements]. The conditions were the most depressive and the labor practices were the most exploitative against us. Nothing, absolutely nothing, no government education or government department, the department of labor would not even recognize us and any complaint that we had, why? Because we were not covered for the collective bargaining and so if I could interpret the 1965 Grape strike, the strike about wages and about working condition, no. The real issues, the fundamental issues were that we were excluded from collective bargaining, and because of that it was upon us and if anything was going to change, there was nothing we could do, there was no reliance on the government, it had to be by our own initiative and that’s why Filipinos, when you talk about the Filipino leadership, they were some of the most skilled, veteran, and tenacious organizers. They had to be, we could only depend on ourselves.
Miguel Bagsit: So do you actually recall working with any of those Filipino Leaders that you mentioned? Maybe some of the Manongs, including Philip Vera Cruz, Pete Velasco, Larry Itliong?
Mary Jane Galviso: No, because when I first started working with my family, it was not near there. It wasn’t until my teenage years that we began to hear of the organizing efforts.
[25:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: Later I did, I was able and I did go up to Delano. Specifically, in those days whenever Filipino crews worked there were two places that you knew to go, you would go to the Filipino Community Hall, the Filipino labor crew bosses, labor contractors[were there] . You’d meet them to find out where there is work or you could go to the labor camps. There were Filipino labor camps throughout the west coast, and that was our network and it was part of our heritage, it’s what I grew up with. And so going to Delano and the community hall was a very natural thing, it was there that I was able to meet some of the members of the Filipino labor leadership including Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz. Itliong was a very outgoing person, Philip was very friendly, but I think that if you went into a room, Itliong probably had his fingers through the coals, he’d notice everything going in and out he was very observant. And I think just the moment I walked into the hall he took note of me and in those days it was a custom [that] if you were new in town, you basically introduced yourself to the kitchen, that’s what you did, that’s where I went and that’s where he approached me and talked to me and figured out where I was from.
Of course in those days 99.9 % work on the field that continues and remains to be, our Ilocanos, and you try to figure out your family line or village, trying to trace who’s who and what we are to each other. I realized just in time that I was there that were changes already happening that would eventually cause him to leave. The organizing efforts that he had, so much to build and to create, but he kind of, but I was so young at that time, he had me taken care of by Manong George. George was the one that made sure that I had something to eat, that I was kept busy while Itliong, it seemed like to me Itliong was at meetings all the time, going from one place to another in a meeting, [laughs]. I recalled a lot of it and it was a good experience and I think that the experience that I had, especially with Itliong and Manong George were very telling about how close or the closeness [that existed] among the Filipinos there. You don’t get that from others, you don’t get that experience from others. In those days, Filipinos took care of Filipinos. If you walk into a labor camp or if you walk into community hall there was somebody there that would be concerned for you and cared about you especially if you’re young, especially if you were female, there was no question.
[30:00]
Leslie Aniciete: You mentioned earlier a Manong George, who does that refer to? Is that a family member?
Mary Jane Galviso: No, no, He was one of the leaders like Philip Vera Cruz. He was there from the very beginning, he was the individual Itliong pretty much appointed to take care of me, watch over me while he [Itliong] was in meetings. And once [one time] I accompanied them and this was when the campaign to ban the short hall was going on, I went with him [Itliong] up to Sacramento, a meeting was arranged with the Governor of California. He explained the situation and issues, how things were and what we were doing there in Sacramento, it was the first time I was ever involved in a political action like that. I think that was very important, even young people were very involved and cared about what was happening on an issue.
Leslie Aniciete: How were you able to support yourself during your time in Delano, and during your time working in the Coachella area working also?
Mary Jane Galviso: Well in Coachella, we supported ourselves, we worked as a family picking grapes so but that was that was two different. But by the time I was already over 18 when I went to Delano. When we talk about a strike, let’s be very clear, a strike is actually a class warfare. It is the working class telling the capitalists and growers “you are not going to make money off our backs today, were not working for you, were not nothing, nothing gets done today, you’re not making money, not until you’re willing to sit down and meet some of our demands and that’s our situation. When a strike is called, the big growers were accustomed to having all the power, they still do [laughs] nothing much has changed, they had the cars, they had the cops, they had the sheriffs, they had everybody, and they were violent. It’s always been distorted that the workers, that there’s violence on the picket line. It’s violence that’s caused by the capitalists because they are not getting the profits or making the money that they want. They get ugly and they get violent, they call out the cops to cross picket lines, so that's the violence, that's the class warfare that erupted on picket lines.
Miguel Bagsit: Do you remember any significant occurrences during that time, did you witnessed anything that is with you to this today from those specific instances that you mentioned all the class warfare and everything?
Mary Jane Galviso: The most experiences that I had, one thing about the uncles, they knew it was gonna get violent, it was gonna get ugly, and they kept us from that. That was one thing that Filipinos would do, they are very protective and so we did not join the picket farmers…
[35:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: ...and that’s why I went to Delano because I wanted to see, I think that what’s more important was living and experiencing the true exploitation that other Filipinos [were facing] and just imagine if they treated us this way in the 70’s, how my father and those who were treated [further back]. So they talk about being dishonest and cruel, if they could squeeze another penny out of you they would do it in any which way they could think of and in the early 60’s the situation was terrible and very very difficult for us. Agribusiness was making it hard for us small farmers and made it miserable for us. We were historically forced into a situation in which there was going to be confrontation in which there had to be a strike, there was no other way, and that’s what took place. I think what was so important because these same conditions exist today, what is important is that Filipinos had really great leadership, over the decades in the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s we were able to at a point to kind of checkmate the big rollers. And that's the unfortunate thing today and that's what’s lacking in the agricultural sector there really is no leadership like we did have in the 60’s and I’m talking about a mature leadership, they knew and understood collective bargaining they understood organizing strategy, union tactics, they knew the ABCs of unionism, and working class organizing, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have that anymore. But I think that in the year as to come, the situation has not changed, in the agricultural sector, and today there is a majority of agricultural workers that are not unionized and don’t have the protection of a union. So we know that what happened in the 60’s is due to come around pretty soon. You’re beginning to see it as workers spontaneously rise up as they did in Washington and they did in the central valley and they did as they took the time as new leadership is developing. I think that that's why it’s important and to understand what was the Filipino labor leadership and what was their particular contribution into making this country a better society and a better place.
Miguel Bagsit: Talking about being able to integrate everything that you want to bring as far as history goes, where do you see yourself in this entire story, because it’s a very interweaved and connected story. We are interviewing you today for that purpose of understanding where you come from since your story is very special as well to this movement, where do you see yourself in that?
[40:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: Most of those born in the 40’s and 50’s like myself and its interesting we are the first generation to grow up alongside our parents working in the fields, vineyards, and orchards, although of course the anticipations and expectation they had was that we would go to college, a university and get a degree and live in the urban areas and that didn’t happen, the interesting thing is that there is quite a number of us who would go back to live in the rural community and to farm. So I thought that I was going to retire in the early 2000’s I got a farm close to family members [Toronto county] today now Orosi. We are the last remaining community of traditional Filipino farmers. And my particular situation is that the battle for my farm has raged on for nearly 15 years now and I’ve been under attack by the local municipal water district who would like to see my farm turned into an 88 housing subdivision. So I went to the local courts and went up to the state courts and I lost. Not surprising, Central Valley courts are still part [laughs] directly influenced by agribusiness. Small farmers, an issue like that, they are always going to defer to big ag [agriculture] Everyone that sits on the board of supervisors in county are corporate farmers who have their interest at heart. So I haven’t found any justice in the courts. Next June 18th is the fourth or fifth foreclosure, I’ll be paying this year, are saying that I owe $18,686 dollars to keep my farm this year. Every year I pay thousands of dollars to this very corrupt water district. A part of me thinks we haven’t changed, we are still a lot of method abuse against us and what is happening with my farm is another example. And agribusiness as we know is more and more going outside the borders of the US. It’s truly in the hands of multinational ambiguous corporations. So you know in the small Sacramento, surrounding every big city there are hundreds and thousands of agricultural land being lost to development, it’s happening in small rural towns. And the difficulty of course, is that it makes it harder. There are a lot of Filipinos who would love to do what I did, to be able to have a farm, but the cost of land if you had real estate development it’s harder and harder to buy land.
[45:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: Another really important factor that I’ve come to realize, that there has been a real breakdown within the Filipino community. Disintegrate [ion] within the Filipinos in the rural areas, that’s the most startling difference that I’ve come to see in my own lifetime. I’ve realized that the first wave of Filipinos, how closely they lived and how close they were among themselves, because remember till 1964 and the Civil Rights Act there was no bank that would grant or lend to Filipinos or poor farmers, you’d have to be your own bank. It was in pulling their money together that Filipinos were able to buy their own land, and you don’t see this anymore today and it’s really heartbreaking because it leaves individual Filipino farmers basically on their own, that's not the case in the town I grew up in, Filipinos we banded together, it was our family farm, my father and his two brothers, village mates that came and worked together collectively and cooperatively. There would be, like Filipino farms existed together with 4 or 5 families farming together and living together and this is no longer apart of the Filipino experience. That’s what makes it very difficult now to survive farming. You really are on your own farming these days. That’s my particular battle and it’s just a reflection of the continuing corruption and huge hassle of economic insurance that agribusiness has. There’s another very important aspect and that is the United States coming back into agriculture as the USDA and their collusion into everything that happens in rural communities is funded by USDA but the schools, the clinics, the libraries, the community centers and more importantly in my case the utility district, they get direct funding from the district.
Leslie Aniciete: Do you recall when the 1970 contracts were signed? Were you able to witness it?
[50:00]
Mary Jane Galviso: No, I was not there during the signing, when I got there it had already occurred, but I was there at the important time, the merger has already occurred between AWOC and New Farmers of America [NFA] that was led by Chavez, what I began to see and realize, I was politically inexperienced. When you experience something during the time I was there, you don’t truly understand those locations and the underlying tensions and changes that are occurring. I got a sense of it, and it wasn’t until I stepped away and left Delano and looked back and I realized what the Chavez faction was doing to the Filipino labor leadership. And that’s why I strongly disagree with Arroy’s [Marissa Arroy] interpretation and depiction of the Filipino labor leadership, that film that she produced really supports and propagates Chavez’s factions and views of that time period. It’s a distortion. Itliong left under pressure, Philip Vera Cruz left under pressure, it was a calculated purge of Filipino Labor Leadership, and not because we are Filipinos because we were the [only ones] left. Many of the top organizers and labor leaders that were in the communist party in this country. Let’s be honest and lets be frank, you don’t have those types of skills and that advanced thinking without being part of an organization that was at the forefront of organizing the working class of this country, they are not born with this understanding, they were not born with these skills, you learn it, and you live it, just remember a lot of who we know during the labor leadership were very young boys, when they came here, they were teenagers. They came in the 20’s and 30’s, when the union drives the beginning to work at their height and they just became actively involved especially the immigrants became actively involved.
Anyway, from what I saw, from what I experienced, the time that I was there, is how the Chavez faction began to purge. It’s interesting again, many people, they write about (laughs) this time in the Grape strike and they do it in a very classless way. There’s no class perspective on it, what did all of this represent. It represented the riots and the right faction and we were the left and we were the most class conscious and we were ready under Chavez. We never endorsed the strike, it was all about class collaboration to go on strike, Filipinos knew better than that. They knew that when it came time, we were not just gonna shrink away, we have demands and have to go up to it. So if we needed a strike, we are ready.
Leslie Aniciete: Could you recall what year this was occurring?
Mary Jane Galviso: It was in the early 70s.
Leslie Aniciete: So was it in the 1973 strike or about that time?
Mary Jane Galviso: No, because when I was there, there wasn’t a strike going on. This was the time when everything was being negotiated.
[55:00]
Leslie Aniciete: So early 1970s, okay, thank you. So we have one more closing question, from your experience you shared with us, how would you rephrase in your exe. Describe your experience and what you’ve learned, gotten to witness in one word or phrase.
Mary Jane Galviso: Because, the Filipino leadership represented the best that the working class can produce. Right now, especially in the agricultural sector in this country, there is a huge void with their passing and without the training and the other generations of leadership. Agricultural workers don’t have the leaderships that they had back then in the early 50s and 60s. Because of that void, that’s [what] truly impacts me, I lived at a time where there was clear strong leadership, and I lived in a time where there was none. It’s a very difficult and sad thing to see. The opportunity is there that exists, all the conditions that existed prior to the 1965 strike exist today. [It] makes me think of course, that Filipinos were not a large part of that workforce as we are in the agricultural workforce, but we are very small now. During the height of course, in 1935, we were very large, the agricultural workforce in this country. And I know everyone talks about the West coast, but if you look into agricultural [sector], we’ve lasted, of course, but our numbers have been replaced.
We were a significant part of the workforce that made the cannery, fishing industry what it is today, and that cannot be overlooked, unfortunately. I hope that one day there is a study that truly documents how Filipinos were in the labor in the US, to build and define agribusiness that is today especially in terms of the relationship between workers and the capitalists and the employers. We played a formidable role in that period development.
[60:00]
Miguel Bagsit: Thank you so much for your time and the interview.
Leslie Aniciete: So this concludes our interview. So again from me and Miguel, we want to thank you so much taking the time to have this interview with us and sharing your story with because we really value and how much this experience has influenced you.
Interview Finding Guide for Oral History of Dick Mazon
[0:00-10:00]
Place of Birth in 1949 - Immigration to U.S in 1958 - Education - Community Involvement after graduating with Master’s Degree - Current Project: Building Community Center - Introduction to Filipino Community at California State University, Sacramento - Community and Political Involvement in college - Culture and Perspectives of Filipino community at that time (late 60s-early 70s)
[10:01-20:00]
Filipino Community of the 50s and 60s - American Legion Hall/Magellan Center - Interactions with Farm Workers in the Delta Area while in College - Manongs in the Delta Area - Personal and Peers’ involvement at the time - KDP (Katapuna Democratic Philipino)
[20:01-30:00]
Foundation of events (Filipino Fiesta, Sinag-Tala, Filipino Youth Conference, fundraisers) - Plans for building that is in progress - Effort to build Community Center 1979
[30:01-40:00]
Building of County Community Center (Partnership with county and financial struggles) - Another Effort to build Community Center - Current attempt to raise money and create plans - Hopes for the Community Progression (Youth, etc.)
[40:01- 50:00]
American Legion Hall separation from the Filipino Community - Filipino Fiesta - Current prospects for American Legion
[50:01-1:00:00]
KDP and the Filipino Fiesta (history) - Filipino Food Fair - Community Politics/Views on Development - Partnership for the Fiesta
[1:00:01-1:10:00]
Plans for Sinag-Tala in the future - Contribution to Carlos Bulosan Center - Delta Area Manongs - Events and work for Manongs - Resilience of the Manong
[1:10:01-1:20:00]
The Views of the Manongs: Gratitude for life - Personal Connection to History - Conversations with Manongs about unions - Living Conditions of Manongs
[1:20:01-1:30:00]
Later Generations of Filipinos from Isleton - Retirement Homes of Manongs in Isleton - Current Food Deliveries to Seniors in Sacramento - Appreciation for Institutions to help the Filipino Community
[1:30:01-1:40:00]
Looking Forward to Ways to Support and Develop the Filipino Community - Remembering Organizers and Programs for Community Development - Looking to Current Events/Issues
[1:40:01-1:40:58]
Closing
Organization: Bulosan Center of Filipinx Studies
Oral History conducted by: Elise Israel
Date of Oral History: July 20, 2020
Interviewees include: Dylan Barazon
Topics: Bay area Fil-Am, 2000s, school and job life, moving to America,
Background information on individual/family: Dylan Barazon grew up in the Philippines. He relocated to America during his teenage years and is currently residing in Davis, California.
Transcription Completed By: Elise Israel and Dylan Barazon
Begin Transcription Here:
Elise: Hello Hello Hello.
Dylan: Hello good evening.
Elise: Oh okay. My name is Elise and you are?
Dylan: My name is Dylan Barazon.
Elise: Today’s date is July 20, 2020. The interview is being conducted at the person’s apartment and we’re being recorded on an iPhone using voice memos. So let’s get started. What year were you born in and how old are you now?
Dylan: I was born on September 27, 1997 and right now I am 22 years old.
Elise: So where did you grow up in the Philippines?
Dylan: I grew up in a small province called Taytay which is roughly I would say an hour away from Manila, which is the capital city.
Elise: And did you move anywhere else in the Philippines?
Dylan: I lived in Taytay for probably I would say about 13 years and then I lived in Pasig which is basically a municipality in Manila for three years, right before I left for America.
Elise: Okay, so why did you move?
Dylan: My school was closer, more of a traffic issue. So my Mom actually bought a condo over there.
Elise : Ok, just so you can be closer to your school?
Dylan: Exactly
Elise: Ok, so how did you view America before you came here?
Dylan: I view America as like a very foreign land. Obviously, my view of it was always stereotypical like in the movies. You know really tall buildings, a really diverse amount of people and I always thought that there were your stereotypical jocks, nerds and whatever you find in typical American movie, but that was further from the truth.
Elise: What movie did you look up to I guess about America?
Dylan: Well not necessarily I can't put an exact name to it but there's a couple out there.
Elise: Can you tell me your own memories about your upbringing in the Philippines?
Dylan: So I was obviously born and raised in the Philippines in this province called Tatytay and my Mom is actually a businesswoman. She owned a factory where she made uniforms for children.
Elise: Okay, does she still own that factory?
Dylan: She still owns it until this day.
Elise: So when and why did you come to America?
Dylan: I came to America in March 27, 2014. I came here initially because my Dad was actually by his father but we had no plans on living here. My sister was seeking treatment for her back because she had scoliosis so we decided as a family. At least me, my dad, and my sister that was should all move here and I finished my senior year of highschool here.
Elise: Ok, can you tell me about your memories of being raised in America?
Dylan: So, I went to America and honestly it was very I was a stark contrast as opposed to living in the Philippines cause in the Philippines it was just more… I was more dependent upon my parents for you know for everyday tasks. But here it's a bit more different. I actually had to commute to go to school. I had the independence of managing my own time and just being able to you know hangout with friends I'd say a really late time in the evening.
Elise: Were your expectations of America the same from what you expected?
Dylan: They were, they were the same in the sense that physically the way the place looks. But they were not met in the sense that like I said as I mentioned previously the whole idea of the jocks, the nerds and how people fit in those specific categories.
Elise: Okay, so what is your role in America? Are you working? Are you in school?
Dylan: As of right now I am a student in UC Davis pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Communication with a minor in Tech Management.
Elise: Ok, do you have any plans to work in those fields?
Dylan: What I do aspire to work for is the automotive industry. I cannot put an exact finger to what realm of that I will go into but that is the hope. So within the next few years I am trying to land an internship that will help set a springboard for my future career.
Elise: Do you remember your parents describing their lives and what did they say?
Dylan: What exactly?
Elise: Like what was their childhood, teenage, and adult life if they ever talked to you about it.
Dylan: Well my Mom she was very I'd say not necessarily reserved. But for both of my parents it's just more of it's just coming to light recently in the past three or four years knowing more about my parents' past. But I would say like in my teenage years they didn't really talk about it. But right now I am a bit more mature to talk about that. It was relatively normal. My dad was simply your typical college student but he wasn't able to finish due to some quote on quote distractions. Sorry, if that sounded very informal in a sense but my Mom was actually not the one who started the business. So this business is called One&Up it's a play on the idea the uniforms or the garments that she made was actually applicable to ages one and up hence the name. So my grandmother actually started the business and my mother took over. So it was a very small scale business and my mother scaled it up pretty well. So that's pretty much the story of my parents.
Elise: Did you ever help with her business at all.
Dylan: Yes, I did actually. But not necessarily in the way I could right now just, you know. lack of mental capacity back then I was a bit younger. You know you can't really entrust me with a lot of things. But I would say I'd help in really simple tasks here and there. Some record keeping here and there, label making, and sometimes I would go with her when she would buy textile for the clothing.
Elise: So what would you consider to be the most important inventions during your lifetime?
Dylan: Come again, sorry?
Elise: What would you consider to be the most important inventions during your lifetime?
Dylan: Definitely the cellphone, well what I mean is what it is now. Just let me rephrase it the "smartphone." Definitely I feel like that's the most important invention just because everything is done through that.
Elise: Ok, why do you like the cellphone so much, or "smartphone" as I should say.
Dylan: Just because the accessibility and the ability to just reach such a wide audience from the tap of literally from the tap of your finger.
Elise: As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?
Dylan: When I was a child I actually wanted to be a toy maker it draws from my passion of cars my parents always told me as a kid I was always looking outside the window and I would count how many cars there are outside the window and I would constantly look at the cars wheels and yeah that was basically the activity that I was doing so from that and that's the funny part I don't know where that passion came from.
Elise: You must of really loved cars.
Dylan: Yes yes I really do.
Elise: Where’d you get that passion from?
Dylan: I have no idea. It just it just it’s something that was I think I was just born with and basically from there I started collecting little Hot Wheels. At one point I would say I had like 500 pieces of Hot Wheels.
Elise: 500 pieces of Hot Wheels?
Dylan: Give or take. Give or take yes. And I did some research obviously with parental guidance of course back then when the internet when I had dial-up back then I found out that Mattel, so Mattel the company, that was responsible for other toys such as well obvious Hot Wheels and Barbie, really famous toys, are the ones responsible for making that. So I wanted to have a hand in designing those at one point in my life.
Elise: Interesting. That’s pretty cool.
Dylan: Yes.
Elise: Interesting. Have you actually like researched into it?
Dylan: I haven’t researched into it necessarily but I do know if I do want to go down that path you’re gonna have to do something along the lines of design. It definitely stems away from my current you know pursuit.
Elise: Okay. So what kind of jobs do you have in the Philippines and here in America.
Dylan: So I didn’t have any jobs in the Philippines. I was basically just a student. When it came to here in America I had a couple of jobs. At first I was my first ever job was a clerk at Target, right beside my high school. I lasted for two months and then I called it quits. After that I worked for my city college and I was a front desk clerk slash secretary or as I like to call it anything they want me to be. And most recently about a year ago I was an afterschool program leader dealing with I’d say about 20 to 30 students at a time. And I did that for a really long time. Actually I found that really fun.
Elise: So why did you leave target after two months?
Dylan: I left Target after two months just because I couldn’t deal with the attitude that some people were bringing to me. And I do understand from from a professional standpoint you know there’s so many different factors that can play into that but there were really really driving my patience and I would say I have pretty good control of my anger but there were times where I would wanted to explode on them because none of the things that they were complaining about one made any reason or two just were any in my control. You know.
Elise: Okay and then.. So what was your favorite vacation?
Dylan: Ooh. That’s really interesting. I’d say my favorite vacation so far. Oh actually they all have their own quirks but if I were to choose one I would say when I went to Guam with my family because that was really fun. I’ve been to Guam I’d say about three times? So that was really exciting. I would say the beaches are even better than Hawaii. But then again I’m only quoting my parents because I’ve never been to Hawaii but that’s what they said so I’m I’m believing them. There there beaches are really nice and the sand is very fine to the touch. It’s very very nice. I would recommend whoever is listening to this to go there. Yes
Elise: So, who or what person has the most positive influence on your life and what did they do to influence you?
Dylan: I’d say my mother but on top of that I would say both of my grandmothers too. There’s no specific person. Just like with anything in life I feel like people tend to like pick things on people and I guess it’s the same. I think from my mother I learned the value of patience. From my grandmother on my mother’s side I would I learned the value of just hard work in general. And my grandmother on my father’s side I just learned how to love. That was all combined together. Those are like the women who really changed my life.
Elise: Were you close to a lot of the women in your life? Like do you have siblings or is your mom the only woman figure in your life?
Dylan: Yes I have a twin sister and I have obviously a lot what’s really funny is in almost all positions except for the one that I had in my previous job, all of my superiors were women. So that was that was very interesting. So I answer to women all the time. So yeah. I would say that’s very interesting.
Elise: I agree. Do you remember someone saying something to you that had a big impact on how you lived your life?
Dylan: Um I would say not necessarily but if I were to live if I were to live by a saying I think it would be which is basically an accumulation of the experiences that I have dealt with throught my life, I believe in the saying “if you’re doing it, it’s worth doing well”. ‘Cause you’re already there you’re already spending time and effort and the value you know your resources. So you might as well do it in the best way you can.
Elise: I really like that.
Dylan: Yes.
Elise: That’s really good. Well thank you for your interview. I really appreciate it. Mwah
Interview Finding Guide for the Oral History of Josie Patria
[0:00-10:00]
Place of birth in 1939 - Growing up in Quezon City - Parents’ Occupation (father was an insurance agent and mother was an elementary school teacher) - Parents’ Education - Siblings (two brothers and two sisters) - Immigration to the United State through Transferring to Sacramento State - Inspiration for becoming a Teacher (1st grade teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez) - Higher Education Experience - Application to Teach in Sacramento
[10:01-20:00]
Experience at Sacramento State College - Connection to Sacramento (Mother’s friend: Mrs. Egitha Estista) - Differences between America and the Philippines - Lack of Racial Discrimination Experience - Academic Experience at Sacramento State College - Experience Teaching
[20:01-30:00]
Memory of Teaching - Social Life after Arrival in Sacramento - Sacramento Filipino Community - The Filipino Family Fraternity (1st organizational involvement) - Meeting Husband - The Religious of the Virgin Mary’s Impact on the Sacramento Community
[30:01-40:00]
Involvement with The Religious of the Virgin Mary (Vice President) - History of The Religious of the Virgin Mary - The Foundation of the Filipino Family Fraternity - Meaningful Events of the Filipino Family Fraternity (Retreats/Festivals) - Experience at the American Legion Hall (Magellan Hall)
[40:01-50:00]
Most Memorable Experience at Magellan Hall (Community Christmas Party/July Scholarship Ceremony/Easter Egg Hunt for children) - The Filipino Community of Sacramento and Vicinity (FCSV) Involvement - Appointment to the Educational Council for the FCSV by Ignacio - Secretary Position to Diaz/JanGorre/briefly Esguerra (Presidents) - Applications of Positions - The FCSV Presidential Campaign Experience
[50:01-1:00:00]
Differences between experience in 80s & 90s to Present
(The FCSV Presidential Campaign) - Reasons for changes - Brief History of the FCSV (Dream of Community Center) - Manila Square
[1:00:01-1:10:00]
2000s Building Project - Hopes for the Community Center Then and Now - Goals of the FCSV during Patria Presidency (Build Up Treasury/Save Land Lot)
[1:10:01-1:20:00]
Hopes for the Filipino Center - Involvement with the Filipino Women’s Club - Events of the Filipino Women’s Club - Presidency of Filipino Women’s Club (1990s)
[1:20:01-1:30:00]
Balancing Presidencies (The FCSV and the Filipino Women’s Club) - Why the Filipino Women’s Club is One of her Favorite Involvements - Political Activity - West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon Campaign - Involvement with the Filipino Fiesta - Revival of the Fiesta (by 6 organizations) and the Current Form
[1:30:01-1:40:00]
Description of 2017 Filipino Fiesta Opening Ceremony - Celebration of WWII Veterans - WWII Veterans and Descendants Association
[1:40:01-1:50:00]
Sacramento Filipino Community’s Reaction to Martial Law in the Philippines - Activist Friends’ Involvement - Current Filipino-Americans’ Relationship with their Culture VS the Past - Hopes for Young Filipino-Americans and Future Generations
[1:50:01-1:56:25]
Mrs. Estista (Character/Involvement in the Community/Impact) - Coming to Sacramento - Closing and Thanks
9/15/2018 - The Morgan Family | 10:20 AM - 11:40 AM
Background of George Yanes (Gregorio)
Jeanette Morgan’s Background
Diversification of Livermore (Laura)
Jeanette Morgan’s Background Cont.
George’s Life after Retiring
George’s Background Cont.
Laura’s Experiences with Being Filipino
George’s Experiences Later on in Life
Interviewed by Jason Sarmiento
Transcribed by Michelle Galat
Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies
UC Davis Asian American Studies Department
[Session 1, September 15, 2018]
[Begin Audio File]
SARMIENTO: Today is September 15th and it is 10:20 and this is for the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies Oral History Program. And today we are doing an oral history in Livermore, California. And if you two could introduce yourselves real quick.
L, MORGAN: My name is Laura Morgan.
J, MORGAN: Jeanette Morgan.
SARMIENTO: We’re going to first talk about you guys just for a little bit, then jump back into your family history. Can you first say when and where both of you were born?
L, MORGAN: I was born here in Livermore, California on November 10th, 1969.
J, MORGAN: And I was born in Livermore, California of July 29th, 1944.
SARMIENTO: Jumping back into your family history - What was your Grandfather’s name?
J, MORGAN: George Carian (sp?) Yanes.
L, MORGAN: Although I found out this morning that when he came to the United States, he changed his name. So, his birth name was Gregorio.
SARMIENTO: Oh! Do you know what part of the Philippines he was from?
J, MORGAN: North of Manila.
L, MORGAN: San Jose City.
J, MORGAN: In Nueva Ecija.
L, MORGAN: Yes, in Nueva Ecija.
SARMIENTO: What trade was he in? Was he a farmer at the time?
L, MORGAN: So, when he was in the Philippines, he was a student.
J, MORGAN: He came here when he was 19, 1927. And, he came here to get his college degree in Engineering.
SARMIENTO: What school did he attend?
J, MORGAN: I don't know. He came into Seattle, which he called his hometown. I know he attended a school shortly, but he came [to the United States] and thought he was going to get his Engineer degree. But he found out he was going to be a house boy in the Catholic priest, so it changed for him. He wasn't able to do [Engineering].
L, MORGAN: He kind of had an indentured servitude for a period of time for the passage?
J, MORGAN: No, his mother paid for the passage. His father had already passed away.
SARMIENTO: How long was he indentured for?
J, MORGAN: I don’t know. He left [Seattle]. [laughs] When it became clear what was happening, he left. And then he started doing -
L, MORGAN: A little bit of everything. Working agriculture, but he did some fishing in Alaska. He was one of the fishing boats in Alaska.
J, MORGAN: The canneries in Alaska. He did that a couple years, I think.
L, MORGAN: He did a lot of different things.
J, MORGAN: I forgot about that. [laughs]
L, MORGAN: See that’s why we’re both here. [laughs]
SARMIENTO: It sounds like he’s following the migrant labor circuit in the Seattle area. Did he come alone or with friends or with other relatives?
L, MORGAN: Him alone.
J, MORGAN: He was alone. He had a [inaudible] on the ship. And they went to China first, and then across the Pacific. And he told us that one time that there was a famous General on the ship with him, but I don’t remember who it was.
L, MORGAN: And didn’t he talk to him?
J, MORGAN: Yeah.
SARMIENTO: Was the General also traveling or was he actually moving into the States, do you recall?
J, MORGAN: No.
L, MORGAN: Don’t know. And I don’t know that he was an American General or no?
J, MORGAN: No, Filipino.
L, MORGAN: A Filipino General, ok.
SARMIENTO: You stated he had multiple jobs. When did he get into agricultural?
L, MORGAN: Probably right away I would imagine. He wasn’t isolated in the Seattle area. He made his way all the way to Nebraska, which is where he met my Grandmother. He worked on her family farm harvesting sugar beets in - what’s the town in Nebraska?
J, MORGAN: Lyman, Nebraska.
L, MORGAN: Ok. Very far west Nebraska. That was how they met.
[4:53-11:00]
SARMIENTO: How was your Grandmother’s family’s reaction to them?
L, MORGAN: Not favorable. [laughs]
J, MORGAN: Because when [George and his wife] first met, I think it was 1934 possibly, he wanted to marry her then and they said no. He continued working and was gone. But I guess somehow they kept communicating going. I’m not exactly sure with letters, but not to her house so I’m not sure where she picked up the letters. He came back a couple years later and they ran away together. On the -
L, MORGAN: 4th of July -
J, MORGAN: 4th of July, that was her -
L, MORGAN: Independence Day. That was her Independence Day. She came from a German farm family, and how many girls? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 girls?
J, MORGAN: Yeah.
L, MORGAN: 6 girls and 1 boy. [George’s wife’s] mother - I’ve always heard her referred to as the old bat. She was not a kind person, but her father was. I don’t think growing up was easy. She only went to school through what?
J, MORGAN: 7th grade. Then had to work on the farm.
L, MORGAN: So it was a tough life and that was why it was a huge Independence Day for her to run away with my Grandfather.
J, MORGAN: But they fell in love right away and she knew that was the person for her.
SARMIENTO: Where did they move to after they left Nebraska or when they ran away together?
L, MORGAN: When they got married? They went to New Mexico, which at the time was the closest state that would allow them to get married because there were so many anti-miscegenation laws. They got married on July 6th, 1936 in New Mexico. Then they moved pretty much to California close after that. And then they were working the farms, the migrant labor circuit. [Jeanette] can probably talk to where they were settled at different points.
J, MORGAN: My oldest sister was born in 1937 in El Centro. And then my brother, George, was born 1939 in Calexico. My sister, Carol, was born in 1941 in El Centro. Then they started moving North. When my sister, Mary -
L, MORGAN: The oldest -
J, MORGAN: The oldest one, was ready for school, my mom said to my dad, “We have to settle down because our kids aren’t going to different schools. We’re not moving them around.” That’s when they settled in Livermore.
L, MORGAN: Is that when he got the job with Jackson & Perkins?
J, MORGAN: He worked out in the Naval station in Livermore, which is now the lab. He worked out there, and then he worked out in the rose gardens. A couple of different rose gardens. Then he worked for Jackson & Perkins until 1970, then they retired him. Then I was born in Livermore in 1944, and my brother, Gary, was born in Livermore in 1951.
SARMIENTO: What was that company that your Grandfather worked for? Is it an agricultural business?
L&J MORGAN: Jackson & Perkins, the rose company.
SARMIENTO: Oh ok.
L, MORGAN: And it was in Pleasanton, right?
J, MORGAN: They had places in Pleasanton [inaudible] Livermore.
L, MORGAN: Oh ok. I always thought it was just in Pleasanton.
SARMIENTO: What types of position did your Grandfather have? Did it run the [inaudible] on multiple positions?
J, MORGAN: With Jackson & Perkins?
SARMIENTO: Yes.
J, MORGAN: He worked in the fields. He did work in research and created new roses, but he mostly worked in the fields.
L, MORGAN: He did budding and grafting and that sort of thing.
J, MORGAN: During the winter when it was too cold, roses were in the field, he worked in Pleasanton. They had a cold storage warehouse where they put together roses to be shipped out and then in the summers he worked in the field. He worked here in Pleasanton, Livermore, and then when the soil was worked out he worked in Arizona for quite a few years. He’d go there for the summer, and that’s where he worked in the fields. After that, he worked down near Bakersfield and Shafter.
L, MORGAN: And Wasco, was what I remembered.
J, MORGAN: Wasco was where he ended up retiring.
L, MORGAN: He would work in Wasco and correct me if I’m wrong cause I was a little kid, he would work during the week in Wasco and every other weekend he would come home. He would say to me, and I was little, “Do you want to come with me?” And when he was leaving to go back and I would say, “Next time, Grandpa, next time!” Not understanding that there was no way he was going to take a 3-year-old little girl with him to go back to Wasco to work, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings because I wanted to stay with my mom. He loved children so I know why he would say that to me.
[11:01-15:04]
SARMIENTO: Is it more of a gradual position that he held? Was he a laborer that could make a lot of strains of roses?
J, MORGAN: I’m not really sure because I was young at the time myself. The research was here in, I think Pleasanton and in Wasco. He worked with some of the people who had more education in agriculture and helped.
L, MORGAN: He worked his way up.
J, MORGAN: But mostly he was a laborer.
SARMIENTO: Did he work with a lot of Filipinos in the groups?
J&L MORGAN: Oh yes.
J, MORGAN: They lived in camps. In fact, both my parents lived in camps. I remember visiting some camps, and it was really interesting - the bathrooms. Outdoor bathrooms. My mom and dad, they bought their house in 1950.
L, MORGAN: That was here in Livermore.
J, MORGAN: Here in Livermore. They had it built in Livermore. But it was hard for them to buy something because my dad was Filipino. They just happened to have some friends that lived around the -
L, MORGAN: Where the houses were being built -
J, MORGAN: Where the properties were selling. And it was being sold through the Catholic Church.
L, MORGAN: Oh, I didn’t know that.
J, MORGAN: The man around the corner - who was Portuguese - he told the Church, “If you don’t sell it to them, I’m going to buy it to them and I’m going to sell it to them.” So [the Catholic Church] did end up selling it to [George and his wife], and then they had their house built. Before that, my brother remembers some of the places where you could see through the -
L, MORGAN: The walls to the outdoors.
J, MORGAN: My older sister and my brother and my sister next to me lived in places that were not so great.
L, MORGAN: Where were they living when you were born? On Buena Vista?
J, MORGAN: No, they were living in that house across on North K.
L, MORGAN: Oh, the one across the street from -
J, MORGAN: It's not there anymore. It was a big house and Filipinos all lived there. They each lived together, had their own rooms. I have some pictures of that place.
L, MORGAN: Oh okay. I didn’t know that. That was just across the street from -
J, MORGAN: It was kind of catty-corner.
SARMIENTO: Is that a boarding house or is that an apartment?
J, MORGAN: It was a house with rooms and Filipino families lived together. Actually, my two aunts each married Filipinos.
L, MORGAN: This is my Grandmother’s sisters. Also married Filipinos.
J, MORGAN: They all ended up living in Livermore, not that they always got along. [laughs]
L, MORGAN: I was going to say, they didn’t get along and they didn’t like each other. So there’s all these people in Livermore that I’m related to that are part Filipino-part German, and I don’t even know. [laughs] I, one time, had one of the little girls in my class and she saw my class list and said, “Oh gosh, I hope this is going to be okay.” And it was. It was fine. There’s people that I don’t know that [Jeanette] knows better than I.
[15:05-20:02]
SARMIENTO: I take it this extended family doesn’t keep in close contact apparently.
J, MORGAN: No, we run into each other in town occasionally.
L, MORGAN: I would say there’s no animosity among the younger generations.
J, MORGAN: But all of the parents are deceased now.
SARMIENTO: So that’s your relationship with your in-laws. How was [George’s] relationship with the Filipino community? Was he rather involved in the social aspect of it?
J, MORGAN: For a while, he was. Lots of weekends partying. [laughs] Killing the goat or the pig. He would go, [the kids] wouldn’t go, but he would go.
L, MORGAN: To the camps, because there were a couple of camps in Livermore at the time. This is even after the time you have the house.
J, MORGAN: There was one on Tesla (sp?) Road, right where it curves. It was called Camp Korigador (sp?). You’ve heard that?
SARMIENTO: Unfortunately not.
J, MORGAN: That was one of the places they would go to kill a goat or a pig or drink. He would come home feeling good a few times. As he got older, he just kind of gave that up. Those camps, as the town changed, of course, they were gone. But interesting.
SARMIENTO: Could you tell me a little bit about those camps? What was the camp called again?
J, MORGAN: Camp Korigador (sp?).
SARMIENTO: Was it just one of the laborer camps that farmers lived?
J, MORGAN: Yes, and that’s where they stayed. The men that worked and didn’t have families - they stayed in the camps. There were a couple around town.
L, MORGAN: There was one out around Haggelman (sp?). [Jeannette doesn’t] remember what that one was called though.
SARMIENTO: Did your father and his Filipino friends just mainly congregate at the camps or did they ever go about the towns?
J, MORGAN: I think mainly they just had their weekends together.
L, MORGAN: At the camps. But they came to the house, too.
J, MORGAN: We had parties.
L, MORGAN: And there were friends that he was closer to that would come. There were pictures.
J, MORGAN: People that he worked with Jackson & Perkins. On holidays, they would come to the house for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years. We had different groups of Filipino friends that would come.
SARMIENTO: Do you recall any negative reactions with the Livermore community in regards to your father and his friends?
J, MORGAN: No. There were just no problems with that. Probably when my parents came because it’s a pretty white community. They couldn’t buy something very easily and it was hard to rent places.
L, MORGAN: Which is why they were in that big house where all the Filipinos were.
SARMIENTO: How did the Filipino community treat your mother?
J, MORGAN: Oh that was fine. They liked her.
SARMIENTO: So there was never any animosity?
J, MORGAN: No.
SARMIENTO: I believe during that time there was a lot of Filipino men married a lot of white women. Was there any other couples similar to your father’s situation?
J, MORGAN: Just my 2 aunts. There were others but I was young at the time. I don’t remember their names.
SARMIENTO: Do you recall any specific laborer practices that your father or any other Filipino laborer brought from the Philippines to use in the rose gardens?
L, MORGAN: I don’t know.
J, MORGAN: His family had rice fields now. He was going to come here to go into Engineering, so farming wasn’t the thing that he wasn’t planning on going into. I think in the Philippines, from what I understand, he was from a more well to do family.
L, MORGAN: So he wasn’t farming.
J, MORGAN: He wasn’t a farming person who had land. He just came here to have to make his way and get a living, so that’s what he did.
SARMIENTO: Did he just learn on the job?
J, MORGAN: Yes.
[20:03-25:02]
SARMIENTO: Was it just your father that worked in the Jackson company or did the rest of your relatives work there as well?
J, MORGAN: My one uncle worked for a different company - it was Paul Devore (sp?). This was one of my uncle’s. The other Uncle -
L, MORGAN: Which uncle?
J, MORGAN: That was Uncle Pete [inaudible]. Uncle Chris had been in the Navy, so he actually got a job out in the lab as a custodian.
L, MORGAN: That’s Lawrence Livermore [inaudible] Lab.
J, MORGAN: He actually helped give people jobs. At the time, it was a little easier to get jobs in the same situation that he was in.
SARMIENTO: During the time that your father was working, there appears to be a lot of labor activists going on in the Filipino community. Was your Grandfather involved in any of the labor unions?
J, MORGAN: No.
L, MORGAN: No, that was my Grandma. My Grandma was the union activist, not my Grandpa.
J, MORGAN: No, he wasn’t in any of that.
SARMIENTO: What was your Grandmother’s involvement in the [inaudible]?
L, MORGAN: After doing lots of different things, she worked in a cannery. She ended up being a cook for the school district. She was a school cook working in the kitchens. She helped found the CSCA Chapter here in the Livermore School District, which is California State Employee Association. A classified union. She was a union starter. As you can imagine, a white woman with a Filipino man, she was kind of a rebel. [laughs] She was kind of a spitfire. It wasn't always easy to be her granddaughter or her daughter. She had pretty strong opinions, and her way was the highway.
J, MORGAN: The right way, she said.
L, MORGAN: The only way. It was her way or it wasn’t happening.
SARMIENTO: Did your father have any strong opinions one or another about farm labor activism or any the unions?
J, MORGAN: I don't think he did. It was different because he was working for one company so many years that if he was treated bearably, it would've helped that he would've made more money. During the summer, they worked peace work and he could make a lot of money during the summer. Winters weren't as good, but they just had to save the money that they made during the summer to help us get through the winter. Because he worked for the company for so many years, he wasn't really involved in it.
SARMIENTO: I’m going to go forward into your generation to ask how your experiences were. Can you repeat again where you were living at when you grew up from childhood to high school?
J, MORGAN: We lived first in a place in Buena Vista - just a little shack we lived in until we were able to get the house built. Then we moved to a town in North K street.
L, MORGAN: Livermore is a town divided by railroad tracks. It really truly is. There’s the north side of town and the south side of town. The north side of town is, still to this day, the more undesirable side. They lived on the north side of town. I remember at one point somebody talking to those neighborhoods. I said, “Oh, those neighborhoods where I spent a lot of my childhood where my Grandfather lived? Not too scared about those neighborhoods. Doesn’t bother me at all.”
SARMIENTO: So when the house was eventually built, what was your neighbor’s different ethnicities? Or Filipino?
J, MORGAN: Well, let’s see. The house on one side was part of the purchase. They sold it to whoever bought it. It wasn’t Filipino, it was Caucasian somebody. The house on the other side, there wasn’t a house there. Most of our neighborhood was white.
SARMIENTO: This was the “undesirable” section?
J, MORGAN: It wasn’t the one you wanted to live on, but it was a nice side of town as far as I was concerned. [laughs]
[25:03-29:50]
SARMIENTO: Besides the labor camps, where did the Filipino community live in?
J, MORGAN: Kind of all over in town. But mostly on the north side.
L, MORGAN: Old Livermore families all lived on the south side. What I told people - I grew up in Livermore and my mom grew up in Livermore, and they would say, “Oh are you one of those old Livermore families?” I would say, “No, we’re the family that was living in the shack on the older Livermore’s property.” That was on Buena Vista.
J, MORGAN: Not the one on North K.
L, MORGAN: No, not the one on North K. I mean, it’s a nice house. I’m sad that it’s not in our family anymore now that my grandparents both passed.
SARMIENTO: When was that house sold by your family?
J, MORGAN: In 2015. My mom passed away in 2014 and she was the last. We had to sell it because we did a reverse mortgage so that -
L, MORGAN: We could take care of her basically -
J, MORGAN: At home. Then after that, we had to sell it.
L, MORGAN: I can't drive by it. I just pretend that they're still living there, and I haven't seen them in a while. I just don't drive by the house because it makes me too sad. [tears up] I spent so much of my childhood there.
J, MORGAN: But I drive by it!
L, MORGAN: You’ve better dealt with it than I have then.
SARMIENTO: How did that neighborhood change as years went on? Was it still mainly Caucasian, Anglo-American neighborhood?
J, MORGAN: Now it’s a lot of Hispanics are living in that area.
L, MORGAN: And it changed from being owners to renters, definitely. But it’s sort of interesting because that area is sort of gentrifying over time. I saw something where that little American Indian center by the Eagles Hall. Going there to build a house there is like 800 thousand.
J, MORGAN: Is that how much they are?
L, MORGAN: Yes! I almost fell over when I saw that. The thought of over ¾ million dollar house in the north side, it would have never happened before. It’s interesting, it’s changing.
SARMIENTO: When you went to high school, was it a diverse student body? Or was it mainly still Caucasian?
J, MORGAN: Mainly still Caucasian.
L, MORGAN: You would have to go find a picture.
J, MORGAN: Of what?
L, MORGAN: Of you dressed as a little Indian and all the little white girls dressed as pilgrims. [laughs]
J, MORGAN: I thought nothing of it!
L, MORGAN: I know. There’s a [inaudible] side of old Livermore school pictures. If you go through it, ad it goes way back, I could find pictures of my uncles and aunts and things like that. A lot of times, there maybe is one or two brown faces but it’s a sea of white faces. They’re easy to pick out, but my favorite one is when she was in Ms. Kuchinata’s (sp?) class at Junction. It was Thanksgiving and all the little girls were dressed up as pilgrims, except my mom was dressed as an Indian. I said, “I can just see how this went down. Hey darkie! You’re dressing as the Indian!”
J, MORGAN: But I never felt there was anything wrong with my ethnicity. It was okay.
SARMIENTO: You did mention earlier that were some Filipino families. Did any other children or even other relatives - were they your classmates as well?
J, MORGAN: I didn't have any as my classmates. But they were alive before and after me. I was kind of the only one in that grade level. Yes, they were in school.
SARMIENTO: Do you recall any troublesome experiences on behalf of yourself or anything that you saw amongst the Filipino studies?
J, MORGAN: No. Nothing.
L, MORGAN: Not from your brothers and sisters either. I mean, I’ve never heard any stories. I think it’s unusual, but never heard stories of -
J, MORGAN: Never felt like there was a problem with -
L, MORGAN: Being excluded or made fun of or harassed or anything, which is weird that that didn’t happened.
J, MORGAN: No. It just didn’t happen. It was fine.
[29:51-34:40]
SARMIENTO: Since it’s not too much of a diverse community, I take it there wasn’t any Asian American clubs or anything?
L, MORGAN: Oh gosh, no.
J, MORGAN: Not then, no.
L, MORGAN: Not even when I was in high school.
SARMIENTO: I'm assuming the area is still predominantly Anglo-American still.
L, MORGAN: It's changed a lot.
J, MORGAN: She probably knows a lot more about that since she’s a teacher.
L, MORGAN: I teach transitional kindergarten. I have 21 students in my class this year. 13 out of my 21 are English language learners representing 12 languages. It’s pretty diverse. It’s very interesting. It’s cool. I kind of look at it and think, “My grandparents were the pioneers there.” It makes me very proud of that.
SARMIENTO: I’m going to jump in a little bit regarding about your teaching. How long have you been a teacher?
L, MORGAN: This is my 25th year of teaching, which is crazy because I’m only 25. [laughs] So how’d that happen? I don’t know. I taught here in Livermore most of the years. I taught for a couple of years in Piedmont School District. I went to Berkeley, and that was where I got a job right out of graduate school. But then I moved back to my Livermore. My husband grew up in Livermore, too. We knew it was stupid to not try to raise grandkids around two sets of grandparents, so we moved back here. I’ve been teaching in Livermore ever since, so 23 of those 25 years.
SARMIENTO: Did you start to notice gradual diverse in Livermore?
L, MORGAN: Yeah, it's changed a lot over the span of my career. I would say when I first hired in - it was mostly Caucasian. Then it shifted. I mean, there's always been a Hispanic population here. It's isolated, kind of, into certain communities. I didn't happen to teach in the schools where there was a Hispanic population originally. Then I moved schools a lot. Over time, definitely more families from the Middle East and South Asia. That's a good portion of my classes, South Asian and representing lots of different languages.
SARMIENTO: In regards to Filipino students?
L, MORGAN: Not a lot. [laughs] Really not a lot. I had Jeremy, who [inaudible] interview [inaudible]. There's been a few over the years, but really not a lot. Although, so my youngest son - his best friend is Filipino. They’re there. They just don’t always end up in my class, I like it when they do though. There’s been a few that have been part like me. The Burgatos (sp?). There’s been a few families that are mixed.
J, MORGAN: My friends. [inaudible]
L, MORGAN: Oh yeah, I laugh at her because all of my mom’s really good friends that she met on PTA when I was a kid. I said, “What did you find? The five non-white people in Livermore to be friends with?” Her really good friends are - well Alice is passed - but Mexican, Hawaiian, Filipino. Well, [Jeanette’s] the Filipino.
J, MORGAN: [Alice is] Hawaiian, but she’s married to Filipino-Hawaiian.
L, MORGAN: Oh true. And then her daughter’s married to a Filipino - Kiera (sp?). Berny and Jan had their own things. They were white, but one was adopted, and one was grown up in an orphanage. So you’ve found all these people who have all these different backgrounds than the rest of the kids that I grew up with.
J, MORGAN: [Alice and I are] still friends.
L, MORGAN: Yes. Good, close friends.
J, MORGAN: Really close friends.
SARMIENTO: I’m going to jump back in with your friendships. Did you guys grow up with each other?
J, MORGAN: No. We met when our kids started school. [Alice and I] got on a PTA Board together and we’re still friends.
L, MORGAN: Like sisters.
J, MORGAN: Two of our original group have already passed away. I see them two or three times a week.
[34:41-39:57]
SARMIENTO: I’m going to go a little bit further from that. After high school, where did you attend college?
J, MORGAN: I didn’t. [laughs] My youngest brother did attend college, though. He’s the only one. But I went to work as a [inaudible] operator. I worked in data processing. I met my husband while I was going to school to learn that. He was in the Navy.
L, MORGAN: He was also going to school. They met at the coffee machine, which I say is appropriate because coffee has always been apart part of our lives. [laughs]
J, MORGAN: He passed away last year.
SARMIENTO: Sorry to hear that.
J, MORGAN: He was in the Navy. My school was a week and a half, or two week, and his was a three week. We met on 401 Grand Avenue at [inaudible] in Oakland.
SARMIENTO: Since he was in the Navy, how shortly after did you get married?
J, MORGAN: Five months later. [laughs]
L, MORGAN: And she as 18! I always say you’ve killed me if I had done that.
SARMIENTO: With him being in the Navy, was he mainly on the ship or did you move around with him?
J, MORGAN: He was on a ship. He was in and out of Treasure Island at the time. He was on a ship. He just went out five hundred miles off the coast and they guarded the coastline. There were 16, eight on each coast, that patrolled. We got married in 1963, and he got out of the Navy in ‘65. We just decided to stay here.
SARMIENTO: There’s a large percentage of Filipinos in the Navy. Did your husband recall any interactions with any of the Filipinos?
J, MORGAN: Oh yeah he had some on the ship. No problems with them. I think one was the doctor, the person who took care of him. [laughs] Never any problems.
SARMIENTO: Did you meet any of them while they were on short leave here?
J, MORGAN: I met some of his shipmates, but mostly they were Caucasian.
SARMIENTO: I asked this already, I just want to clarify. Were any of your siblings also in the rose or in the farming industry or just our father?
J, MORGAN: My oldest brother worked with my dad a little bit. When he first got married and he got married young too -
L, MORGAN: Even younger.
J, MORGAN: He worked with my dad for probably a year and then he got into other things.
SARMIENTO: How many siblings do you have?
J, MORGAN: Four.
SARMIENTO: One of your siblings went to college, correct?
J, MORGAN: Mhm.
SARMIENTO: Do you recall where he went?
L, MORGAN: He went to a lot of places. Davis being one of them, but he didn't finish there.
J, MORGAN: Yes, he went to Davis for a semester, I think.
L, MORGAN: He was too homesick. [laughs]
J, MORGAN: He was homesick so he came back.
L, MORGAN: We’re all big babies in my family. [laughs]
J, MORGAN: And he went to Shabot, and he went to Cal State Hayward. Got his degree there in Biology.
SARMIENTO: What year was that [inaudible]e?
J, MORGAN: He graduated in 1969 from high school. So he started in college in 1969.
L, MORGAN: Did he get in through four years?
J, MORGAN: Yes.
L, MORGAN: So ‘71. ‘72. No ‘71. No. 3. [laughs] This is why I teach T-K. I'm actually really good at math but obviously, haven't had enough coffee yet.
J, MORGAN: He graduated in 1969.
L, MORGAN: Plus four is ‘73.
J, MORGAN: He finished in four years.
SARMIENTO: It sounds like your brother went to college right when the whole ethnic studies student protest was going on. By any chance, do you recall any memories of him mentioning that?
J, MORGAN: No. He probably wasn’t involved in that.
L, MORGAN: He lived at home during college. He was a commuter student, probably not as involved with what was going on with the campus community. There to get your degree. When I went to college, that was the message too. You were there to get your degree, don't get involved n a bunch of nonsense. Especially since I was at Berkeley. [laughs]
[39:58-45:04]
SARMIENTO: So, he wasn’t definitely involved in any -
J, MORGAN: No.
SARMIENTO: Did he have any friends by any chance? Do you recall if any of his friends were Filipino students?
J, MORGAN: I don't think so because he didn’t stay on campus. He commuted, he was a commuter student The only time he was away was when he went to Davis for six months and we were driving there every other day.
L, MORGAN: I was a baby apparently. I made that drive a lot.
J, MORGAN: We drove there to Davis a lot. We met at the Nut Tree a lot.
SARMIENTO: Is that the one in Vacaville?
L&J MORGAN: Yes.
J, MORGAN: Then it was a really great restaurant.
SARMIENTO: When you were your adult age, did your father still hang out with the Filipino community at the time?
J, MORGAN: No not anymore. There wasn’t a real community.
SARMIENTO: Because the camps were gone. It wasn’t like a gathering place. A lot of his friends, the family friends, moved out.
J, MORGAN: Some back to the Philippines. Some down in Sacramento and Stockton. They kept in touch a little bit but not really close.
L, MORGAN: And as he got older., he slowed down. He retired for good at 91.
SARMIENTO: Oh wow!
J, MORGAN: Oh yeah, I guess we didn’t tell him about the second job he got. [laughs]
L, MORGAN: So when he retired, he was 70. It wasn’t in 1970. [Jeanette] said it was in 1970, he was 70.
J, MORGAN: He retired when he was 70.
L, MORGAN: Yes he retired at 70 from Jackson & Perkins. Then he was home for about a year and he watched a lot of soap operas. Hercules and Xena (sp?) Warrior Princess. My Grandma said, “No more. You cannot waste away sitting in the back room watching tv for the rest of your life.” So she made him go get a job. He worked at a local [inaudible] nursery, owned by a Japanese family. That was interesting. He worked until he was 91. He worked 6 days a week, 6 hours a day -
J, MORGAN: 7 hours a day -
L, MORGAN: 7 hours a day. More than a regular work week and trained a lot of guys that were a lot younger than him. I remember him being more able-bodied than they. He was not fond of the Japanese.
J, MORGAN: And he told them so. He said, “You weren't nice to my people.”
L, MORGAN: During the war.
J, MORGAN: He kept reminding his boss of that. But it was ok.
L, MORGAN: [His boss] loved him. They absolutely loved them. They kept him for 20 years.
J, MORGAN: He started a rose garden at the nursery. They didn’t have the rose garden, but he created the roses. Then they sold them. He would bud them and graft them and do other things, then they sold what he made at the nursery in Pleasanton.
SARMIENTO: Did he operate that himself? Or did he [inaudible] other assistance to help him in that?
J, MORGAN: He did it.
L, MORGAN: They had beautiful rose bushes at their house too. A long gravel pathway of roses. Beautiful.
SARMIENTO: What did he do again when -
L, MORGAN: At sushi?
J, MORGAN: He maintained. He kept plants watered, pruned them when they needed it. But he did create the rose trees.
L, MORGAN: He did what they needed him todo. He probably did a little bit of everything But working with the plants.
J, MORGAN: He would go to work at six in the morning and come home at two in the afternoon or whatever. He had to record his soap operas. Then he would come home and just watch soap operas.
L, MORGAN: He drives an orange Camaro. It had been my uncle Gary's, the one who went to college. I don't know how my Grandpa ended up with it. A tiny little Filipino man in a bright orange Camaro. If you'd seen him out and seen him driving and try to wave, "Oh Grandpa, hey hey!" No, he's very fixated on the road and he was going to get to work and back and that was in his orange Camaro. He was quite a sight.
[45:05-49:46]
SARMIENTO: The people he was training, were they Filipino or Hispanic?
L&J MORGAN: Hispanic.
SARMIENTO: Because at this time, were there not too much Filipinos at the time?
J, MORGAN: I mean, they had all kind of been the same age so they were gone like he was. Retired at the same except they didn’t have to tell them to go back to work.
L, MORGAN: Until you’re 91 years old.
SARMIENTO: I’m actually going to jump back a little bit. I’m curious a little about his experience in the migrant work circuit. Do you recall any specific stories that he would tell you as a kid that come to mind regarding work life or living?
J, MORGAN: It was interesting because my husband was from Washington state. He was born in Seattle and eventually moved to Yacama which was apples and cherries and other things. My dad had actually worked in that area -
L, MORGAN: Oh I know what story you're going to talk about.
J, MORGAN: Actually he worked in the area which was Yacama, but my husband hadn't lived there. He told us about having to hide under the Moxy Bridge because the white people were coming after him to kill him.
L, MORGAN: That they wanted to kill a chink.
J, MORGAN: That was the story we heard. Actually, my husband drove me to where that was when they heard about that. So he actually had some [inaudible] experiences being Filipino.
L, MORGAN: One of the things about my Grandpa - he was a very quiet man, he didn’t talk a lot. He had to be in the right mood to talk. And then when he would talk, the flood gates opened.
J, MORGAN: He didn’t share a lot with us. I’m kind of sad because we lost out on some history from him. We had that one time -
L, MORGAN: Oh yeah we were up in Tahoe, my brother and I, went on a park course. We were at a cabin and we got lost in the woods and they couldn't find us and we couldn't find the road. Eventually, they did find us.
J, MORGAN: That night, he just poured his heart out.
L, MORGAN: Told us all these things. And we all went, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk that much.” He was talking about the Philippines mostly, being a young man in the Philippines. [To Jeanette] Do you remember any specifics from that night? I mean, I think we were all in just so much shock from the whole experience.
J, MORGAN: He was so glad they were okay because it was getting dark. That’s when we finally found you. [Inaudible] and I were sitting there waiting for them at the park because they were supposed to come back around and then they just didn’t show up. Everybody was really concerned. My dad opened up that night, and that’s when I found out most of what had happened to him coming here on the ship and coming to Seattle and things that had happened in Seattle. Actually, I think my mom said he got involved with a blonde who stole his books. [laughs] So, that was part of not going back to school.
L, MORGAN: Oh yeah, his university textbooks. She stole his textbooks to sell. I don’t think she was studying Engineering.
J, MORGAN: No, I don’t think so. Anyway, so that all kind of came out that night, too. But he didn’t talk about it too much. We just didn’t question him. I’m so sorry that I hadn’t questioned him.
L, MORGAN: He never went back to the Philippines. Not once. Which is so unusual for Filipinos, I came to know later. He considered himself an American. He got his citizenship in 1950, right around the time they were building the house. He was so proud to be American.
[49:47-54:52]
J, MORGAN: He told us that his life wish was to come to the United States and become a citizen.
L, MORGAN: Since the time he was little.
J, MORGAN: He left at 19 and didn’t ever go back.
L, MORGAN: Never saw his family again, because they didn’t come here either.
J, MORGAN: He only had two siblings. He was the oldest. And then he had a brother and a sister. I know they had property and him being the eldest meant it was up to him It was his. He said, "I'm not coming back there. You do with it what you want to do. I'm not coming back" when his mom passed away. She passed away at 98, he was 97 when he passed away. My mom was too, but there was an 11-year difference between the two.
L, MORGAN: We have to have a good retirement because we have good genetics. [laughs] But we can work until we’re 91, so it’s okay.
SARMIENTO: Would you feel comfortable talking about some of the story that your father said that night? Or if you recall any?
L, MORGAN: [To Jeanette] Do you remember?
J, MORGAN: Well he told us about traveling, getting on the ship. I think it was really difficult he was leaving his mom and he knew he would never see her again. His father had already passed away. He choked on a fish bone. My dad never wanted fish after that.
L, MORGAN: He would say, “I’m not fond of fish.”
J, MORGAN: But he told us about traveling.
L, MORGAN: Is that when he told about meeting the General?
J, MORGAN: Mhm. I'm not sure what kind of passage he had on the ship. I just don't know. I know his mom sold rice for him to get his faire. He came into Seattle and he considered that this home. He lived there for a short time. He got there in 1927 so he met mom in 1934. So there's seven years apart there that I don't know what happened. But he never left her. He didn't ever.
L, MORGAN: He had to leave to go to work.
J, MORGAN: But not like going up to Alaska to do fishing. He was a wonderful man, she loved him dearly.
L, MORGAN: He was kind and gentle. Really gentle. Loved children, loved all his grandchildren, and my boys - his great-grandchildren. So I have three sons, and when my middle son was little, he was sick. He had a stroke actually right after Fran (sp?) was born, he had a stroke. And so here I was with a two-year-old, and an infant, and my Grandma in a wheelchair going to go visit my Grandpa because I was on maternity leave so I had the ability to do it. We would go visit him because he was in a skilled nursing facility for a while.
J, MORGAN: But I think mostly I’ve heard from my mom about the bond, who still is [inaudible], and then being indentured to a Catholic priest and being a houseboy that he hadn’t planned on having happened. And he left that and made his way, I think he traveled on the trains. Like I said, he didn’t talk much about it. We weren’t smart enough to ask him more about it.
L, MORGAN: I wish we knew more.
J, MORGAN: By the time I came they were pretty much settled in Livermore. I hear stories about what happened to [my brother and sister] when they lived in camps.
L, MORGAN: Like what? Like you said, being able to see through the slots?
J, MORGAN: Mhm. And the camps you had a different life. My mom tried to make it good for them and being German -
L, MORGAN: It had to be clean. And cleaner. And even cleaner.
J, MORGAN: So I don't have a lot of stories, but just a few.
[54:53-1:00:02]
SARMIENTO: Do you speak Tagalog?
L, MORGAN: He spoke Ilocano and Spanish and Tagalog -
J, MORGAN: Visayan.
L, MORGAN: English. Spanish.
J, MORGAN: He spoke a lot of the dialects in the Philippines.
L, MORGAN: And then Grandma spoke German and they only spoke English at home.
J, MORGAN: We didn’t speak German, we didn’t understand what dad was saying with his friends.
L, MORGAN: Maybe that was by design.
J, MORGAN: Maybe so. I know my mom had some German things when she yelled at us when we weren't doing the right thing.
SARMIENTO: Your father - did he pick up his language in the Philippines or did he use it here?
J, MORGAN: I think in the Philippines. You had to speak English for one thing -
L, MORGAN: And he was educated.
J, MORGAN: And he was educated, had beautiful penmanship. I don’t know how he picked up the other dialects, but he did. He was pretty intelligent person. Very liberal. A Democrat. And that’s what we were gonna be.
L, MORGAN: And [inaudible]
J, MORGAN: He voted in every election there was. Absentee towards the end, but he voted up until -
L, MORGAN: Signed maybe. [laughs] With an “X.” After the stroke it was different.
SARMIENTO: I do want to follow up on his political activity. Was he mainly so a participant or did he volunteer for a local Democratic party?
J, MORGAN: No, he never.
L, MORGAN: I think he was too busy working. [laughs] Making a living.
J, MORGAN: When he could have, he was making a living. But he read the newspaper, he knew what was happening in the world.
L, MORGAN: That was always a part of what was going on in their house. Discussions about what was going on in the world and politics.
J, MORGAN: He followed what happened in the Philippines. We didn’t correspond much with his family because whenever they wrote, they just wanted something. My parents didn’t have the money to help them out the way they probably could have since there were five of us.
SARMIENTO: I'm going to go back to Jackson & - what was the full name of it?
L, MORGAN: Jackson & Perkins.
SARMIENTO: He mainly worked here in Livermore. What were the sites he worked at?
L, MORGAN: Wasco, but that was later. Pleasanton.
J, MORGAN: Livermore. Some in Livermore. But in Arizona, a different field in Arizona. And can you imagine working in Arizona in the summer in the fields? And he did that. Never complained about working there. He told us how he kept cool though. They wore sweatshirts. He wore t-shirts a sweatshirt and then another shirt. He said when you perspire, then you cool off. Then he always wore a hat. Then he [inaudible]
L, MORGAN: And his blue work shirts.
SARMIENTO: Do you recall him speaking of how technology for rose cultivation changed over time? Did it become easier?
L, MORGAN: No, I think it was all old school for him.
J, MORGAN: He would bud the roses and then the person working with him would come behind him and tie rubber bands around them to keep the graft together. He was talking about having lunch with his tier and we knew what a tier was, but my husband didn’t. He was imaging my dad sitting next to a tree with a tire [laughs] and he was having a lunch with his tier until we explained what the tire was. It was a person, not a tire.
[1:00:03-1:04:59]
SARMIENTO: I guess he mainly worked in this part of California. Anywhere in the Central Valley or -
J, MORGAN: Yes the Central Valley and Wasco and Shafter near Bakersfield. That was where he worked quite a few years.
L, MORGAN: And that’s where he lived during the week. I remember going down one time to see him there and it was a little house. You’d think like a little company house, a little house with a lot of Filipino men in there. And it was hot. [laughs]
SARMIENTO: He was still communicating and still lived with Filipinos, correct?
J, MORGAN: Yes. These really good friends would come for the holidays. They worked for Jackson & Perkins too.
L, MORGAN: This is the question I always had. Did Grandpa do any of the cooking, the Filipino food cooking? Or was it Grandma? And if so, how did she learn how to do that? It wasn’t like you could look up the Filipino recipe at the time.
J, MORGAN: Okay well when she lived in camps. She probably learned from the other people.
L, MORGAN: But there weren't women, I mean there weren't Filipino women.
J, MORGAN: No, but there was the men that cooked. And they were usually the only married couple.
L, MORGAN: So she was like the [inaudible] mom for all the Filipino men? Which is why I think they all loved her. Because she started cooking for an entire school before she was a school cook. She was probably cooking for households full of people. She didn't know how to cook just for a couple of people. Like if she cooked, it was for an army. Always a ton of food. Always way too much. That was probably where that came from, or when she cooked for the farm when she was younger [inaudible].
SARMIENTO: It sounds like she had a pretty intimate relationship with the other laborers. She cooked for them, did she congregate with them just as friends?
J, MORGAN: Yes they did. Living in the camps that was your social life. They had really good friends, and they were single males. They were godparents. Actually, I had Filipino godparents too, but theirs was a little different. They were close friends of my parents that were my older brother and sister and other sister. In fact, I have some pictures of them. The godparents with my siblings when they were little.
SARMIENTO: Did your godparents and your parents keep in contact as the years went on?
J, MORGAN: No.
L, MORGAN: Who were your godparents?
J, MORGAN: I can’t remember their name. [laughs] My godparents lived in the San Jose area.
L, MORGAN: San Jose, California?
J, MORGAN: Yes. Agnew, Agnew was known for being a place they had a crazy home. Sanitary.
SARMIENTO: Laura, I think I'm going to jump from your childhood - I'm just going to repeat some stuff to get the flow of it. You grew up in Livermore, and it's still generally Anglo population at the time. When did you experience the interaction with the Filipino-American community?
L, MORGAN: Very little, really. It was mostly through my family. The one Filipino person that was completely Filipino was my Grandpa. He was my one experience.
J, MORGAN: You had that one in high school, and it was a Filipino family.
L, MORGAN: Oh the Santos’ - Christina (sp?) Santos?
J, MORGAN: Oh yes Christina (sp?), but no the guy.
L, MORGAN: Robert DeMarco? Oh well, that wasn't in high school, that was earlier.
J, MORGAN: Middle school?
L, MORGAN: No, Sonoma. So there were a couple families that were Filipino. Not too many.
[1:05:00-1:09:43]
J, MORGAN: She got a scholarship.
L, MORGAN: I did get a scholarship. I got [laughs] the Filipino Student Scholarship, but I had only got second place because I went for my interview and they asked me all these things about Filipino culture and I didn't know. I said, "My Grandpa didn't talk about things. I don't know." They said, "Have you had pancit?" I said, "Yes, I've had pancit." [laughs] That’s about all I can tell you. That was sort of what got me to become more interested in my own heritage and the stories. If he's not going to talk about it, I want to read about it and do some research to find out. It was interesting to find out, I didn’t know until then - this would have been in college - that most of the immigrants that came from the Philippines at the time my Grandpa came, were also single men and that they didn’t marry Filipino women. They married white women. They were a generation of people who were half and half and eventually a quarter and whatever. Like me. So I haven’t met a lot of them. [laughs] I’ll meet a lot of people who are my generation who are half, and not a quarter. I’ve had that, “Well you’re only a quarter,” and I go, “Well I’m a quarter because my grandparents were brave enough to get married when they did to pave the way for your parents to get married a generation later.” [laughs] Take that.
SARMIENTO: When you were in college, did you get more exposed to Asian American/Filipino culture or was it a little bit after that?
L, MORGAN: I would say that it started then. I started getting a little more into it at that point. So I went to UC Santa Barbara for the first two years, then I transferred to UC Berkeley. Santa Barbara was a little white at the time. I think it's a lot more diverse now. When I transferred to Berkeley, I had a more diverse range of friends and definitely had more Filipino friends who took me under their wing. I went to their house and had celebrations or whatever. Got to eat food. So that was the kind of the beginning of it. And then talking to both my Grandma and my Grandpa a little bit about things. Like I said, he didn't do a lot of talking. that was kind of where it all began.
SARMIENTO: Were you involved in any student organizations?
L, MORGAN: I was going to college to get my degree. And that wasn't actually from my Filipino side, that was my dad. This is a gift, you are not going to college to mess around. You bring home C's, I bring you home. Go get your degree and then when I transferred to Berkeley, that was the era of Desert Storm. There were protests and my Grandma would call me, "I'm really worried about you." I said, "I'm not even going by Sproul Plaza, just leave me alone. I'm going to class. I'm doing my thing. I'm getting my degree. I'm being a good girl, so don't mess with me." She was the one that was such a firebrand anyways, it wasn't until later that that came out in me. Not until after graduate school.
SARMIENTO: You said one of your former students got you involved?
L, MORGAN: In this whole thing. So my student’s name was Jeremy. And I’m thinking of Jeremy this [inaudible], his dad Arthur is like Mr. Livermore. He’s highly involved in - I don’t even know what his title is - but the [inaudible] of Livermore and definitely the arts here in Livermore. He organizes the Barrio Festival every October, which is a Filipino-American festival that happens every year in Livermore. That was kind of how this came about. He knows Robyn.
SARMIENTO: Yeah Robyn knows everybody.
[1:09:44-1:14:40]
L, MORGAN: People always tell me, “Well you know everybody here in Livermore.” I’m kind of an introvert. It’s just cause I’ve lived here my whole life. My mother’s lived here her whole life. That’s why I know everybody. Arthur didn’t know right away that I was Filipino. In fact, even with [Jeantete], they guess a lot of other things. I remember he gave me a hug and said to me, “I loved you before. But I love you even more now!”
SARMIENTO: I think we only have a few more questions. Did you have anything you wanted to tell us that we possibly would have missed?
L, MORGAN: I don’t know. We talked about most of it. We’ve done most of the stories we were actually able to get out of him over the years.
J, MORGAN: A little bit of interest, just as after Dave and I were married. They never thought I was Filipino they would ask if he had married someone from Vietnam since he was from the Vietnam era.
L, MORGAN: Although he didn’t go to Vietnam.
J, MORGAN: Or was I Italian? Or Chinese? Now come to find out, I had my ancestry done. I am a little bit of Italian, Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian.
L, MORGAN: So when we did the first company, it came back with no Filipino.
SARMIENTO: Oh wow!
L, MORGAN: Yeah. I think what it is, it's going genetically. I was a Biology major, too. I teach four-year-olds, don't ask how that happened. So the biologist in me said okay well where did the people who settled in the Philippines come from? Well, they would have came from China and Southeast Asia. Going back even further than just the Philippines, that's where it's coming from. So we did another one and it came back far East. East Asia. She was upset for a couple of days and didn't tell my brother and me what the results were And sat on it for a couple of days.
J, MORGAN: I said, "There's nothing Filipino in there." I was looking to see because my father's features were not really Filipino with the broader nose. Maybe they were Spanish? No Spanish. I was really devastated that it wasn't Filipino. But it sounds like the Philippines is a melting pot, just like the United States is a melting pot.
L, MORGAN: It's an Asian melting pot basically from all different places. That was interesting, but then we had it done from a different company and it showed more in line. It was so interesting because, on my Grandmother's side, it could pinpoint to the town in Germany and also to immigrants in the Midwest.
J, MORGAN: And it wasn’t German either. It was Scandinavian.
L, MORGAN: It had all kinds of things. Ashkenazi Jew. We were like, “I always wanted to be Jewish and now I am! And Italian!”
J, MORGAN: There were so many things.
L, MORGAN: It was fascinating.
J, MORGAN: Then also too, when my father had his stroke, we ended up with a caregiver who was from the Philippines and they could speak -
L, MORGAN: He spoke Ilocano.
J, MORGAN: My father spoke Ilocano.
L, MORGAN: That was Alex.
J, MORGAN: We reconnected again with the Filipinos and he took care of my dad. He was so great.
[1:14:41-1:20:22]
L, MORGAN: What happened was, I rated and he was deported. Came into the house, like what in the middle of the night?
J, MORGAN: No, he didn’t come to work that day and we found out he was intercepted taking his daughter to school. She was in kindergarten in Livermore. They took him away.
L, MORGAN: Where did they leave her? At school? Standing there on the street corner? I mean she was so little.
J, MORGAN: I don't know if he had got a hold of his wife. He had never done what he needed. his wife had a green card and he didn’t. And actually that’s a whole nother story, but anyways. So he was deported.
L, MORGAN: And we were devastated because he was wonderful. His wife was a caregiver too but she had a job. She couldn't help out. She did a little just to get us through until we could find somebody else. Alex was like a family member at that point.
J, MORGAN: He was with us for a year and it was good for my dad. [My dad] had a stroke but still could pretty much do things for himself. We would ask him what he had for breakfast and he would say, "I don't know." He lost his short term memory, but he lived a couple years after he had the stroke. We had some really great times with him.
L, MORGAN: We had him at home. We didn't ever put him in a home until the very very end. We had caregivers with him. That's where the Filipinos are now. They're working as caregivers. When my Grandma was dying on her trajectory downhill, we had Filipino caregivers for her too. And then when my dad passed away, we had Filipino caregivers for him. I miss them so much. They live up in Pleasant Hill. We're still in touch with them and we still see them.
J, MORGAN: We’re like family. But my mom had female caregivers that were Filipino and we were close with them. She passed away at home. We did that directly. My husband passed away at home. We had the caregivers for two and a half years.
L, MORGAN: And it was a family. Ace was our main caregiver, then his girlfriend Carla (sp?) was another caregiver that would come at night. Then Carla's (sp?) mom, Leia (sp?), would come on the weekends. And when she would come, she would bring her daughter, Christine (sp?). Christine (sp?) was pre-school age at the time and so Christine (sp?) was always at our house. We spoiled her and bought stuff for her.
J, MORGAN: So we still have a connection to that community. Then we had Ryan. Ryan helped out too. Three days a week he would help me get Dave ready for bed. Dave was on hospice for 15 months and so we had his bed in the family room and he passed away at home, too.
L, MORGAN: And I would come over at midnight bit [Jeanette] didn't have anybody. If there were videos of us trying to do it, they made it look easy. Caregiving is so hard. I don’t know how they do it because not only is it a difficult job physically but emotionally. You get so attached to people and then you lose them. I know it was really hard on them when my dad died because we had all gotten so close.
J, MORGAN: The thing is, Ace, his main caregiver, has a college degree from the Philippines but he doesn’t have a green card here yet as with most of that family which is, I think, a travesty. You come here, you just be able to have the trajectory to get a green card and be here. I think what’s going on now is crazy. So we’re still connected. We’re still connected to the Filipino community.
L, MORGAN: We’ve heard of other families having trouble getting caregivers, but we never did because we have the Filipino in connection there. The grandmas’ caregivers - if you go to a hospital, who were the nurses? They were Filipino - they all would love her and just fawn all over here because here was this white woman who had been married to a Filipino. They adored her. They never saw her feisty side the way we did. They always thought,” She’s just a nice woman.” [laughs]
SARMIENTO: I think I asked all my questions. Are you guys comfortable?
L&J MORGAN: I think so.
SARMIENTO: Alright, I do appreciate your time. It is 11:40 on December 15 and we are concluding this interview. Thank you again. Thank you so much.
Filipino American Oral History Project
Oral History Interview
With
Nickie Tuthill-Delute
September 15, 2020
Virtual, Google Voice Interview
By Daniel Nero
Welga Archives, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies
UC Davis Asian American Studies Department
[00:00]
NERO: All right, let's begin the interview. It is Tuesday, September 15th and this is Daniel Nero conducting an interview for the Bulosan Center of Filipino Studies to record the history of the Filipino American community and we are conducting this interview via Google Voice. Let's begin. Could you please state your name for the recording?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Ah, yes. Nickie Tuthill-Delute
NERO: Then, could you spell your last name, please?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Sure, T, as in Tom, U-T-H-I-L-L, hyphen D as in dog, E-L-U-T as in Tom, E.
NERO: When and where were you born?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I was born in Delano, CA in 1953.
NERO: And then which part of California is Delano?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: It's the Central Valley. It's about 30 miles north of Bakersfield.
NERO: Let's see. Tell me about your mother and your father, when and where they were born?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: They're actually born or they're from Hinunangan, Southern Philippines. Southern Leyte, Philippines.
NERO: And then, when were they born?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh, Dad was born in March of 1902 and Mom was on May of 1918.
NERO: Any siblings?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Me?
NERO: Yes.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: OK yes, so including myself there are seven of us. One had passed at birth pretty much and we have a sixth one that we discovered about 21 years ago in Philippines. So there's six of us living.
NERO: And when you said that there's a sixth one that you found, what does that mean?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: It means that we didn't know that we had a half—sister until right about the day that my mom had her stroke and we discovered by hook and crook on [Transcriber’s Note: English language idiom]. We discovered accidentally that we had a half—sister from our Aunt, she just happened to mention it and that's how we discovered it. I've reached out to her and we've connected.
NERO: And so this is in the Philippines, you said.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Yes, she is actually in. Yeah, she is actually living in him Hinunangan, Southern Leyte, Philippines.
NERO: So let's talk about your family's immigration history, how long has your family been in Delano or the United States?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: OK, so it's a two parter. My dad was, as I mentioned, he was born in 1902 and he immigrated in 1926 and he came to look for work and historically now I find out that he's a manong [Transcriber’s note: Manong is the Ilocano word for Older Brother]. Part of that immigration group that came in in the early or in the 20s. So, Dad immigrated here and he had a cousin who immigrated in 1905 and was a cannery worker in Seattle at about 1918. And my dad’s brother, our Uncle, immigrated 1926 and so my dad had that. I am aware of because I had to go through genealogy to find all this that he had two relatives here in the United States by the time he arrived in 1928. And from what I had seen in the records, his destination, once he arrived, he arrived in Seattle, Washington. His destination went to San Francisco, which I thought, “wow, that's really interesting. How did he know where to go?” When I'm figuring that it's probably because of his cousin who was, I believe, living in San Francisco at the time.
And then my mom came in 1952, it was because she married my dad in the Philippines on 1952. Dad arrived off course many years before and he was working with the Navy as a civilian, and had a break from what I understand on the records. Married my mom and he went back to the [United] States to work and she followed him several months later and came. She actually flew on a plane, which I never knew that. She flew in Acclaim Pacific—I mean Philippine Airlines and came to San Francisco. And at the time they were living— Dad was living in San Francisco while he was working and I am assuming that they were planning on living here [San Francisco]. But then, Mom was complaining that it was too cold in San Francisco. Since you’re [Transcriber’s Note: Referring to Daniel Nero] from Nevada, in in the summer in San Francisco, it's pretty cold. It's not very hot, and so she arrived here and my dad would come home from work and he would say— he told us this is the story— he told us “Gee, your mom is like a cat hanging by the heater.” And it's like “what's wrong”? She's like, “oh she's too cold” so anyway, my uncle was already migrating throughout California and he knew about Delano. He was there for work picking grapes and mentioned to my dad that there were a lot of Filipinos living there and that the weather was much better and maybe that it would be a great place for them to come to move and establish a home there. And then, next year I was born [laughs]. I was the first of the eldest, clearly. So, that's how my parents immigrated to the US.
NERO: So, just to backtrack a little bit, so your dad moved because of job opportunities?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Yeah, he was looking for a better life. He mentioned that he was working as a teacher in the Philippines and he —I'm just guessing because, my dad didn't really tell us a whole lot because I just know from personal records/ through genealogy— that his cousin was here already and my uncle or his brother was here, and so I'm sure that they probably spoke to each other and probably encouraged him to come to the States. And historically, to the United States was in possession of those things. Is that right? I'm trying to remember my history, but anyway, I know that my dad always kidded— yeah, well, he and all the other all his friends would always say “hey, you know, there's probably gold on the streets. We should look for it.” But yeah, in reality they knew that was not true, but that was a goal that I'm sure they probably had when they were a lot younger.
NERO: So, you mentioned that your mom actually flew on a plane — Philippine Airlines — Did your dad do the same? Or how did he get to America?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Right? Oh, he went by ship, from what I gather since he arrived here in 1928 to 1952 and during the 1940s and [19]50s he was working with in the Navy as a civilian, and he traveled and because of work assignment he was always on the ship. I never found any immigration papers or census papers of him taking an airplane. Back and forth during that time.
NERO: So, it was through like the military, that he was able to immigrate to the United States.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Correct.
NERO: Let's see. So, you said that your parents, with at least in your immediate family, would be the first ones in America. Correct? Were any of your parents or relatives, were any of them farm workers?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: In the Philippines or in the United States?
NERO: In the United States.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: No, no, they I mean they were. Well, I shouldn't say that my uncle was a farm worker. Farm labor worker? My dad’s cousin was actually a cook. Subsequently though, the story is that my dad and a lot of his friends from Hinunangan eventually came to the United States. They created a benevolent society. They call themselves the Hinunangan Circle of America. And they created the organization so that they could help and support each other.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Because at the time, I thought I found out that they weren't able to own property, run a business, have a bank account, so I know that because the organization does still exist. It's a little different now. It's a little more of a social organization, than it was a striving to help each other through times of trouble, but they would help each other whenever somebody looked down on their luck and…so where was I going with this anyway? So a lot of them who came here if they weren't working in in the fields, and a majority of them were working in late [sp?] agricultural labor — agricultural farms some would even go up to the fish canneries either in Alaska or in Seattle, and a few of them were on from what I can tell I had blue collar jobs like cooks or I had one of my dad's friends with a printer here in San Francisco and somebody with a gardener in LA. But they were just a few, a majority of them were farm labor workers.
NERO: For those who are farm labor workers or just, I guess like farm worker adjacent. What were their living conditions like? If you know or if you have ever heard any stories from your relatives.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Well, I was born in 1952 and I grew up in Delano. Delano has labor camps during those times, and I know that a lot of the Filipinos single men lived in those labor camps because we would go and visit them. My mom would sell her pastries, her Binangkal or budbud or Bibinka to the Filipino men that were there, and I do know that. I mean, I didn't see them, but I have heard that there were other labor camps throughout the West Coast from Washington, Oregon, California. And their conditions, you know when you're a kid, you’re just kind of like “well, OK, this this is how they live” but they lived in like barracks [with] a single room — 8 by 12, maybe? I'm not really sure. It had a single bed, a closet. A small little closet, one window and that was that was pretty much it. And I remember when we were kids, when we would go visit and see our Manongs or our uncles, we would say “hey, can we see your room” and they would always say “no, no no, you don't want to see our room” and my uncle—I think was my uncle— finally said “OK, OK you can come see, come look in and see, but you can't stay for very long” and it was kind of like “oh wow this is great” and we go in. And it's like, “Oh my God, it's so small.” Then he had like a calendar hanging on the wall and it had a girly picture up and you know we’re kids, we’re like going “Ohhhh OK”. And he said “OK, OK now you got— now you have to leave” [laughs]. And, we're like “okay” and we’re like five, seven, ten—years old. And anyway, so they had several rooms like that, like in a barracks style. We would go there and go “we've got to use the bathroom and we go to the bathroom” and it's like this this long—Oh, I don't know—it's like a plank up against the wall with a hole in it and you go “oh can go use the bathroom” and you look down and it's like “oh it’s like dirt!” then you're like “Wow, OK. That should be interesting.” And then we would go visit the cook because my mom and dad would always offer them vegetables for their meals for the cook. It was like a large type of cafeteria in a wooden building and sometimes the cook would—if they had any food—they would feed us kids and that was that was really nice. It wasn't the greatest, but they had a place to live, had a bathroom and shower and food and so from what I understand now that those were the standard living conditions that that they lived in.
[16:03]
NERO: And I know that you said that that you were a child during like, when you visited these labor camps. Could you speak on any like discrimination that they faced?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Now, off hand, I never really saw it. I grew up in a very isolated type of life. So I mean, if there were, it wasn't really obvious to me, and then the labor camps by the time the Delano grape strike occurred in 1965. It was a lot of the labor camps were deemed illegal and were torn down and so by the time I figured out what was discrimination, then that was already gone. But the fact that they were already told that they were kicked out of their living—their home, which what it's called, their home—that’s discrimination there. But I know that my dad really hardly ever spoke about the bad things, so I was pretty clueless. Now of course I have other siblings so they might have different experiences, but that was—I'll be honest—I never really felt it or heard anything. Maybe I have, maybe…
NERO: Have you ever asked?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: No, not at the time. Like if I didn't know any difference at all and of course, as I've gotten older, my dad, even though he lived to be 88, I was like in my 40s and all his friends had all passed away even sooner than him. So you know the opportunity to ask was not there. That I just I missed that opportunity to know a little bit of their history.
NERO” OK, so you've brought up many things about like the Grape Strike we'll get to that in this second section of questions. I have to kind of shift a little bit and focus on you growing up in Delano. So, growing up, were you mainly around family, friends or relatives?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Mostly family and friends.
NERO: Why do you think that is?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Small town [laughs].
NERO: That makes sense
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Small town and I honestly grew up thinking that I had no relatives except for my dad, brother, my uncle and we had and another manong which was—[laughs] I find out now wasn't that much older than my dad, but we used to call him lolo [Transcriber’s note: Tagalog word for Grandfather].
NERO: [Laughs]
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh, OK. Oh, “why is he our Lolo?” and because you know, we always figured that our grandparents were in the Philippines and I found out later that he was married to my dad’s—his first cousins—and so, I think he migrated to the United States, but around the same time. Anyway, because he was so close to my dad’s first cousin, we called him Lolo, and he was our designated babysitter. But I don't know if you want to talk about that yet, but anyway so I grew up thinking that I had no relatives and I find out years later that I have a lot of relatives in the United States and in the Philippines but I really didn't grow up with them because at that time, they weren’t quite around. There were a few, but not a lot, and so it's just mostly family. My immediate family that I grew up with and all my friends in the town of Delano.
[20:31]
NERO: In a sense, the people that you're surrounded by are practically your family now too, like everyone’s your Tita [Transcriber’s Note: Tagalog word for Aunt], everyone’s your Tito [Transcriber’s Note: Tagalog word for Uncle].
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh, yeah.
NERO: Speaking of, let's talk about the Filipino community. Were all the Filipinos close with one another?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh God, yeah. It's like everybody knew you knew each other. So I mean, it's small, I grew up In in a town, it was only at that time about what 10,000 people or something, and we had a Filipino community hall and we used to go to all social events, Christmas parties, Easter Egg hunt parties, birthday parties. You know everything that you can imagine. My brother in the in the 60s was a king of hearts [laughs].
NERO: What is that?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: It was Saint Valentine’s Day.
NERO: Oh I love it.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I don't know if they do that anymore, but it was a social box and they crowned the king and queen. You know, little kids for Saint Valentine's Day and my brother was, amazingly, amazingly enough [laughs] was the King of Hearts. So anyway, so we’re a very close—knit community. We all knew each other. We all went to school together. I mean, there were the farmers and the business owners and we always figured to label our town because of the railroad line that that was right down the middle of town. So we had the east side of Delano, where all the white people lived, and then the West side of Delano, where all the minorities who have all the Filipinos, Mexicans, African Americans all lived on that side of town. So we had one elementary school and we all went to that same elementary school. So it was a combination of K through 8 [th grade], so we all knew each other from kindergarten from five years old to 8th grade to 14. So we all kind of knew each other. We all knew all the families and we only had one high school. So then we all integrated with the Caucasian students from the east side of school in our town. So that yeah, the close knit community.
NERO: Let's focus on the Filipino community first and we'll talk about the heterogeneous mix of the groups. Were there any tension between the Filipino ethnic group?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: No, not that I grew up with…No, I was thinking about that question and I thought, “well, you know, maybe later down the road,” but when I was growing up, no, and not at all who we all got along pretty well.
NERO: OK, what about between like Filipinos and Mexicans, Filipinos and white folks, like any tensions between like interracial tensions.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, I didn't really see too much of that, then again, the problem I have is that I was pretty sheltered on being the oldest girl and I was not able to see any of that, at least I think that's what my parents did. You know, protected me, but I mean, I know that there were some tension. You know in the 60s, but it was mostly the…
NERO: Civil rights movement?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Yes, thank you, that! The civil rights movement and I was more into the Identifying [with] the feminist movement. I'm not sure they called it the feminist movement yet that came in the 70s, but you know, I was remembered as a kid, I was kind of like “I don't want to be like these women, don't want to be like little girly girls and all like those stuff” but anyway. So in regards to Mexicans and Filipinos, I don't know, we all seemed to have gotten along. I just personally mean, I'm trying really hard to think about that, I mean it didn't happen until much later.
NERO: And by much later you mean like not growing up, but during the 50s, 60s?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: In the 70s actually, I mean in the 70s mostly, I was in.
NERO: I understand.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I was in high school when this was all coming out. I mean when the Grape Strike [started] and that created a lot of tension. But again, this is the Grape Strike. This was like in ‘65, but even then, I was kind of clueless until later, but we can talk about that later. You're ready to ask me questions about it?
NERO: OK, OK so we're switching back and forth. Let's go back to the Filipino community and earlier you mentioned the Manongs. How did the Filipino families view elderly models?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh well, you know, like they’re relatives, a lot of them. I mean we did, we would have them over our house and they would stay whenever they were visiting, and so our Lolo was Manong, my uncle was Manong, so many of my dad's friends from his benevolent society, they were all Manongs. I mean, now I know the word and so that what it means and I grew up with them and I thought my dad was the only old guy in in in my life and I realized later that everybody in Delano all the fathers were that old and all my dad friends were all that old.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: You know how it is, there's Asian Americans, or I mean, Asians, Filipinos. You know, they look so young you don't realize that they're already in their 50s or 60s when you're like 10 years old.
NERO: Well, you mentioned that. You now know the word and you know what it means, so can you give me a definition of what a Manong is?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Well, a Manong is older Filipino and it's a term of endearment to respect. And it usually categorizes in what we’re speaking to right now. It categorizes the men, the Filipino men who arrived in the United States back in the 20s and 30s. I mean, I know now you can say to any older Filipino man for respect. But I associate now Manongs with the older, the really older generation of like my dad. I mean if he was alive now he would be over 100 years old.
NERO: Let's see, do you have any memorable experiences about a Manong that you'd like to share?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh gosh, I have so many. Oh OK, well you can talk about my Lolo and he was, as I mentioned, was married to my dad’s first cousin, so there were very close friends. He would come to visit us in our home in Delano when you know, and I could never figure out when he would come visit, but he would come visit us and there were times he would come and babysit us and so, I thought “wow, he's a great cook.” I mean, if food always came out and he just you know [his] Filipino cooking, just wonderful. And he would always tell us his kids “Pick a vegetable, pick a vegetable” and because my dad grew all this vegetable at our house. And [he’d say] “pick a vegetable and bring it over and I'll cook something,” I go “Oh yeah, oh OK. Great!” Beans or eggplants or whatever and he’d say “Oh, Okay!” and he’d go ahead and cook something and we’d go “Wow this is really good; I mean he could just whip it up like that.”
And there were times when I knew that he was lonely because he would Drink a little bit too much. It was kind of like, that's our lolo and then he would start crying like all the sudden. He's like sitting there and he would be drinking and then he starts crying. My mom would sit there and say, oh “don't do that in front of the children”. You know, “don’t be drinking in front of them” and we’d like going. “Oh well, that's our lolo”. You know, and he would get like you know, even sadder because my mom is yelling at him. But I realized at that time because he must have been lonely because he left [Transcriber’s Note: The Philippines] years ago. This [happened] in the 50s— 60s he left like in the 20s. He left his wife, he left his daughter and he had never went back to the Philippines. He stayed all those years. So anyway, that's happy and sad. That's one story.
[31:28]
NERO: Kind of switch gears a little bit. How was your relationship between Filipinos born in America and Filipinos born in the Philippines?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: When I was born in the 50s, you know that mix wasn't great. It came much later when I was in my teens where we had more Filipinos started to come in and coming into town and working and living in the camps. So the story is this. This is how we had the Filipinos from the Philippines who are living in the camps or maybe some who were living in town with relatives and then there was us: The Filipino Americans who would sit there and try to try to emulate them, or they try to emulate us. And there was some tension and I'm not really sure about all this. My brother saw more so because it was a guy kind of thing but they used to play basketball with each other and they would have like fights. From what I understand but I wasn't really quite sure about it exactly.
So there was that kind of tension going on. It's about somewhere in 1975 and my brother and a bunch of his friends of the local guys decided to have a Filipino Basketball tournament in Delano and it would be Filipino Americans and the Filipinos from the camps or around town. They would like have basketball games with each other and my brother would always say “You know it was like really difficult because they would play basketball like they were in the Philippines. They were like really rough. They would like hit each other, hit us and you know play really rough” and so they had to change it and they mixed it up. They would get the camp guys with the Filipino American guys and they created teams and so they created that Basketball tournament, which led to what is now the Delano Philippine Weekend that happens every summer in July, which started with the basketball tournament. And that basketball tournament created the Fiesta [Transcriber’s note: the Philippine Weekend Barrio Fiesta] and now they have a [Beauty] Queen show, they have a Mrs. Queen show, they got tiny tots on competition. And what else did they do...they still have the basketball tournament.
I mean to this day they still have It. It would have been the 45th anniversary this year except for COVID [Transcriber’s note: COVID—19 Pandemic], that it didn’t happen. And so what happens is that the basketball tournament was so popular that people from all over they were people from San Jose, California, from Stockton, from Sacramento, from Fresno, from Los Angeles, San Diego. Their Filipino teams would come up or come to Delano for this this tournament. OK, so I have this one story. My mom was in a nursing home in the 90s and you know the nurse who was taking care of my mom was Filipino and she was asking us, "what we were going to be doing for the weekend” and while she was asking how she mentioned that she was going go out and go out of town to this to this event—this Filipino event that happens every year and she was like "my son goes to it, he plays basketball in this tournament” and we're like “Oh well where is this?” I thought maybe Stockton or something., and she goes “Oh, it's probably some place you never heard of,” “Oh well, tell us” and she goes “It's Delano, California. My husband and I really like “Delano!? Oh my God, I grew up down there” and she goes “no way! My son goes and he plays in this Filipino basketball team and this is here in San Francisco, and we go there every summer” and I go “Yeah, my brother helped put this [Basketball tournament] together, I go down there and whenever I'm visiting and help with scorekeeping or whatever.” So anyway, it's a small little town, a big event. it's like wow, I was quite pleasantly surprised at how popular this event is.
NERO: But it also goes to show how truly network the Filipino community is?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Yes! Oh my God. I mean I would go down every year to watch the basketball game because that was what really put this thing together. And I would see all these teams from all various parts of California. I think there was a Vegas basketball team that frequent them. And I was like—I mean, the guys in Delano, they got the word out, and there they were and I was always looking forward to [saying] “wow what Filipino basketball team is from where?” You know, it was really cool just seeing this.
NERO: So you talked about the Fiesta, you talked about the basketball tournaments every year? Does this happen in the community hall or...?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh gosh. OK, so it happened everywhere in town.
NERO: Oh, OK.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Because Delano, it's maybe now 50,000 people. But you know, it grew slowly over time. But yeah, we had a Filipino hall [where] they would do it at the time. The Queen show or whatever in the early days, the basketball tournament occurred in the high school. The school district was very accommodating to the Filipino community. I think it was around that time that we had our first Filipino Mayor in Delano, so that helped quite a lot and we did have I believe a couple of teachers who were also Filipinos and come. But see we had it at a park eventually on various high schools for the tournaments and The Queen Show and all that, it just grew so much. It grew so big. That they had to do it in like in larger venues like the High school auditorium, the Filipino Community Center. Yeah, I mean it could maybe hold 100 people, but it's pretty tight. It's pretty small, in a small stage. So eventually that moved out.
But yeah, we had tournaments at the high schools, the Fiesta still was at a major public park. They had a parade down Main Street and they had all the queen shows at the High school auditorium.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: So it was pretty popular and the only Filipino—owned business was the Filipino Community Hall. They would occasionally have a few things there, but it actually just eventually outgrew it.
NERO: OK, so we're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about the Grape Strike. So you mentioned that you're born in the 50s and then throughout like the 60s—70s, that's when the growth has happened. Do you remember about the Strike? Like, can you talk about the atmosphere any significant events that? You know, like you witnessed?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: OK, so I lived through it that I didn't participate because it was in a sense...
[40:29]
NERO: OK.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Kind of an intense situation. I just remembered my parents, who would argue at home and I just remember them arguing about going to work because you wanted to honor the strike for the benefit that they were achieving. But at the same time my mom would sit there and say, “well we can't stop working because we have children.” I think [it was]1965—I don't know. My sister was maybe six or something, she was the youngest between me being 12 and she being six. You know, young children. So my parents were hard pressed to say “well we have to honor the strike.” So what I recall we would go to school and in the summers we would work in the fields with our parents, and the strike was a long strike, it was like for five years from ‘65 to 1970. So every summer we would work in the field and what I always remembered was we would go to work and then suddenly we were told get out of the field, put all the stuff that we were working with, [and] just put it under the vines, walk away, get into the car and leave. And then we find out later that my dad and the crew boss who knew that strikers were coming over and they were going to come over in and badger us, to say “get out of the field” and so my parents, all the families that were picking grapes would want to protect their families and themselves to get out of the field, get int the car and leave and so that nobody would get hurt because they were some violence that occurred. So it was kind of one of those.
This is what the strike was all about and there were times when my dad couldn't go to work because they were striking in a certain areas that they were supposed to be picking, and then that would be the time when my parents would say “the kids won't go to work with them, they would go by themselves.” So what may have happened, they would not tell us, but that was that. That was what I had experienced and there were a lot of news about Delano on TV and on newspapers, so one of those things where you would see it in the news, in in your own town and you would go to the grocery store and they were strikers there and they would say, “don't buy grapes” and sometimes they would hassle you, and bully you. And a lot of people from what I remember really didn't appreciate it and I think a lot of people didn't like the strike because of the way that they were being bullied. As they're going into to do their shopping because we only had, I think at that time just a few grocery stores. Safeway was our major grocery store, and we had a couple of smaller grocery stores. And the strikers would always go to come to Safeway, and that's where they did all the heavy picketing. I mean, so that was my experience with the Delano Grape Strike. I'm trying to think my parents were arguing. Yeah, all the news. I mean, it was like “Geez, all this news on about Delano?”
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I do know that my mom had a cousin and he would stay [with us]. So what happened was that we used to live in a very small house on our current property and as the family got bigger, my parents decided to build a bigger house. You know, four bedrooms—three baths versus a two bedroom—one bath. Anyway, but they still had that house and they rented it to my mom's cousin and he actually was working for [Larry] Itliong during the strike and what I always remembered about him was that he was always one of the strikers. He was always out there carrying a sign and yelling at people and I always figured he was one of those violent kind of guys, I mean, even though he was my mom's cousin and so he used to live right next door with us and we would see him around town and at the grocery stores and yelling at people. And so I always figured you know he was a diehard striker and I always figured, “oh he’s probably a henchman for the United Farm Workers and my mom would get really mad at him because whatever he does, that's what he does. But he used to come over and bring all these—= my parents [would say] “Who are all these people that are that are staying at the house” and they were all part of the strike. But they were Caucasian, and we would call them at the time “the hippies” because they were young Caucasian, you know long flowing clothes and hair, they were loose, all that kind of smoking and drinking, and they were hanging out and we’re like “wow what's going on over here?” And my Mom yelled at him and said “Hey whatever you do, just don't bring any of your work over here.” I mean, I can hear him arguing in Visayan [Transcriber’s Note: Filipino Language spoken primarily in the Visayan Islands] he would yell back at my mom, [I’m] like “Geez, nobody yells at my mom” and he would yell back at her and saying like “you should honor the strike” or something like that. I vaguely remember that.
But other than that, that's what I remembered. And then, of course, the Forty Acres being developed.
[47:30]
NERO: What do you mean by the Forty Acres being developed?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh, Forty Acres. It's a location now in Delano. It's kind of about a couple of miles outside of the main part of Delano, and it's where Cesar Chavez—he did his fasting over there and then when the strike—when it was successful—they opened a clinic, and that's where a lot of the people, and even myself would go over and have affordable health care. Doctors—I'm not really sure how the doctors came—but the doctors were there. I don't know if they volunteered or if it was something, maybe they got some benefits or something, but they would be out there with some of the nurses and they would take a lot of patients. And then the hiring hall was created, and anyways that's where the office was located for the United Farm Workers. And eventually the Agbayani Village was built there, which was the housing for all the Manongs that were displaced after the strike was finished, because a lot of them, got kicked out of the camps because the Camps were deemed as illegal. So they moved all the Manongs out. A lot of them had to censor themselves and so that's when Larry Itliong, [Philip] Vera Cruz, Pete Velasco put together the housing units for the Manongs that were displaced.
NERO: So that's actually one of my questions about the Agbayani Village. I want to go back to a little bit of what you said about your mom and your cousin, so there's a lot of that contention between Filipinos about the strike. Why do you think that is like? Why do you think that tension exists?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I mean this is my own personal experience just because my mom. OK, so that I was treated with like “we don't want Nikki to see all this stuff” and my mom was always like “we got to show this, like this perfect or a perfect family, we have no problems” [laughs], and it's like, “OK, well that's being a hypocrite.” So and then there's my mom cousin who was part of the strike and he believed one thing and she believed in this perfectness, and they would clash. That's how I kind of saw that as kind of an attitude perception of how their lives would be. I mean, I grew up thinking that my mom really never wanted to address the negative part of life and yet, at the same time she was like really being overprotective. Because I mean every time I went anywhere she was like following right behind me like I would go to a dance and then lo and behold, here she is! You know, in the darkness making sure you know “OK is she behaving herself,” that kind of thing. But there's always that tension, I believe and it might be, just something that's part of our culture. I mean, I can never understand it. And yet to this day I do still see it in in other families and sometimes I catch myself, pretending like everything’s fine, you know nothing to worry about. And I think being honest and showing how you truly feel about things, I think it's more honest which we were not always until they expressed that way. One of the things I do want to bring up was my mom— [about] our half sister— because this is that that part of her life where you think that maybe she would tell us, but she never did. She never told us. I mean, when she had her stroke she lost her ability to write and speak then when we finally said “hey mom, we know” she just kind of looked at us and you know, like, “oh OK”. It's like she couldn't really say anything and it was just one of those things where you sit there and you go “Mom, all you had to do was tell us we would have been OK” and she kind of like nodded and said “mmm hhh”. Like it would have been just nice to know what you went through. And I was telling a cousin of the events and her takeaway was, “well, If your mom had shame so she didn't want to talk about it.” I go “this is our half—sister”, and we celebrated when my brother had his daughter and we said, “Mom, your first grandchild.” In reality, she already had four grandchildren we didn't know about! [laughs]. You know what I mean? It was like that. All of a sudden, life became immeasurable because of the…well, I don't know, the lies, or the secrets that people have. Anyway so, it's great to know that she had grandchildren much sooner than we realize because my half-sister is 20 years older than I am. It's like wow.
NERO: I want to ask about the Agbayani Retirement Village. Do you know anyone who volunteered to help construct it?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh gosh, no. You know what. Wait, yes, I do Max Bacerra and some locals[s]— Lorraine Agtang. I do know that they were there. Let me turn my Bluetooth headset off so I can go… [Transcriber’s Note: Tuthill-Delute switching audio capturing device].
Can you hear me still?
NERO: Yes I can.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Hang on, you could turn up my volume, OK. I did know some people, local people who did help build it. I mean, even though we had a lot of volunteers from what I understand, I think there were a lot of college students, who came there.
NERO: Do you have any experiences during the construction, I guess? Like can you talk about the construction in itself from your perspective?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I was already living here at San Francisco and I would only experience it whenever I visit in town. That and that was it.
NERO: OK, that's actually a good segue for like the last section of this interview. Let's talk about your post-high school years. What did you do after graduating high school?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: After I went to high school and graduated I went to college and I worked. And I would visit home every other month while my parents were still alive, and that, how would I say, the caged bird needed to spread her wings.
NERO: Where did you go to college and what did you study?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh OK, so I went to a couple of colleges; Community College from Bakersfield and I did Cal State University, also in Bakersfield, which just opened at that time. And then, really, for as long as I can remember I wanted to get into design and art and wanted to go to New York. I wanted to be a designer and it's like my parents would always sit there and say “Sure. Yeah, how are you going to get there? Who's going to pay your way?” I go “Oh. Aren't you going help?” My parents would sit there and say “We can't afford you going to New York.”
So anyway, so I was going to college and I thought, well, I'm going to fill out an application to transfer to a bigger university, and I applied to San Francisco State and I got accepted. I was like, “Oh OK, it was like wow, great, I can't believe it. I'm going to San Francisco.” My parents were so…Anyway, so I said “hey mom, dad, I just got accepted San Francisco State. I'm going to go to college there.” I just like flat out said “I'm going to college there.” My dad was like “Oh. Well, why did you do that?” “Why did I do that?” “Well, you could go to college here in Bakersfield.” Like “Oh no, I'm going to San Francisco. It’s simple as that.”
I know that my parents weren't very happy about it, but you know, I was the first woman [in the family] going to college. Subsequently, of course, my brother went to San Diego State and did much better than I did [laughs]. I went to San Francisco State for a couple of years and then I dropped out in the 70s but eventually went back in the 90s and got my Bachelor’s. My interest had always been in art.
That was when I had great time expressing myself and was doing a lot of artwork doing mostly ceramics and sculpture. And then of course I graduated and then I hear my mom's words: “Well, what are you going to do with it?” I know, it's like “OK, now what am I going to do? Where do I begin?” So I started working in a couple of places. I remember working for the classified department in the San Francisco Chronicle and I was trying to get into their art department, but it was kind of an old boys school. You know, printing departments in newspapers, and so I just — hard as I tried, I couldn't get in there, so I eventually left, finally got a job working in an ad agency and that was about as close as I ever got to working with creative people and I've been working in that field. Well, pretty much now, but not in the art field. I was more of a project manager, so I got to work with print managers, art directors, writers, and then of course the account people. So I got to see a lot of radio commercials being produced, even produced a couple of myself. I oversaw a couple of commercials being produced and newspapers and newspaper ads. Those are the days and now of course everything is all Internet —but they still do commercials.
NERO: So is that the career that you stayed at for your adult life?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Pretty much. Pretty much until I can't work any longer and that's the druthers. Now as you get older, I'm now in my 60s. I'm having a hard time finding work and now with COVID, forget about it. I'm weary to go back to work and getting infected.
NERO: Were there any other Filipinos in your field of work?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: There were a few. There were a few. Not a lot, but most of them were more in administrative and you know, like clerical. But not a whole lot. I did grow up with a couple of guys, [Asian] Americans who went to San Francisco State also majored in art. And they were art directors. They were very successful last batch. But they were. You know, one of the few.
[01:01:19]
TUTHILL-DELUTE: I mean, most of them were Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans. I mean, now I, believe there are a lot more Filipino American artists in the industry kind of world. When I was looking for work in the from the 70s to the to the 2000.
NERO: So you mentioned that Delano's population grew. What about the Filipino population and how did it change During your adult years?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: In Delano. OK, well it has changed quite a lot. What has happened is, is that a lot of the Filipino families have migrated to the City of San Francisco — I mean the City of Delano. Sorry and, some are teachers or doctors — professional jobs. And they stayed on and they brought other friends and families to the point where there are more in the blue collar—white collar jobs and or white collar jobs and the labor. Yeah I would go down and say “hey you know I used to use a picked grapes” and they look at me and they say “You picked grapes?” I go “Yes! There are Filipinos that used to pick grapes” and because only the Mexicans now pretty much pick grapes and most of the Filipinos have migrated over to the packing shed because they have better benefits there, working conditions [are] much better than working in the field. So that's where a lot of the Filipinos ended up.
And anyway. So what happened also to and because of the population has increased, more Filipinos, and also more Mexicans. The town has changed. Main Street used to be of course, owned by — well, I mean you don't know that — but it used to be owned by a lot of Caucasians. But I mean they were also immigrants because they came from Slavonic countries and some came from Italy and in other places, and they own the businesses, they ran Main Street Delano. Now you go to Delano and Main Street Delano is owned by all minorities — Mexican Americans, Filipino Americans and your Caucasian business owners, is very few there. And we would kid around and say “What happened? Do these like kick out all the White People in Delano?” They always wondered about that. It’s they're still around because I know that the family names are there. They always wondered about that. You know, it's just they're still around because I know that the family names some have stayed on because they still have like their vineyards, their growers. They're still there, and some have married, you know, inter marriage, they married either another Filipino — a Caucasian married Filipino or Mexican — and so they stayed and had families over the years. So, the town has changed quite a lot. I mean, we have a lot of Mexican restaurants, hardly ever when I was growing up. Same thing with Filipino food. I mean the only Filipino food you can find was at somebody’s home. Now, there are a few restaurants where you can get Filipino food and it was rare to find anybody who would sell Lechon [Transcriber’s Note: Whole Roasted Pig, Filipino Style]. Now — I mean, my parents would wait until there was a special occasion and buy a hog and then we would have a barbecue at our property. But now it's more common. It's I mean — thank God, but our history needs to change. We need to talk more about our Filipino American history.
NERO: So speaking of, let's talk about FANHS [Transcriber’s Note: Filipino American National Historical Society]. So how did you get involved with FANHS?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: OK, that's an easy one. My brother who is in San Diego was involved with FANHS because his wife was a president of FANHS and he was mentioning, “oh, you know, we're having a conference in San Diego” and I always love going to their [conferences] because my brother is a teacher — was a teacher — [and] a school administrator and I would love to go to a lot of his teacher conference, because I get to meet all these educators and I see all these vendors, and all the books and art stuff. And I thought “Oh OK, FANHS yeah. OK, Filipino American history organization. Sure, you know this looks really great.” I wanted to volunteer and help out. I went to the first FANHS Conference in San Diego in 2014 and saw how it was run. My poor brother was running ragged because he was helping putting it together. So I would help with the managing people, moving them here and there and I would be a moderator at a panel and I thought. “Hey, this is really great.” My brother would say, “Hey you know, if you want to go to a panel or workshop or something, by all means, go ahead and join in.” And like in a panel and a FANHS Chapter in the Central Coast was talking about people that she was interviewing and I sat there and I thought, “Oh my God, those are my cousins,” because they owned a Filipino market in Pismo Beach. And I thought “My God, I know those people were my relatives!” And then somebody was doing some research in New Orleans. And they were like looking for Filipinos that were in the New Orleans area way back in early 1900s and I went “Oh my God. Let's see if she has my uncle there because my uncle was in New Orleans in 1930.” And lo and behold, she found his name! And there it was on the presentation. I was like “Wow, these people are pretty cool!”
We became members and that's where I learned more about like Manongs, the Bridge Generation, the Filipino history in America and I thought “Well, this is great” so that became into the Delano chapter. My brother calls me up one day and he says “hey, you know what? We got to do a Delano — FANHS Delano chapter. I want you to help put it together, and we're going to put up an event and it's going to be on the anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike. It'll be 50 years.” and I went “Sure, sure I'll do it. I'll help. I'll put this chapter. I'll help put the chapter together and I'll help put this event together” and so that became the Delano Grape Strike: The Bold Step [Transcriber’s Note: Event title for the FANHS Delano chapter’s event] and that was in 2015 and I helped along with the officers, helped put this event together. We became a chapter like in June I believe, through July, August, September. The event was in September. We had three months to put it together.”
NERO: Oh wow, three months for the 50th Anniversary?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Yes, For the 50th. And you know. People in the officers and some of the volunteers would…You know, because I've done these kind of events because I was working with Oracle at the time and one of the things that Oracle has— It's a it's a software company here in Silicon Valley—and they do this big event every year in San Francisco. You know, they close the street down. They take over the Convention Center. They take over this and that. Anyway, so I kind of knew a little bit of planning, an event, a big event, but so, what I was trying to say is that 50 years and I knew that this was going to be a big event, and I kept stressing to them “Well, it's got to be more than just one night. It's going to have to be a weekend thing” Especially because then Dawn Mabalon and Robyn Rodriguez came into the fold to help us put it together. They helped get guest speakers and suggested topics for our workshops with panel panelists. And I thought, “wow, this is just like a FANHS conference, but you know, it's a Delano chapter event.” So it became a three day event Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And we there are a lot of people who attended and I think a lot of people in Delano and were like “Oh, I had no idea that this could possibly happen” and but what's really interesting is that the people who planned it realized the scope of the history in Delano, but the people in Delano still don't really know it, interestingly enough. They don't go to a lot of the functions that occur there. So that's my contribution to FANHS. And then of course because I'm still here in San Francisco, I decided to join the San Francisco FANHS chapter [laughs].
[01:11:22]
TUTHILL-DELUTE: So then they kicked it off this year in right before the pandemic and we have a lot of members, a lot of students. And the President or the person who's kicking off is a Filipino American college professor at the City College Community over here. So she's — she happens to be a student many years ago in San Diego and she knew my brother because he was a school administrator and at the time his wife — She passed away of cancer— but she used to be a student of hers. I mean, of my brother's wife at the time because she knew my brother and his first wife. So, she's got knowledge and information, which is really great.
NERO: So we're now just winding down to the last part of the interview. Talking about the Bold Step Event. Why do you think that event was important?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Oh my gosh, why is it important?! It's because of the Filipinos that were involved in it that people don't know anything about. You know they thought Cesar Chavez was the Delano Grape Strike, I mean. Even the people who grew up with it, we all know Cesar Chavez but nobody made a point to say “hey, no, let's get this straight,” so that's my big takeaway is that when I realize that you know this is history that needs to be told correctly. Then our event became the big kick off. I mean, I understand that there are other stories about it, but this was the big kickoff to get the story right because you know we made— we had a couple of people from the from Cesar Chavez Foundation who came and actually said “Yes, Larry Itliong started it.” If it wasn't for him, the Grape Strike occurred because he was the guy who came into town and said “hey, we need to make this change, we need to get more money for our workers and the only way we can do it is to strike.” I mean it's like “Oh my God, let's get this right, let's get it straight.”
NERO: And then, second to last question, do you feel that Filipino American history is getting enough recognition?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Enough? No. it needs more, it needs more and I can only say that because in the town of Delano where the Grape Strike occurred, not everybody still knows it and so we need to— I understand that we've now got the curriculum for Filipino farmer history into K-12— but I haven't seen it implemented. Yeah, but it's more and more events. And I now that I'm part of FANHS and I am in the Delano chapter, I try to bring awareness through FANHS with events, and we have a tour that we do every year — er, not every year. That if people request it, they can do a tour of the Delano Grape Strike locations where the Grape Strike occurred. Out in the field the Filipino Community Hall where they held their meetings, where Cesar Chavez took the agreement at the Guadalupe Church, which still exists, and where Larry Itliong is buried, he is buried in Delano. And of course the development of the Forty Acres where Cesar Chavez had his fasting, where the clinic was developed where the hiring hall was, and where Agbayani Village was created. Then of course the other history, which is the Delano Chinatown which is now like bulldozered over. But that's where all our Manongs used to go. You know, go shopping, go gambling, go drinking, go eating. Extracurricular activities and but that in itself is history. And so anyway.
NERO: And then here's the last question for the interview. What advice do you have for young Filipinos like me and many others?
TUTHILL-DELUTE: Come to Delano.
NERO: I'm tempted when you said there’s Lechon everywhere, I'm so tempted.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: [Laughs] Yeah, they're— Oh my God. Well, there is one main person that really makes it and you got to go to Delano. And when I mean Delano is a really—I mean in in a whole lot of ways, It's still a small town and it's in the middle of really nowhere, and the freeway runs right through it. But the thing is, is that Filipino history is in all our lives. I mean, it's in Delano, Stockton, Sacramento, Coachella Valley down over by Morro Bay. Down over by. Where the Manila Men in New Orleans are. The kids, the youth, I think are better off than when I was a youth of our Filipino history, but we need more of it, so that everybody is aware of who the Filipino Americans are, how we came here and that our history is part of American history.
NERO: And what a great way to come to close the interview. Thank you for thank you for your time. So this concludes the interview with Nickie Tuthill-Delute, and this is Daniel Nero signing off for the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies. I'm now going to stop the recording.
TUTHILL-DELUTE: OK.
[01:18:06]