Editor’s note: Where necessary, the editors have provided translations for Tagalog terms in footnotes.

PDF available here.

In London there are many Filipinos, but I don’t know as many of them as I used to know in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in any case there’s more often than not a rift between us, as I’m not only Filipina or even Filipina British but Filipina American. The Filipinos who became my friends in London were actually Filipino Bangladeshis, born neither in the Philippines nor in Bangladesh. I had never met UK-born Filipino Bangladeshis before, but a friend assured me that there was a large community of them in this city, which was now my home. This friend also owns one of the few Filipino cafés in London, but in truth it isn’t exactly a Filipino café but advertises itself as a pan-Asian establishment, decorated with all manner of classic and contemporary Orientalist kitsch: vintage posters of Mr. Miyagi and Bruce Lee and anonymous geisha women. The menu itself features a few Filipino dishes but is mainly centered on what is called pan-Asian fare: there were dishes I recognized as vaguely Malaysian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, and Cambodian. I once tentatively mentioned to my friend that it would be nice to have a few more Filipino—or indeed, Filipino Bangladeshi—dishes on the menu. He said that he didn’t think the London was ready for it. I replied: You have to make them ready for it. That’s true, he said. But as far as I know, he has no current plans to open a Filipino or Filipino Bangladeshi restaurant.

I often go there in the off hours, when there’s hardly anyone around but the kitchen workers, none of whom recognized me as Filipina until I began speaking to them in stilted Tagalog, after which point I became obligated to call everyone kuya¹; kuya, for they were all men. As is customary in the kind of Filipino establishments I’ve been most familiar with since I was a kid, I typically order one dish, and it comes to me in the company of five other dishes I have not ordered, none of which I’m permitted to pay for, all of which are delicious beyond the speaking of it. But most of the time I go there for kapeng barako.²

On one particular visit to my Filipino Bangladeshi friend’s café, I ordered an iced kapeng barako, with condensed milk. I usually order a plain hot kapeng barako, no sugar, no milk. What I had forgotten was that, of course, the condensed milk often used in Filipino drinks and desserts is made by Nestlé. At that point, I hadn’t knowingly eaten a Nestlé product for over ten years. I watched my friend make the drink, and sure enough, it was a Nestlé can of condensed milk that he was holding aloft. He gave it to me, with a free plate of leche flan. I thanked him and drank every drop, unhappily careful not to waste anything.

***

For the first five or six years of my life, I was given nothing to eat but canned baby formula, usually Nestlé brand. I’ve turned this fact over and over in my head for years, and still I have trouble understanding it, or even fathoming it. It was mostly my mother who was raising me during this time; my father was still traveling back and forth between the Philippines and California and did not live permanently with us. We were still living in the first place we ever lived, a two-bedroom apartment in Milpitas, California, that we shared with my mother’s mother, two of my mother’s sisters and her younger brother, all of whom except my mother were undocumented. We were living just off Junipero Drive, on the side of the town closest to Elmwood Correctional Facility, walking distance from the Catholic elementary school I would later attend, which was almost entirely attended by Vietnamese, Filipino and Mexican students, either first-generation or immigrants themselves.

We were also close to a run-down shopping center that featured a movie theater, a dollar store, and a Vietnamese restaurant. The shopping center was named after Junipero Serra, that Spanish friar who, in 1780, advocated beating the shit out of the native Californians who were being forced to live and work in the concentration camp environments of the early Spanish missions. We learned about Junipero Serra in school: like all good inheritors of the Catholic colonizing project, we were asked to build models of missions and bring them in to class. I built mine out of very cheap clay, not intended for modeling, and I used an old Domino’s pizza box as its foundation. I remember that the whole thing collapsed in my mother’s car just as she was dropping me off at school in the morning. Nevertheless, I brought the whole thing in, as it was, and claimed that I had made it this way on purpose, to show the later destruction of the missions—either by earthquake or native attack, I left it up to the imagination of my fellow students.

This little shit, my teacher might have thought, for I did not receive a passing grade on the report.

I also learned that Junipero Serra died on my birthday and, afterwards, took great pleasure in musing aloud to my friends that maybe I killed him, wiped him off the face of the earth in order to be born myself. That’s not how it works, tanga,³ a friend replied. Why are you always like this, maarte naman talaga.⁴ Didn’t he die like hundreds of years before you anyway.

But it was while living near the Junipero Serra Shopping Center that I spent my early years being fed only canned baby formula, usually Nestlé brand. I was given no other type of sustenance: no mashed peas, no mashed carrots, no mashed apples, no Gerber’s baby anything. Only canned baby formula, usually Nestlé brand. Only later in college did I learn that Nestlé had orchestrated a very successful campaign in my mother’s country, as well as other countries in what is often called the Third World, dedicated to convincing expecting mothers out of breastfeeding and encouraging them to purchase Nestlé baby formula. Breastfeeding was dangerous, backwards, and nativist, the campaign implied. Nestlé baby formula, on the other hand, contained a complete—and superior—array of nutrients. If one was a good mother, if one truly cared about the welfare of one’s child, one would not hesitate to feed one’s child a steady diet of Nestlé baby formula.

My mother grew up in the heyday of this campaign and would have been of the generation of women to be instructed, in this way, on how to be a good mother. Later, international boycotts were organized against Nestlé as a result of this campaign, for many children had died as a result of being fed Nestlé formula, particularly when it was mixed with contaminated water, as formula typically required. By the time this boycott was organized, my mother had already immigrated to the States and was working as a nurse. I don’t know if she ever heard about the boycott. I know only that for the first five or six years of my life, I was fed only canned baby formula and nothing else. I don’t think it was because she was too poor to afford anything else, though she was poor; baby formula isn’t particularly cheap. I don’t think it was because she didn’t know that there were other kinds of food to feed a child. I can only think it was because she had been successfully taught by a multinational corporation that this was the greatest act of motherly love she could perform for her child—and she loved me so very, very much.

I eventually became addicted to this formula and, at the end of the five or six years, actively refused to consume anything else. My mother, in an attempt to wean me from it, began to hide the cans of formula and to fill the pantry with other kinds of food, reasoning that if I were hungry, I would find something else to eat. Little did she know how stubborn I was, how little a survival instinct I have, how attached one can become to the things one is taught to need and want, even when those things destroy more than they nourish.

I stopped eating. I only remember that late one evening I fainted, and this was different from my customary fainting spells. I was apparently ice-cold to the touch, unresponsive, gaunt as a cricket. My mother and father—now living with us—rushed me to the nearest hospital, where I was fed intravenously. It was the first time in my life I had ever eaten anything other than baby formula.

Still, long after that, and to this day, my illnesses persisted. My immune system always seemed to me to be like a kind of lace mantilla: delicate to the touch, utterly porous, a foreign thing even to myself. If I didn’t have pneumonia, I was covered in eczema; if I didn’t have eczema, I wasn’t eating; if I wasn’t starving, I had boils; if I didn’t have boils, I was spending days weeping for no reason. Only my bruha⁵ grandmother could pronounce the word to make sense of it all. Engkanto.

***

What I didn’t know about engkantos⁶ as a child, and only learned later, was that they were white. In the descriptions I heard and read, they were always described as fair-skinned, with light-colored eyes and light-colored hair. They were also taller than most human beings—which is to say, they were taller than Filipinos, more like the average height of Europeans. And indeed, there are some who believe the engkantos were an early description of the early Europeans. An engkanto was a white visitor. And when he came, people you knew caught diseases. When he came, people you knew disappeared and were never seen again. When he came, people you knew went crazy, were lost to their loved ones, and lost to themselves, even when their bodies remained. When he came, people you knew died. And when he came, fewer and fewer people you knew died of natural causes.

It was said that engkantos didn’t enjoy being looked at, that one way to arouse the fury of an engkanto was to look directly at it. What are you looking at! the engkanto would shout. How dare you raise your eyes to me! But perhaps nowadays an engkanto would say something like Buy two cans of Carnation Good Start and get a free feeding bottle today.

***

I don’t begrudge my friend the tenor of his café’s aesthetic, and ultimately I would always say to him or anyone in a similar position, I know you’re on your grind, pare, do you? And yet, I cannot say it makes me happy to be in a restaurant surrounded by white people posing beneath paintings of Mr. Miyagi, texting each other about what a great pan-Asian restaurant they’ve discovered. But then, an imperial city like the one I live in now is forever obsessed with food in this manner, mostly because the inhabitants of this city are quite used to collecting and exploiting foreignhood as souvenirs, as invigorating discoveries.

Once, I came to my friend’s café in the afternoon, when it was still empty and, because I was having such a good time chatting, decided to stay for dinner. As more and more white people filled the tables, my friend and the rest of the kitchen workers—all Filipino immigrants and Filipino Bangladeshi family members of my friend—no longer came out into the front room to chat with me, or with anyone. They couldn’t be seen to be giving me special treatment. Music started playing—it was classical and European, but I couldn’t identify the composer; I don’t know European classical music all that well. I was the only woman of color in the restaurant, not to mention the only Filipina, and I realized that my presence was souring the atmosphere, at least for the white customers. They had come to this neighborhood pan-Asian restaurant for their beloved pan-Asian experience, to enjoy a faraway Fantasy, lush and fragrant with banana leaves. What they enjoyed less was being confronted with the grumpy Real, sitting there, speaking stilted Tagalog with a passing waiter or silently drinking kapeng barako and later big glasses of wine, first giving everyone the stinkeye, then, as the wine kicked in, becoming less and less silent.

But for me, souring anything, atmosphere or otherwise, was always a knotty pleasure, having grown up with a love for the sour, for that quality of asim: the tamarind, the kalamansi,⁷ vinegar, the shock of acid on the tongue. How many times did I over-lime a soup or continue eating a pineapple until my mouth bled, not just because I genuinely loved the taste, but to prove that I could take it? Sourness was the taste of fermentation, the taste of something preserved, marinated, saved for the future, improved with time; but it was also the taste of flesh being broken down, of something being denatured. Sourness was the thrill of knowing that a hurt could also feel, taste good; it was the reminder that something that felt and tasted good could also hurt.

And so this, I realize now, must have been the pleasure of sitting in my friend’s café that evening. This was the pleasure I took, in discovering the coincidence between my birthday and Junipero Serra’s death; this was the pleasure I took, in drinking kapeng barako sweetened with Nestlé condensed milk, in not being able to give up the formula I had become addicted to. Sour pleasure. The pleasure of asim.

***

There are all sorts of methods for dealing with supernatural beings like engkantos, dwende, aswang,⁸ and a lot of those ways have to do with seasoning. For some monsters, the only remedy is salt; for others, garlic; for yet others, the asim: exorcism through lime, vinegar, green mango. I wanted to know if the sour was how you banished an engkanto, especially given how much the taste of the sour pre-dated Spanish arrival. Maybe the white monster was some picky eater from Seville who couldn’t stomach kamias.⁹ The idea satisfied me; I hoped it was true.

But when I looked it up, it turned out that it wasn’t engkantos that sourness repulsed; it was the santelmo, a creature I hadn’t ever come across before. Santelmo was also St. Elmo’s fire, that natural phenomenon seen by the Italian writer Antonio Pigafetta and described in the chronicles of his expedition with Ferdinand Magellan, from Spain to South America to the Philippines.

During those storms the holy body, that is to say St. Elmo, appeared to us many times, in light—among other times on an exceedingly dark night with the brightness of a blazing torch, on the maintop, where he stayed for about two hours or more, to our consolation, for we were weeping. When that blessed light was about to leave us, so dazzling was the brightness that it cast into our eyes, that we all remained for more than an eighth of an hour, blinded and calling for mercy. And truly when we thought that we were dead men, the sea suddenly grew calm.

The Philippine mythology I came across thought the santelmo was the lost soul: the one drowned in the sea, aided by no one; the one who died before her time, and thereafter spent eternity enticing others into similar untimely deaths. What the European and Filipino accounts had in common was the vision of the santelmo as a rage of fire; it wasn’t a being as much as it was a state of being, an experience, an intervention, a revelation. It was a monster only in the sense of the mostrare and monstrum: a sign, an omen. It had something to show, something to tell. Most of all, the santelmo was particularly dangerous to people with doubt in their hearts, people who traveled alone, torn people, people in whom uncertainty outweighed faith. Those people, in order to protect themselves, were advised to pray and to throw sour things at the apparition, to aim the kalamansi-bullet right at the center of the fear.

It would have been more convenient, I suppose, if my love for the sour could have been directly connected to some obvious enemy and its obvious expulsion ceremonies. It would have been more convenient if I could point my finger to the white visitor, safely outside of myself, and anoint the border between us with acid. But it turns out sourness isn’t for the engkanto. Sourness is for the lost—five thousand miles from the Bay Area, seven thousand miles from the Philippines. Sourness is for the wronged and the wrong, the drowned and the formula-fed—and indeed, the word wrong comes from the Middle Dutch “wranc,” a word that meant sour, bitter, something that distorts the mouth. Sourness is a survival lesson: an ongoing education in how to make the bitter taste good, how an acid can also be something that feeds you, builds you up, even as it breaks you down. Sourness isn’t for the engkanto. The engkanto never had to learn how to appreciate that kind of taste.

The only thing I still can’t figure out is if I’m the santelmo herself—the one lost, the one whose history works just like a horror story, the one whose vengeful flesh will be broken down, denatured, and then, maybe, preserved. Or if I’m the witness, the one being pursued by the santelmo—the one full of questions, the one whose faith isn’t always strong enough, the one who travels alone, the one who reaches for the bitter charm, the one at risk, the one who still might have a chance.

Endnotes:
¹ Respectful form of address for an older brother.
² Strong coffee.
³ Stupid.
⁴ “Ugh, so dramatic.”
⁵ Witch.
⁶ Fairies.
⁷ Philippine citrus fruit, similar to lime. 
⁸ Dwarves, ghosts.
⁹ Bilimbi fruit/tree cucumber.

Abstract

If social invisibility is defined as the derivation of a social identity through nonvisible characteristics, Filipino-American social invisibility is the derivation of an ethnic identity given character by its chronic misrecognition and effaced representation in U.S. culture. Filipino-American social invisibility emerges from the culture of U.S. imperialism, specifically the historical legacies of colonialism and the racial ideology of orientalism that shut them out from the social processes producing institutional knowledge about race. Consequently, Filipino Americans experience the culture of U.S. imperialism as their exclusion from racial discourse.

The absence of a Filipino-American racial discourse necessitates that their stories take a shape different from those who are acknowledged in the U.S. racial imaginary. Filipino-American social invisibility sets the conditions for a new genre—the invisibility narrative. This social-invisibility narrative addresses the discursive absence itself and explores its effect on Filipino-American communities and identities. It possesses three distinct features: the triangulation of Filipino-American identity in relation to visible racial identities, an instance of misrecognition for a visible racial identity that turns and/or propels the plot, and the retrieval of Filipino culture through family members or a romantic interest. The article closes with a discussion of the invisibility narrative in three recent Filipino-American feature films: The Debut (2000), The Flip Side (2001), and Slow Jam King (2004).

Please find the full article here at no cost.

Introduction

My name is Jason Gavilan, and I earned a History Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. My dissertation, “The Politics of Enlistment, Empire, and the ‘U.S.-Philippine Nation’: Enlisted and Civilian Filipino Workers in and beyond the U.S. Navy, 1941-1965”, examines how the experiences of Filipinos shaped—and were facilitated by—the United States Navy. Filipino civilians were native-born Philippine locals recruited by U.S. military officials to work under indefinite civilian contract within U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Okinawa, Guam, and elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific. These civilians often worked in positions of manual and technical labor on these bases. In turn, Filipino enlistees were native-born locals in the Philippine archipelago who U.S. military officials recruited in its enlisted force. The terms of their enlistment normally lasted between four and six years, with probable chances for re-enlistment.

By investigating the historical distinctions and comparisons between civilian and enlisted Filipinos within (and beyond) the U.S. Navy, I explore the following questions. When and why did U.S. military officials enlist Filipinos in the first place? Second, what political implications did Filipino recruitment serve in expanding U.S. war, occupation, and colonial governance in the Philippines—and elsewhere in Asia and the Trans-Pacific? And third, to what extent did these recruited Filipinos shape their own terms of enlistment, upward mobility, and subjectivity beyond their parametrical restrictions by the U.S. military and the nation-state? From these underlying questions and frameworks within my dissertation, I argue that the inclusive and restrictive politics of Filipino enlistment, coupled with the intricate bi-nationalities of U.S.-Philippine relations, vitally contributed to the Cold War imperial politics and multiethnic alliances within the formal and informal U.S. Empire nation-state. These seemingly contradictory politics of enlisting Filipinos played a key role in shaping militarized formations of the U.S.-Philippine nation state during and following the Second World War.

Scholarly Interventions

My dissertation focuses on World War II and the early Cold War period up to 1965. The reasons for this are twofold. It complements the majority of previous work, especially in Asian American historical scholarship, that focus on the post-1965 period of Asian migration and settlement in the United States. While many works rightly recognize the quantitative importance of the 1965 Immigration Act as a port of entry for hundreds of thousands of Asian professionals and families to the U.S., there were also critical masses of Asian immigrants, including Filipinos, who came to the U.S. well before 1965.¹ In conversation with the historians Mae Ngai (2003) and Dorothy Fujita-Rony (2003), my dissertation decenters our temporal understanding of Asian immigration as a post-1965 phenomenon, and re-centers it on a significant segment of Third Wave Filipino migration to the U.S. and elsewhere in the transpacific: enlisted civilians and stewards in the U.S. military (1941-1965).²

Like the early Cold War period, the overwhelming impact of global circumstances and catastrophes in World War II cannot be overestimated or over-studied—especially the politics of minority enlistment, inclusion, and experience in the U.S. Navy and other branches of the U.S. military. My prioritization of World War II, therefore, seeks to redress previous works by scholars of this period who have not yet addressed one of the most crucial events in world history and all of its related and regional historical scholarships. My emphasis on the Second World War fills this under-theorized area of historical scholarship, particularly in Asian American and Filipino American studies.

Methodology

My dissertation project draws upon both written and oral historical records to shape its explicit and implicit historical arguments. By written historical records, I mean correspondences, letters, and memorandums composed by U.S. and Philippine military officials, political officials, military personnel, and civilian citizens. In turn, interviews of mostly Filipino naval enlistees, from various published oral history collections and manuscripts, comprise the oral historical records cited in this dissertation. While the written historical files largely informed my findings regarding enlisted stewards during World War II and civilian workers during the early Cold War period, the oral histories primarily guided and shaped my historical analysis of Filipino enlistees following the Second World War. My extensive, balanced, and methodical use of written records and oral histories is what distinguishes this dissertation project from the work of previous scholars on this subject, particularly within Philippine/Filipino American history, Asian American studies, and American military history. My dissertation is the first methodologically balanced and comprehensive historical analysis on military correspondences and oral histories of U.S. Navy Filipinos since the inception of Filipino American and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies as American studies fields of scholarship over thirty-five years ago.

Notes on the Following Interview

From April 26 to June 6, 2004, during the early stages of my doctoral work, I visited Cavite,: a Philippine province with a long history of U.S. military presence and Filipino naval recruitment that spans throughout the twentieth century. In this province, I conducted numerous interviews with Filipino U.S. Navy retirees. Some of these retired enlistees, like my lolo [grandfather], were just visiting this Philippine province for vacation purposes. Some, like my tatay [father], chose to retire and resettle permanently in the Philippines after obtaining U.S. citizenship and veterans’ benefits through their enlistments in the U.S. Navy. Some retirees, on the other hand, were initially recruited in the U.S. Navy as civilian workers but were never officially promoted or classified as enlistees. While these civilian workers were, in many cases, as geographically mobile as their enlisted counterparts, they were never able to settle long-term in the U.S. and obtain the same privileges and benefits of citizenship as my lolo and the other 22,000+ Filipino naval enlistees between 1944 and 1973.

One of these retirees from the civilian naval force was my lolo Bonifacio Luna’s cousin, Larion Luna Toledo. Mr. Luna Toledo, as one of my senior colleagues would note, is “just one piece of a larger and more complex historical analysis of Filipinos in the U.S. Navy.” In the early afternoon of May 31, 2004, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Luna Toledo about his life before, during, and after his life in the U.S. Navy. Bonifacio Luna also participated.

* * *

Mr. Luna Toledo, May 31, 2004

Jason Gavilan [JG]: Please tell me your full name.

Larion Luna [LL]: Larion Luna Toledo.

JG: …And what day is your birthday?

LL: October 21, 1931.

JG: And where were you born?

LL: Here in Ligtong, Rosario, Cavite.

JG: And when you were a little kids, how was Ligtong like?

LL: Oh, at that time, it’s very happy here.

JG: Happier?

LL: Yes. No drug. No everything, except dancing—you know dancing—folk dance?

JG: Mmhm.

LL: Here, folk dance. Filipino dancing…. Now difficult. Not previously, at that time, until midnight, people are happy. Now, little bit of trouble.

JG: How else was it happy back then? How were things that made people happy at that time?

LL: Because people at that time are not greedy.

JG: Not greedy.

LL: Yes. Now, when they see the television, because American life, now, they mirror it. They want to follow that [way]. Because earnings here in the Philippines are very small. You cannot afford American life. You see people here… like American—but we’re native Filipino. It’s much better living at that time than today.

JG: And what else can you remember about living at that time in terms of how it was like during that time? Anything else?

LL: What?

JG: What else do you remember during that time that made people happy?

LL: Now, only the… almost all people follow the new generation.

JG: They want the American life.

LL: Yes.

JG: And how do you feel about that?

LL: Sometime I feel happy when they are enjoying. But when they have trouble, I blame myself. You see, I have two children—two kids. They want, what do you call that… bad habit, I don’t like. You know what I mean, bad habit?

JG: No, what do you mean?

LL: Oh, that’s bad habit. Don’t tell somebody, huh?

JG: I won’t. LL: (speaks softly) That’s drug.

JG: Uh-huh.

LL: Drug.

JG: Siapu?³

LL: Yes. That’s bad habit. They will, until now, they did not admit. They only tell a lie…. I knew it. But I did not stop. That is big—I made a mistake for me, why I go abroad. Because if I’m here, I do not let that happen to them. Some more question?

JG: Yeah. How many brothers and sisters do you have?

LL: I’m the oldest. I only have two sisters.

JG: Only two sisters. And what are their names?

LL: Next to me, Linda Toledo Barea… And Buling is my last sister.

JG: And what work did they do?

LL: Oh, until now, storekeeper.

JG: Where?

LL: Here, under our own house.

JG: And your sister? Same thing?

LL: Yes.

JG: And your parents. What did your parents do?

LL: Oh, parents now, they almost… my father, almost sixty years, they pass away. And my mother, around now, fifteen years. I’m the oldest now in this house.

JG: And when were your parents born?

LL: I don’t know, maybe around now, if they’re living now, they’re more than one hundred years …

JG: … And what jobs did they have?

LL: When my father were living, he was only fisherman. And my mother was only housekeeping [stay at home mother].

JG: But your dad fishing—that was enough to support the family?

LL: You still cannot support. That’s only little amount for food. It’s better you’re working in a company than fishing.

JG: So did anybody else work to support the family when you were growing up?

LL: No, I’m alone at that time. But I realize it’s better when you finish school, or you are a professional. Anywhere you go, it’s very quick to find a job than if you’re a fisherman. Not like me. Only five grades in elementary.

JG: So you start school at age five?

LL: The school in elementary, I’m five years old.

JG: And do you remember what you learned when you were in elementary school?

LL: Oh, Japanese language and English. That was during Japanese time. 1941…

JG: You were in  fifth grade in 1941?

LL: Yes, yes.

JG: And you learned English and Japanese. But was Tagalog taught in the school?

LL: We speak the national language when we were playing, like that. But inside the classroom, we speak English and Japanese language.

JG: So, were you allowed to speak Tagalog in school?

LL: …What do you mean to say?

JG: I mean, you mentioned earlier about Tagalog not being taught.

LL: Yes, if teacher ask you in English, we also answer in English, speak in English. Not speak Tagalog.

JG: And if you speak Tagalog, they—

LL: They will hit you. Yes, if they ask you in Tagalog, okay. No question. But when they ask you questions in English, don’t answer in Tagalog. (Laughs) …That’s true. You answer to your grandfather.

JG: What did you think about that?

LL: It’s better that they’re, like when you’re playing, you play. But if they ask in English, you better answer also in English. Not now, almost all Filipino teacher speak in English, almost all children answer in Tagalog. Real bad.

JG: So from grade one to grade five you learn English.

LL: Yes. Beside that, even [if] I’m not learning in elementary, I learn my own… So from that time, it’s very difficult to find job. But when you know a little bit in English, it’s very easy. But around that time, all good company here in the Philippines, I was employed. Like, example: Travis Air Force Base, U.S. Intelligence. Subic Naval Base, Naval Administration. And also Philippine Navy. Also good company. Philippine—that’s a government, yes—Philippine government. And I enroll in many, many country. Because I speak a little English, I go there… like Saudi, Iran, Qatar. There in Qatar, I stay there around for ten years. But not too much lucky… Because of my smoking cigarettes. Until now, I smoke cigarettes too much [Larion currently suffers from emphezema.]…

JG: Okay, let’s go back for a second. You stopped school in fifth grade—

LL: Yes.

JG: And what did you do right after?

LL: At that time, I go fishing.

JG: Oh, you go fishing.

LL: But every morning, the relative of my father always asking me, “Why I go fishing?”…. That’s the father of the mother of Auntie Liting. He’s the richest man at that time. Until now, Auntie Liting’s the richest woman in our place. Always in the morning: “Larion, did you catch fish?” I say, “Nothing!” “I tell you before, you find work in the Philippine government. So at that time, I try… Every morning, they’re [mother and father of Auntie Liting] asking, “Larion, did you catch fish?” I say, “nothing.” “I tell you before, go to [Senator Montano]… the greatest people at that time here in Cavite… There, at the time, I find work. (Laughs)

JG: And what year was that?

LL: I always in Congress.

JG: Congress?

LL: Yes. I ask for recommendation. Oh, big story. You want to know it?

JG: Yeah!

LL: If I’m jobless, I always go to the office of Senator Montano. When I find a job, I begin to go with him to his office. So sometime, I’m jobless again, I also go again to his office … [mentions how he got jobs despite his fifth grade education, earning one hundred and eighty pesos a month working for the government.]

JG: How much did you earn being a fisherman during that time?

LL: Sometimes, seven days a week, we not make salary for us! No fish! We did not catch the fish! But almost in one night, very sleepy, because you know… We twelve to fifteen people in one banka. [During Japanese time.]

JG: Banka?

LL: Banka is boat… Long one.

JG: So what year did you start working for Senator Montano?

LL: Oh, at that time, it’s almost 1951, ‘52.

JG: Okay, so for ten years, you were a fisherman.

LL: Yes… [Describes the prestige of Senator Montano and his experience working for him and the power of obtaining connections with him in finding a government job. Then explains working in Guam for the U.S. military as a boatbuilder, obtaining a job from the U.S. embassy and quitting his previous job with the Philippine government in order to “earn more dollars.”]

...

JG: When you were going to school, did they teach Philippine history?

LL: Yes.

JG: Oh, they taught Philippine history when you at school? What kind of history?

LL: Philippine history.

JG: From what grade?

LL: Only grade one and grade two.

JG: And do you remember what they taught about Philippine history?

LL: Yes, yes. Especially the hero of that time. Andres Bonifacio, Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo. Do you know General Aguinaldo?

JG: Mmhm.

LL: One of the best general … is my grandfather.

JG: Who is it?

LL: Joaquin Luna. That’s the brother of our grandfather. He’s the greatest, according to veteran, huh? … I did not see, but there is in history—Joaquin Luna. That’s our family.

JG: And do you remember, in terms of what they did, who they fought, stuff like that.

LL: Relate to our grandfather?

JG: Yeah.

LL: At that time, that history, our grandfather, Joaquin Luna… When there is… they say, “Men, always, on my back!” You mean, when there’s fighting, our grandfather… “Ating ating,” how do you say that in English?

Bonifacio Luna [BL]: Magician.

JG: Magician?

BL: Yeah… That’s only common here…

LL: Many soldier told me around that time, our father tell our grandfather, “Okay, all of you, on my back.” When there’s fighting, our ating soldier, he catch the bullet of the enemy! It’s true. I say, “I cannot believe!” After that… the bullet of the Spaniard…

JG: Oh, the bullet of the Spaniard.

LL: Yes! That’s why you tell me your grandfather, very intelligent. Good in, how do you say in English… At that time, only Luna have a trick… At that time, this Captain Luna, they call his greatest, even…[unclear]… General Aguinaldo. So that’s why at that time, many people stay here. Because one kind of Captain Luna’s here, you better stay here. Nobody will touch you. That’s why this town, this barrio is very young…. When they say, don’t do anything—and if you want to go inside. But my town don’t make mistake. When they say, don’t do it, if you don’t follow, you [get killed]. Even now… people get killed.

JG: Which one(s)?

LL: Oh, councilman.

JG: Oh, the councilman.

LL: When they say, don’t do it, you do it, face to face—they’ll kill you now. They cannot give to the authority because… Dismiss… Because he’s the authority, and you did not obey him. So he is authorized to kill you.

JG: This is today.

LL: Yes, today… If you have authority, if a civilian make you want to fight you, especially if you have a gun, you kill him with gun. That’s how it happen…. Yes…

…

JG: What did you think when Grandpa joined the U.S. Navy?

LL: Your grandfather? He’s lucky.

JG: Why lucky?

LL: Many people here want to go join the Navy but cannot pass the examination. Because he have a brain, your grandfather. Many, many people here in Ligtong want to join the Navy, but they don’t pass the examination.

BL: I’m lucky because I pray hard.

LL: At that time, I’m big, I can’t join! … Then I saw people employed in big company… [tells privilege of knowing English, not Tagalog]

…

BL: … If my family is rich, I had money, I wouldn’t be in the Navy. I’d be a teacher now, if I’m still alive. Because I’m smart! I’m good in school! As I told you. See the way I raised you? I did what I used to do. Three years, no speak. But I raise you. I guide you, the way you go to school. I told you I don’t want you to go outside and play without doing your homework. Remember I do that to you? And then when I found out you cannot speak good, I went to teacher and ask about somebody that teach you. And I took this child development in college. I ask teachers, the way I bring you up, that subject is about bringing up children. The more toys you have, the better for you to be smart when you grow up. And then I take you to play in the gym. You go to those bars in Slater. I took you there. I take you there, I take you back. Go to McDo [MacDonalds]…

Endnotes:

¹ Yen Le Espiritu, Homebound (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 31.

² The “Third Wave” of Filipino immigration to the U.S., according to Fred Cordova, was Filipinos who came to the U.S. between 1945 and 1965. This wave primarily consisted of navy men, women nurses, professionals, business technicians, and engineers (Cordova 1983, 20). The Second Wave of Filipino immigrants came during the U.S. colonial period between 1906 and 1934. In its early years, this wave was comprised of pensionados, who were students subsidized by the Philippine colonial government. Those who came later in this second wave were single male laborers who worked in farms and canneries, primarily in the American West, Midwest, and the East Coast (Cordova 1983, 14-19). The very first wave of Filipino immigration came between 1763 and 1906. This wave included more sporadic patterns of migration among seafarers, laborers, domestic workers, and “stowaways” escaping Spanish colonial captivity in the Philippine archipelago and the galleon trade ships. On these galleon ships in particular, many of them were stationed as crew members and slave laborers.  While most of them migrated to Alaska and Hawai’i, a few of them landed in Acapulco, Baja California, Peru, Guam, and New Orleans, among other places in the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic (Cordova 1983, 9-10). See Fred Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, A Pictorial Essay/1763-circa-1963 (Seattle: Demonstration Project for Asian Americans, 1983).

³ Mr. Larion Luna pronounced this word exactly how it looks in this oral historical record: “siapu,” with a p. I repeated the word with that exact pronunciation and he affirmed it, as recorded in the interview. Nevertheless, it is possible that he might be referring to the word “shabu” instead. “Shabu” is a type of methamphematine, as noted by Luis Francia (“Uncle Luigi”) and Alfred McCoy in Eye of the Fish (2003) and State and Family in the Philippines (2009), respectively. I am indebted to these works for bringing to light this historical fact and possible historical correction.