Lanna Park

My reflection is broken up into horizons.

O - me

A - my parents

B - my grandparents

C - my great grandparents

R - distant original ancestors (whom I will never know)

O:

I never questioned my multi-ethnic identity until I came to college and had to adjust to a very different social environment. Growing up in Hawai’i, my childhood was filled with a cultural diversity like no other. I could eat Filipino food in the morning, Japanese food for lunch, and a mix of many other cultures in one plate, for dinner. Quality raw fish is the food I miss the most. Naturally, when coming to UW, I wasn’t used to certain foods not being an option. It even took me a while to adjust to the landscape. I was used to beautiful beaches and smelling the salt in the air carried by the tradewinds. I wasn’t prepared for nature to be so far away in Seattle. Lucky enough for me, I found ways to access the outdoors and the people that I met in the beginning of my UW journey, stayed in my life, and supported me in exploring my heritage. College has turned me inward and made me question my identities. Being dual heritage often made me feel not completely tethered to one or the other. But I have since been exploring my Filipino identity through research at the Burke. I remain so grateful for this space because I feel seen, for my disconnectedness. It was fulfilling to get that reassurance when dealing with similar emotions being in that space. Particularly, I enjoy the ways in which we break out into discussion on cultural objects, or photos, to give our thoughts or express our frustrations. My consuming frustration stems from the lack of context that the cultural materials have at the Burke. Maybe it’s because I want to be an archaeologist that makes me feel this level of devastation to how much of the narrative was lost with the extraction of these items. Through our own inquiry, we find out more information that is left bread-crumbed in the catalogues.

In the beginning, I was interested in everything, and looked at everything. However, I found myself most attracted to the photographs that they have there. Particularly, I was drawn to the photos of Filipina women in the archive because women play a large part in my life. I was raised around strong women, my mom included. Most of the photos at the Burke lack a significant amount of context and are usually donated from past travelers. This lack of context, but the eternalization of a moment, in a headshot, or a portrait, I feel a connection towards it. The disconnect is akin to my own disconnect. Though I am discovering that not knowing everything doesn’t make me less whole, it urges me to keep exploring.

Before this year I did not have any Filipino friends and stayed with the people that I knew (whom I love dearly). I always felt like I was missing out on something that I couldn’t quite understand. However, after joining this research opportunity and interacting with Filipino organizations, I was able to connect with more Filipino students on campus. I think I’ve concluded that what I was missing was an innate understanding of each other. Our shared heritage comes with community. I remain forever grateful for the people I have met along this journey, and this opportunity will be unforgettable. This space has been a really special place and has definitely been a site of healing as well. This space has also equipped me with the tools to explore my Koreanness as well. I am excited to see what I will discover in that journey.

Like the O layer that I categorized this section under, it is still growing new plants and changing. I will continue to grow and change even though I’ll be leaving this space and graduating. Knowledge Kap has mulched my soil in preparation for what beauty is to come.

A:

My parents’ layer. My mom, born in the early 70s, had to deal with these boundaries in Hawai’i toward success in a new colonial environment. She herself recalls her impoverished childhood, yet also recalls moments of familial joy. Her closeness to her family and the Filipino families around her and her siblings kept her tethered to something. She did not have the opportunity to receive an education and was dealing with a world that was never set up for her to succeed. Even though she did not get that western validity she was very successful in everything that she did. She is the strongest woman I know and the most stubborn. Every task at hand is met with a persistence that I truly can’t understand. She worked and works hard building her life to then help me build my own.

My father has a different story. He and his parents (mother was pregnant with his little brother) moved to Socal from Seoul when he was just one. They would then settle in Federal Way, Washington. It is here where he would grow up understanding the harsh reality being a person of color. He often recalls many memories of racist remarks or being targeted because of his identity. He also recalls meeting his closest friend and playing sports all the way through college; this brought him joy. The mainland is what we call this place—it was not as ethnically diverse as Hawai’i was. His parents worked tirelessly to build capital in this world and he was able to go to college and receive an education. He would then work work work, until his career brought him to Hawai’i where he would eventually meet my mother. His work ethic paired with my mom’s made way for a better life for me and my siblings to cultivate a good life for ourselves.

C and B: Intertwined histories/layers

Filipinos of Hawai’i were the last ethnic group to be recruited into Hawai’i’s exploitative sugar industry. The sugar industry in Hawai’i was a tactic the US empire used to fuel their extractive capital that hinged on racial justification for its execution. Successive groups of immigrants (also considered settlers) were recruited. The largest groups of migrants being, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Puerto Ricans,–strategically brought to Hawai’i at differing times set on promoting racial divide so colonists could benefit and sidestep resistance, which, ultimately, still occurred. [1, 2] With every populace they recruited, there was resistance that deemed them invaluable. Then, US empire moved on to the next populace of people whose homeland they were exploiting until eventually, they started recruiting from the Philippines. Colonialism sent Filipinos abroad and all felt forced to migrate in search of a better life that the colonist ridden homeland could not provide. Filipinos were the cheap labor that the US empire was looking for in order to fill their demand for the industry and were their last attempt meant to keep sugar production flowing. [3, 4] Filipinos first started coming to the islands in 1906 and their forced migration to Hawai’i can be quantified in three waves. The first wave was the Sakadas or the plantation workers (1906-1930s), while the second wave is remembered as post WWII Filipinos (1940s-1960s), then finally the third wave from 1965 onwards who had some sort of higher education. Many expected equal opportunity, especially plantation workers, but they were quickly faced with harsh reality. Filipinos were uniquely faced with the lowest paying wages, racial stereotypes, abysmal living quarters, and more. [5]

What makes Filipino forced migration distinct from those other ethnic groups was their status as US nationals because they were under US control at the time (colony). Filipinos were first authorized to go to Hawai’i in 1906, but recruitment really picked up in 1910. These Filipinos were primarily taken from the Cebu and Ilocos region in the Philippines. [6] This Sakada generation lasted from 1906-1930s and were primarily single males. In response, the hostile racialized environment responded by labeling them bachelors, sneaky, and sexual predators. These fabricated attributes assigned, are reflective to a unique racist hatred toward Filipinos that would outlast the plantation industry and follow Filipinos in the decades to come. [7] Migration continued and more Filipinos were still coming to Hawai’i, adding further diversity to the Filipino experience. Post WWII Filipinos came to Hawai’i and joined the industry system with their families set for permanence. They sought a new life and were willing to work on the plantations for their chance at that. My own family came to Hawai’i during this time and were faced with the harsh realities of plantation life. My great-grandparents picked up what little they had and left the homeland bound for Hawai’i. My great-grandmother was pregnant and would soon give birth to my grandpa after WWII in Hawai'i. Yet, more Filipinos still kept arriving and the third wave began in 1965 with Filipinos coming in with professional backgrounds.

However, Filipinos didn’t remain subservient to the plantation economy, confined under those systemic abuses, nor subscribed to stereotypes, but in fact rose up to become leaders of some of the most remembered plantation strikes of Hawai’i. The most remembered strikes were in 1920, 1924, 1937, and 1946. In 1920 organizer Manlapit had been in conversation with the federation of Japanese labor and “frequently accompanied the Japanese on their organizing trips.” [8] He was taking inspiration from the more experienced Japanese union, to better form the Filipino one. However, Manlapit grew restless and proclaimed a strike that didn’t even have incomplete plans in 1920. Haphazardly, yet persistent, they went on strike for higher wages and in reaction, the Japanese were left with a choice: to strike or not to strike. They chose to strike, not because they were necessarily forging that cross ethnic solidarities, but as a reaction. They had their incomplete plans, yet still decided to push their own strike. This bifold strike was interpreted by the oppressor as a moment of ethnic solidarity, the very thing they were trying to prevent at all costs. In reaction, employers criminalized the strikers, isolated leaders, and ultimately repressed these groups of people. [9]

Filipinos would not give up. Though the strike of 1920 was largely considered ineffective because of its haphazard nature with demands ending in compromise, conditions were still unsettled. Manlapit would rise again and organize yet another strike that was similarly disorganized in 1924. Largely remembered as the “Filipino Piecemeal Strike,” this strike’s sporadic inception is hard to pinpoint. [10] Manlapit, on O’ahu, encouraged workers to work, but at a slow pace to curb production and frustrate the industry. This strike strategy would spread throughout O’ahu and to the other islands, and was actually effective in curbing production. In response, employers, the oppressors, began to flaunt authority like hiring special plantation police forces to coerce violence through anticipation while they were striking. The industry was looking for a reason to shut down this movement. This anticipation would culminate into the 1924 Hanapepe Massacre on Kaua’i. [11] This violent and quick exchange of shots left 20 dead. 16 of the dead were Filipino strikers and 4 were policemen. This violent event allowed employers to be publicly racist toward Filipinos, and impose intense sanctions. Japanese strikers were also blamed in turn because they were sympathetic to Filipinos. Employers began to label strikers whether Filipino or Japanese as communists, and ‘crack-brained demagogues.” [12]

Race constructed by the US Empire plays a pivotal role in the justification of such reactions and conditions. It provides the context that umbrellas Hawai’i’s inception being illegally annexed, then as a state, and then driven by sugar industry feeding US primacy. Though even after the criminalization of Manlapit and his eventual exile to California, he would be back. In California he would work closely with an organizer named Manuel Fagel. [13] Fagel founded Vibora Luviminda, the name paying homage to a nickname of a resistance leader against American occupation in the homeland. This was not a local organization, but a national one that made its way to Hawai’i. [14] This eventually culminated into organized strikes on Maui. In reaction, employers were forced to face the rising agency that Filipinos began to understand against the industry. Filipinos and many other ethnic groups were gaining confidence and building toward something more powerful.

That moment would be the strike of 1946. After long months of planning and learning, a racial rearticulation erupted that turned the colonial logic back onto the oppressor (employers), allowing an interracial labor movement able to resist as a whole. [15] This fascinating social moment proves that definitions of race and stigma are fickle, made up to benefit colonists. This strike was united under the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union or the ILWU. In the end, “the settlement was an impressive victory for the union, if not a total triumph on all counts. The union leadership had demonstrated to the rank and file the importance of solidarity and careful organization. By maintaining ethnic solidarity, the union had put to rest the old threat of racial differences.” [16] After decades of specific group oriented resistance, terrible planning, and many attempts, ethnic groups breached their containment and wove together new multi-ethnic connections to push against their collective oppressors. Much is unknown to me what my great-grandparents knew about this movement as they were just beginning to settle in Hawai’i. Because they have already long passed I will never know their individual experiences to such a powerful shift in the industry, but I remain hopeful that they, like all the other Filipinos in my life, advocated and remained steadfast.

Those strong solidarities forged in the mid-20th century seemingly dissolved and conditions appeared to settle back into the US colonial framework as plantation work continued. However, the plantation industry came to an end and Filipinos needed to adapt to changing colonial standards. My own grandparents remained in the plantation system and observed the plantations ‘end.’ My papa always described work on the plantation as hard physical labor, long days, heat, but always, always was prideful of his hard work. He was a crane operator (fig 1.) and carried large bundles of cane to the next station. He recalls the impoverished conditions he grew up in, but there were also memories of such joy. He detailed the deep-seated prejudice facing interracial marriages even in his lifetime, but also experienced those ridiculous ideals fading away. He was alive at a very pivotal transition point in time where Filipinos had to look elsewhere as a means up.

[Fig. 1]

On another note, I cannot divorce the lens of ‘race’ constructed by the empire's hegemony when thinking about the last decades of the 20th century. I do, however, want to use race as a necessary axis to truly understand the symptoms of US empire after a strategic mid-century logic switch. That is, observing the rise of the US security state as we know it today. The empire sought to overtly rebrand itself as a global leader and protector of people from communism to continue its extractive capitalism, extending its claws into countries abroad, while simultaneously tightening surveillance and demanding loyalty of its diverse subjects nationally. [17] This new fear, these new stakes, affected the way that Filipinos were navigating their route to success in the late 20th century.

This new norm was adopted and promptly put into action to put pressure on rising world powers. Hawai’i was thus a strategic capture to not only make the US richer, but to also place pressure on its competitors. This change was not met with agreement, but sparked important social movements in the late 20th century. Though with the rise of this new rhetoric, arguably, it forced another rearticulation of race that affected Filipinos of Hawaii in particular ways. That rearticulation directly affected Filipinos navigating the prospect of higher education. Already at the margins socioeconomically, Filipinos were now expected to be educated to become successful. This rearticulation conflated assimilation confusion from one wave of Filipinos to the next and splintered the ability to resist as a multi-generational collective. This rebrand not only allowed the US to squash any sort of ‘hostile’ resistance as it was branded as communist, against the nation, and a threat, but also allowed them to control knowledge. [18] Who had access in those spaces were pivotal in the continuance of US Empire’s agenda. Controlling narrative, controlling history, within colonial racial hierarchies is how you seemingly train colonial subjects into submission for generations. US national ideals were built, controlled, and perpetuated in the sphere of higher education. [19] These institutions grant individuals power, influence, and prove credibility. The US empire perceives knowledge building (under their terms) as legitimate. While this system is inherently negative, it can also be used positively for the marginalized, for Filipinos. For Hawai’i it was institutions like University of Hawai’i (UH) Manoa that served as the main producers/teachers of culture of US colonialism in Hawai’i. UH perpetuated racist hierarchies (prioritizing US empire demands), but it also reformed and was and is used by the marginalized.

As plantation systems were dissolving in the late 20th century, tourism was on the rise, and newer Filipinos were arriving, still very few Filipinos were making it to places where other ethnic minorities were. Filipinos were not represented in higher education. Filipinos were in survival mode from the Sakada generation to the next, despite quick colonial restructuring that forced adaptation. I seek to continue the conversation on where Filipinos should play a role in their liberation today (to the ever-changing diaspora). Although expected from us, higher education is necessary in our moves toward liberation. More narrowly, how Filipino representation at UH Manoa then, signals to scholars now, for possibilities toward our collective liberation. Rampant notions of individualism (self-preservation) molded contested points of fragmentation within the Filipino community in the late 20th century. How Filipinos saw themselves and how they operated in the years after this shift in US colonialism affected how they navigated higher education. Empire and higher education are attached, and affect one another. Filipino representation matters at UH, with higher education a necessary bridge that we must carefully build and nurture, allowing us to defy the oppressor on their own terms. Further, this would make way for activism with justification digestible by our colonizers.

R:

The layer of the distant ancestors whom I will never know. I decided to include this layer—the layer where the parent rock that feeds all the layers that build on it—because that is exactly what mine and my family’s stories are built upon. Although I’ll never know who these people were, their energy has been carried on through generations and I feel that. I wanted to acknowledge them. So here they are in the parent rock layer that has informed so much in the layers of my great-grandparents, grandparents, my parents, and my own everchanging layer.

Endnotes

1. Beechert, Edward D. Working in Hawaii: A Labor History. University of Hawaii Press, 1985. p.88-128.
2. Beechert, Edward D p.40
3. Beechert, Edward D p.139
4. Beechert, Edward D p.184
5. Beechert, Edward D p.138-9
6. Beechert, Edward D p.185
7. Teodoro, Luis V. Out of This Struggle: The Filipinos in Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press, 1981 p.120, 102-8.
8. Beechert, Edward D p.200
9. Beechert, Edward D p.152
10. Beechert, Edward D p.219-20
11. Beechert, Edward D p.221-2
12. Beechert, Edward D p.223
13. Beechert, Edward D p.226-8
14. Jung, Moon-Kie. Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaii's Interracial Labor Movement. United Kingdom: Columbia University Press, 2006. p.141-6
15. Jung, Moon-Kie Ch.5
16. Beechert, Edward D p.301
17. Jung, Moon-Kie p.160-9, 210-13
18. Boaventura de Sousa Santos. The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press.
19. In further detail: Palmadessa, Allison L. American National Identity, Policy Paradigms, and Higher Education : A History of the Relationship between Higher Education and the United States, 1862-2015. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature, 2017.

Works Cited

Beechert, Edward D. Working in Hawaii: A Labor History. University of Hawaii Press, 1985.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos. 2018. The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9781478002000.

Jung, Moon-Kie. Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaii's Interracial Labor Movement. United Kingdom: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Teodoro, Luis V. Out of This Struggle. University of Hawaii Press, 1981.

Palmadessa, Allison L. American National Identity, Policy Paradigms, and Higher Education : A History of the Relationship between Higher Education and the United States, 1862-2015. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature, 2017.