The ghosts of Corregidor

THE GHOSTS OF CORREGIDOR: Victorino P Mapa A moat surrounded the castle. Once the drawbridge was raised the castle keep and its inhabitants with ample supplies could defend themselves indefinitely. On occasions the defenders would even sally forth, repulse and counter-attack. This concept of warfare has long gone into oblivion along with the times when knighthood was in flower and armies fought with swords and bows and arrows. The castles extant today are nothing but tourist attractions Incredibly this method of warfare was kept alive in the 20th century with the creation of Corregidor, The elements of a castle-like fortress were all there: the bay was the moat. The battlements were the gun emplacements. All save two, were permanently sited on concrete bunkers to imperil any attacks that came from the sea. What was worse is her guns were pieces taken off closing military bases in the United States, turn-of-the century ordnance that bore the year they were forged: 1906. There was, of course, Malinta tunnel which only reinforced the mole’s idea of defense. . This tadpole shaped, two and a half mile islet with an undulating terrain could only accommodate an airstrip small enough for a piper cub. Corregidor had no place in an era of fleet warships, armor-piercing cannons and attacks that would come from the sky. All the island fortress had going for it was the hype. The American press touted that the “Impregnable Rock” could repel any invaders that set foot in the Philippines; that her sixteen inch guns could obliterate any warship from twenty miles; that her shores were dotted with deadly short-range guns and machine guns; and most of all she had the US Marines and Philippine Scouts ready enough to do battle with anyone foolish enough to take her on. America was totally unprepared for war when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She had no air force, an outdated navy of which half were sunk in the sneak attack and barely 300,000 men in uniform. Corregidor, along with Singapore (ballyhooed as the “Gibraltar of the East”) had to be touted as deterrents to aggression against a battle-tested, vastly superior Japanese army. The Allies were playing bluff poker with no cards to play with. The Japanese didn’t fall for the trick with Singapore. They landed troops in Malaysia, overran the British Army and in February 1942, Yamashita’s 22,000 troops accepted the surrender of the British garrison – manned by over 100,000 men. But the bluff with Corregidor worked. The Japanese had so much respect for the island-fortress that even when they landed troops in North and South Luzon and overran its defenses, even when they pushed the Filipino-American army into the Bataan pocket ( “ a cat entering a sack”) and could invade Corregidor from the east, opposite of its guns’ fixed trajectory they did not. The Japanese so believed the American press that they staged their first air raid from a high, high altitude nearly a month after the Philippine invasion. Almost all of Corregidor’s water supply was destroyed on that first raid. From then on Corregidor was subjected to daily bombings. By February 1942, the Japanese had set up 75 millimeters on the hills of Ternate, Cavite and the bombings were joined by uninterrupted shelling. Battery Geary took a direct hit on its munitions room that her sixteen inch guns flew a quarter mile like matchsticks. Other batteries were similarly hammered enough as to make them inoperable. Corregidor’s guns couldn’t fire back at all. Their mountings were fixed. Hundreds died from shrapnel and direct hits. The wounded considered themselves lucky. Their wounds granted them a “pass” into Malinta tunnel. The non-stop bombardment, the realization that they were cut off, that escape was impossible, and no news was forthcoming from the outside world except for the exhortations to hold on ( grandiously broadcasted through General MacArthur) began to affect the defenders. Morale sunk: Men broke into tears, others walked around aimlessly, many picked fights and a malady acquired a name: Tunnel Syndrome. Malinta Tunnel with its series of laterals was the sole, sane refuge from the din of explosions. Many who went in for duty or to report refused to come out; the sick and the wounded who were brought in malingered. The “Tunnel Rates” were recognized by the wan pallor of their skin. But for the rest who had to man their posts Corregidor was a daily hell. These were the “gaunt, ghastly men, unafraid” remembered by MacArthur as he escaped from the Rock in late March. Bataan fell on April 9, and from its Mt Samat Japanese guns could now site Corregidor as well. With no fear of retaliation lest Corregidor’s guns (if operable, which wasn’t) would hit the 75,000 troops who surrendered. The “Rock” was bracketed from the south and north and subject to daily air raids. She was now ripe for invasion. A Japanese battalion landed in the early morning of May 3.Sick, hungry and debilitated as they were the shore defenders put up a fight wiping out the first wave. Defenders from the cliff hurled down grenades and mortar shells.Survivors were finished off by the bayonet. Marines and scouts stood and held and died when their ammo ran out. But the issue was never in doubt. By the third day Japanese tanks at the entrance to Malinta tunnel demanded unconditional surrender. During the first months of the war Japan faced no defeat. Corregidor was the last to fall. On that day, May 6, 1942 Japan was the master of all Asia. Philippine army soldiers today garrison the island to protect it from souvenir hunters and salvagers. When they patrol the grounds at night they allege that they catch glimpses of wraiths and hear strange moans and cries. Whether you believe them or not the soldiers swear there are ghosts in Corregidor. But there are other ghosts that are visible to the senses. In no other place in the world can one find gun emplacements, ammunition dumps piled high with defused shells, fox holes and machine gun nests by the shore and Malinta tunnel, all looking as if the conflict happened only yesterday. The Rock’s two major places of interest is Topside and Bottomside. Bottomside is where you catch sight of Malinta tunnel as your sightseeing boat docks. Linger long enough and in the sound of soft breezes that waft through the laterals you can feel the fears and anxieties of those “gaunt,ghastly soldiers” who sought refuge ; go Topside where you find the parade grounds and the “Mile-long barracks” now partly covered by creeping vines. As the wind whispers through the ruins you can hear the the footsteps of soldiers who once walked about its hallways with a free, swinging stride., men who were warriors once and young. Look up at the two flags in the old parade grounds as they flutter in the breeze and you can hear the melancholy tune of taps played at sunset. Walk around the monument to the fallen brave for those who fought and died, when Filipinos and Americans were comrades-in-arms, when they fought, bled and died together – in the remembrances that the sights and memories evoke it is hard to keep from weeping.

OLD AGE ADAGE

OLD AGE ADAGE Victorino P. Mapa I intend to live forever. So far, so good. ----o---- I was born in 1930.. And the room next to me was 1931. ----o---- I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be around when it happens. ----o---- Hypochondria is the only disease I haven’t got. ----o---- The best thing about Alzheimer’s disease is that you always keep meeting new friends. ----o---- Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end? ----o---- Be nice to your kids.They’re the ones who will be choosing your nursing home. ----o---- A clear conscience is the sign of a bad memory. ----o---- If exercise is good for you why do athletes retire at age 35? ----o---- Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down. ----o---- He who hesitates is probably right. ----o---- I always wanted to be somebody – but I guess I should have been more specific. ----o---- Been there, done that, can’t remember most of it. ----o---- I went to buy some camouflage clothing. I could’nt find it. ----o---- Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die ----o---- The only way I can hear heavy breathing again these days is to take up jogging. ----o---- Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician. ----o---- Marriage is nature’s way of preventing people from fighting with strangers. ----o---- Old Lady : Do you remember if we ever had mutual orgasm? Old Man: No, we always had AllState. ----o---- and going back to the womb ….. Knock knock Who’s there? Keith Keith who? Keith me, thweetheart

Lin-Tik

LIN-TIK Victorino P. Mapa He’s an overnight hero in Asia, spawning gosh- awful puns of his name, unabashed admiration, unceasing tweets and cover stories all over the world. Lin-sanity spawned countless cover stories and features reached such a fever pitch that NBA ran out of NYC his Number 17 Tee shirts. We’re, of course, referring to Jeremy Lin. If the name is still unfamiliar to you then you must be living in some other planet.. Lin entered the NBA through the back door. The Golden State Warriors took him on presumably to improve attendance,, that is, having an Asian American on a home team with a predominant Asian American population.The gate receipts did’nt improve. . The Warriors gave him for free to the Sacramento Kings, another cellar dweller. He was the best bench warmer for both teams. With some glee the Kings released him to the New York Knicks. The knicks were losing key players to injuries. The water boy was unavailable. So was the peanut vendor. In desperation the coach gave the ball to that Chinese guy sitting at the far end of the bench.His entry causes the knicks to win six games continuously. Lin fever was born. . The hooray and hoopla isn’t because Lin suddenly learned how to play overnight.. His dad, Gie Ming a compurer engineer was the basketball freak who showed his son films of Larry Bird , Kameel Abdul Jabbar and other NBA stars and taught young Jeremy the basics at the local YMCA. In High School he led his team to a State championship; in college he racked 30 points against the perennial NCAA contender, the University of Connecticut. But no one came knocking because he played for Harvard. Whartda…???? Harvard? You choose senators, justices and presidents from Harvard but not, nay never, ball players Like it or not he wa also a victim of racial stereotyping: To main street America you mine ball players from African Americans. Ever so often you can also get white guys like Larry Bird, Steve Nash. . But Asian? They may be computer geeks, did laundry or ran gourmet restaurants but play ball? No way Jose! The conventional wisdom is Asians can’t jump! Even Pinoys had their own perceived images. Hollywood during WWII was rife with war movies where Fiipino soldiers spoke pig-din English. Thanks to those John Wayne flicks . When I was fresh off the boat in San Francisco I always got left-handed praises , “Why, you speak English!!!” . If a Pinoy lives in Southern California he’s invariably asked the question, “were you Navy?” Even today old gezzers continue to ask the same question. The categorization continues to exist, albeit, slowly dying. For instance, Manny Pacquiao’s TV interviews and his mellifluous command of the english language is erasing that image. Many even opine that he sounds just like James Mason, but I’m digressing. Jeremy Lin is a great ballplaye. but he’s no Kobe Bryant. His star-status in American eyes stems from his being Asian., the novelty of having a 6 ft 3 Asian playing in the major league. Of late the hype has abated somewhat due to Lin temporarily sidelined by an injury and by the fact that the NY Knicks have been losing games oftener than the prosecution panel struggling to impeach Chief Justice Corona. If and when Jeremy Lin resumes dribbling fans will hopefully re-evalutate him whether or not he’s a good hoopster by his ability. Not because of his looks and/or race.

one Liners

ONE LINERS FROM THE FAMOUS AND NOT SO:
Victorino P. Mapa


I used to have a job in the Kotex factory. I thought I was making mattresses for mice.
Ray Scott
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Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake it you got it made.
George Burns
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You have a cough? Go home, eat a box of Ex-lax and tomorrow you’lll be afraid to cough.
Pearl Williams
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People who say money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop.
Tom Shivers
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My wife calls our waterbed the Dead Sea.
Milton Berle
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There are three ages of man: youth, middle age and “Gee you look great!”
Red Skelton
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I once wanted to be an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.
Henny Youngman
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I don’t have anything against facelifts, but I think it’s time to stop when you look permanently frightened.
Susan Forfleet
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Have you noticed? Anyone driving faster than you is an idiot, and anyone driving slower than you is a moron.
George Carlin
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Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?
Robin Williams
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You can’t take it with you. You never see a U-Haul following a hearse.
Ellen Glasgow
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.
H. L. Mencken
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My husband says I treat him like a God; every meal is a burnt offering.
Rhonda Hansom
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There are two ways to handle a woman, and nobody knows either of them.
Ken Hubbard
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I went to a meeting for premature ejaculations. I left early.
Red Buttons
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Whoever called it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
Groucho Marx
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It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I Just don’t want to
Woody Allen
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I know a guy who saved all his life to buy a cemetery plot. Then he took a cruise and was lost at sea.
Norm Crosby
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Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, when’s it going to end?
Tom Stoppard
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Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Erma Bombeck
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A woman drove me to drink. I never even had the courtesy to thank her.
W. C. Fields.
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I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
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I bring out the worst in my enemies. That’s how I get them to defeat themselves.
Roy Cohn
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If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all the evidence that you tried.
Newt Heilscher
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You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety seven today and we don’t know where the hell she is.
Ellen de Generes
---o---

A friend of mine willed her body to science, but science is contesting the will.
Joey Adams
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If blind people wear sunglasses why don’t deaf people wear earmuffs?
Steve Mcfarlin
---o---


Who invented the brush they put next to the toilet? That thing hurts !
Andy Andrews
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I don’t make jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers
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I’m desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
Dave Edison
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The hold-up guy walks into a Chinese reastaurant and says, “Give me all your money!”
The man behind the counter says, “To take out?”
Henny Youngman
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I like two kinds of men: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.
Mae West
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I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.
Charles M. Schulz
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Love is what happens to a man and woman who don’t know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
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Why is it when we talk to God we’re said to be praying, but when God talks to us, we’re schizophrenic?
Lily Tomlin
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Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
Guy Bellamy
---o---

If I look confused it’s because I’m thinking.
Samuel Goldwyn

The doomede Bastion

THE DOOMED BASTION:
Victorino P. Mapa

In the early 1920s American military leaders predicted that the Philippine archipelago’s thousands of islands could not be successfully defended. The planners therefore drew War Plan Orange 3 which called that in the event of war with Japan American and Filipino troops would retreat to the Bataan Peninsula and hold off for as long as they can until help would come.
Pearl Harbor was attacked . A few hours later Japanese planes from their bases in Formosa (Taiwan) swooped down on Clark Field and destroyed the US Air force. They landed the next day at Damortis.. General McArthur underestimated the Japanese and over-estimated his Filipino troops. Instead of immediately implementing War Plan Orange he attempted to stop the Japanese. Gen Wainwright called on the 26th Cavalry, a tough well trained regiment of Philippine Scouts to stem the Japanese advance. Two other Philippine Army divisions offered some resistance. But outside of these two contingents the rest of the troops were ill equipped and poorly trained. At the sight of the Japanese they dropped their guns and ran. The 26th Cavalry reduced to 450 men tried to block the Japanese advance . They even made a glorious cavalry charge against a modern armored column. The rush to Bataan was made at the last minute. As a result much needed provisons to sustain them were left behind. By December 24 the American-Filipino troops along with thousands of civilians funneled into Bataan. Of the 75,000 soldiers three fourths were Filipinos. Most were untrained, American soldiers fared no better. Their numbers included airmen and sailors who lost their planes and ships and were totally unprepared for infantry duties. Most of their weapons and munitions were obsolete, many dating from World War I. If this was not bad enough provisions were in short supply from the start. Many were left behind in the pell-mell rush to Bataan. Bataan was 75% impenetrable jungle, cut by streams and deep ravines and a breeding ground for malaria, dysentery, typhoid, dengue fever and other diseases that did not discriminate either armies. The stage was set for the four month siege.
The Japanese wrongly assumed that US forces would defend Manila. They therefore rushed to Manila instead of thwarting the Bataan retreat. Japanese intelligence indicated that only a ragged army of 25,000 defended Bataan. So Homma released 15,000 of his finest troops to the East Indies and replaced them with 6,000 untested, poorly trained reserves from the 65th Brigade.
MacArthur commanded the troops from Corregidor and made only a 10 hour stay on Bataan.(American GIs derisively referred to him as “Dugout Doug.”)J The initial battle line was divided in two by the steep Mount Natib whose jungle was so dense and impassable that it was left undefended. The line was held by three Philippine Army divisions, a regiment of the Philippine Scouts and American troops. Japanese troops attacked on January 2. From then on the battle was constant highlighted by stubborn defense ,hand-to-hand fighting and incredible couinter-attacks that pushed the enemy back.
But the line soon cracked and an orderly retreat was made to the towns of Bagac and Orion, the second line of defense. The fighting was without respite and soon the men “had a blank stare in their eyes and their faces covered with beards lacked any semblance of expression.” The reinforced Japanese launched a number of amphibious assaults against the southwest tip of the peninsula. They were met by heterogenous troops of ex-airmen and sailors who had no infantry training and the Philippine Constabulary who incredibly wiped out the invaders.The untrained sailors impressed the Japanese as “a new type of suicide squad who would attempt to draw Jap fire by sitting down, talking loudly and lighting cigarettes and contain the Japanese long enough for a regiment of scouts of push them back.”
By February both sides were exhausted. The incessant fighting, malaria, dysentery and beri-beri took its toll. The Japanese were greatly weakened. The defenders could have counter-attacked but they were just as physically sapped. Battle forces moved slowly forward and back – not unlike the trench warfare of World War I. In one instance Philippine scouts fought for four days to gain 40 yards. It was hard even to tell the armies apart. In Donald Young’s book, the Battle of Bataan, the Japanese 141st Infantry was attacked by soldirs of the Japanaese 9th Infantry who, after seven days in the Natib forest, like a blind, hungry rattlesnake, were striking at anything that moved.” Incredibly, the unprepared, outgunned and starving “battling bastards of Bataan” were winning.
But the end was preordained. Food, equipment and ammunition ran out. 80% of the troops had malaria. 75% had dysentery. The defenders were resisting far beyond human endurance. On April 3 a heavily reinforced and rested Japanese army supported by endless artillery barrage and overwhelming air support began to break through. On the evening of April 8 an earthquake shook the peninsula. The next day Bataan surrendered.
Bataan today is a mere blip in American history. Hardly anyone remembers it today. The recollection is made every April 9 only by a few aging and rapidly dwindling Filipino veterans. They gather at the slope of Mt Natib where a monument commemorates their gallant yet futile stand and re-live the myths that Bataan upset the Japanese timetable, that they stopped the Japanese advance so that the Allies could re-group and liberate them. Without question they resisted with valor, suffered and endured hardships far beyond human endurance and shed more blood than their American comrades. The reality however is that Bataan was a tragedy and disaster. It was a doomed garrison from the start, a pawn that the greatest industrial power was prepared to sacrifice. As a result it became the greatest military disgrace of the US Armed Forces.
The soldiers died for something and died for nothing
“ If you are able, save them a place inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say You loved them,
though you may or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
Take one moment to embrace
Those gentle heroes
You left behind.”

MAJOR MICHAEL DAVIS O’DONNELL
1 Jan 1970, Dak To, Vietnam

THE MANONGS - II

THE MANONGS - II
Victorino P Mapa

The Manong was by no means the infallible saint. There were stories of some who would blow their month’s wages at a single throw of the dice and return the next month to do the same; racous tales of brawls and mayhem in the ghettoes where they lived and at cat-houses, run ins with the police who swooped down on illegal cockfights.There were moments too when pushed around too much and insults no longer be tolerated. In bars, pool halls and back alleys the Manong would cut his tormentor down to size, sometimes literally. The bully learned to fear the deadly “balisong” fan knife.
But on the whole he was a God-fearing and law-abiding man. He devotedly sent his money across the seas to support the family he left behind. No man had stronger family ties. There were stirrings in the community about the little brown man. .. He may look funny in his outsized suit but he knew how to pay his bills; he may speak fractured English but this did not deter him from forming clubs or joining discussion groups to improve himself. No man was more active in his community’s affairs or more helpful to his neighbors. America began to give him grudging respect. The Manong persevered and no man was prouder when he stood before the judge to take his oath of allegiance as a brand-new citizen.
I did’nt know a soul a soul when I first set foot in San Francisco. My older sister preceded me but she lived in New York. I hung on to the Manongs who put me at the Washington Hotel. That was at the corner of Kearny and Washington. It was a two-story building and the hotel was a walk up. Tino’s Barber shop was on the ground floor/ A side door opened to the pool hall. Tino’s was the USO, bookie joint, pawn shop and information center rolled into one. Tino, of course, was the official Godfather of the block. If you could not find a long-lost relative Tino could tell you. If you were broke and needed a no-collateral short loan Tino was the soft touch. And many was the time when Tino would cut hair and conveniently forget to be paid because the customer was a “broo”, that is, a member of his fraternal order. The Manongs who frequented Tino’s were not “Pambrowns” (a contraction of the term, Bum Brown, what those who were not working were called during the depression.)They were either retirees on social security, or kabayans on their days off. They were dapper in their Stetsons, their shoes were always Florsheims and everyone worse suits, often loosely since most haberdasheries didn’t carry small sizes.
That area was the unofficial “Filipino Town” of San Francisco. It was considered to be the hairiest part of town, that is, if you were not a :bro.” But it was actually the safest. Tino’s tenants were the peacemakers. They had a way with the fan knife. . Drunks, muggers and pickpockets learned to stay away. Cops on the beat never failed to touch bases with Tino.

Like all others who came to seek a new beginning in America the Manongs took the full brunt of intolerance and prejudice before the Filipino could gain acceptance. Through his perseverance the barriers to our race in the field of arts, science and technology were erased so that those who followed could be lawyers, engineers, doctors, professionals. They were still in great numbers when I arrived in San Francisco in the late 50s and I had the privilege of meeting them. Most were way past middle age. A few lived a life of bachelorhood, staying at rundown hotels and living off their pensions and social security.. Those with families had homes in the Portrero, Richmond and Mission districts that they had paid for many years back. They still wore outsized suits and spoke the same slang English that they learned phoenitcally from their Caucasian bosses. While their sons and daughters had college degrees and were Americans in mind and speech The newcomers could not relate to the Manongs. This new breed of College degree professionals who spoke English far more fluently found them……..different and derisively gave them the new term , “OT”.The Manongs ‘ generation is history and the titled , and “educated” Filipinos now take center stage The Manong may be the decrepit old man, the “OT” in fading memory , that he was only stoop-farmer, bus-boy, janitor, laborer, menial worker. .We have forgotten that Manongs paved the way for us. and their examples were the best messages we delivered to America about the Filipinos’ true worth.

THE MANONGS

THE MANONGS
Victorino P Mapa

They are forgotten now, the places where they once lived is hardly a memory. A city block in San Francisco - the area encompassing Kearny, Jackson, Washington and Montgomery streets where they once congregated, has completely disappeared. There’s a sleazy part in Los Angeles that starts from the corner of Alvarado Street and Temple that the city father’s designated as “Filipino Town” to remember them. But the Filipinos who live there now hardly know why it is so. What is perhaps characteristic of how they are recollected is a small, less than a hundred square feet cemetery in Maui where a few dozen of them are buried, some crosses askew, the names hand-scrawled. It is not at all noticed by the young who hie off to enjoy the pubs and bistros at nearby Lahaina.. These were the Manongs, the first Filipinos to come to the United States when the 20th Century was young , the predecessors who took the brunt of prejudice and discrimination for those who would come after them..
When first I set foot in the United States in the 50s. They had another appellation : OTs, or Old Timer - unbeknownst to them, a pejorative term given by the younger, better educated Filipinos who came after World War II. . The post-war Pinoys found the Manongs….…..”different.”. They were elderly, wore oversized suits bought off the rack, hair slicked back with pomade ala Rudolph Valentino and spoke a kind of patois that was a mixture of James Cagney English and words like “broo, pambrown, da kine” and referring to the mother country as “da islans”. “Hey bro, ya jus’ come from da islans? How’s t’ings down dere, da graff an corruption? “ Their questions were as offensive and grating as their ludicrous attempts to sound “stateside.” But the impudence was a shield to hide their inferiority, their lack of schooling. After the initial brashness however, their subsequent questions would denote a poignancy and homesickness that they cannot dislodge from their soul, “How does Manila look now? Has our country recovered from the war? Where are you from? My name is Ben Cruz. Have you heard of my family? I’m Ilocano and I haven’t heard much from my town since I left in……”I would begin to tell them what little I knew. The questions would gradually ebb and I would find myself the only one speaking . I was bringing them back to the land and people they have left behind , the motherland they have never stopped loving .
The first Manongs were like other immigrants who first set foot in America: the maltreated and abused , farmers working for obdurate landlords, the lowest of the low with no hope for a better future in their own homeland, Ignorant and unschooled they nevertheless shared the dreams of men who aspire to be free, the right to have his place in the sun, the privilege of steering his own future. They found that opportunity when America beckoned. She was beginning to flex her muscles at the turn of the 20th century. . She had built her skyscrapers and dug her coal mines with men from the old continent; built her railroads with the immigrant Irish and the Chinese coolie; In the expanding west her vast farms were now crying for men who were immune from the sun and the constant stooping that the work required. She conscripted the brown men from her new possession to work the sugar fields of Hawaii, the canneries of Alaska and the green fields of California.
The first wave arrived in 1902. The Manong couldn;’t have come at a worse time. The Philippine “insurrection” had just ended. There were tales about the atrocities of the war with yet more cruelties inflicted upon “our young American boys” by the dreaded “bolo-men” who attacked from ambush and just as suddenly disappeared, the press played up stories of the treacherous brown men who called you an “amigo” before hacking you from behind. “Behave yourself or Aguinaldo will come and get you!” was the admonition the mothers of America gave to their unruly children. And now they were here in America’s backyard. They heard the same gibes wherever they went, “You can worship with us but stand in the back of the church;speak our language but do not expect equality; work for our husbands but don’t mingle with our children! You may be President Mckinley’s little brown brother but you’re no brother of mine.”
They werer paid less than decent wages. couldn’t own property, weren’t allowed to live in “decent” neighborhoods and could not date white girls. Those that deigned to go out with them were labeled prostitutes. In fact, discriminatory laws were passed prohibiting the union between Filipinos and Caucasians TheManongs took work that the white man would not soil his hands with: Stoop farmer, busboy, barber, janitor, porter. Iinitially met them as fellow passengers on board an American President Lines ship on my first trip to the United States. I listened to their stories of how they fared when they came to America and took jobs that paid less than a dollar a day, of indentures in the canneries of Alaska that paid almost nothing, how they were beaten by red-necks and doors closed to them because they were……”different.” “during da depression bro, time was bad for all…we tram’ (tramped) on caboose treyns (trains) walked miles , find work, lose work, den’ we go ‘nother town, find work, anything, enywhere, but we help each other, no kababayan lef’ hungry, and we always find work….”
They were short-changed, conned and insulted at every turn. As with other émigrés that came before them the Manongs were made to go through the fire and forge of bigotry and exploitation before they could blend into the American mainstream. The mettle of the Manong shone through the hardships. His industry lending quiet dignity to whatever menial tasks were assigned to him.