(train rumbles) - [Announcer] Long before it was the capital of California's Silicon Valley, San Jose stood at the center of the fertile Santa Clara Valley, once called the Valley of Heart's Delight.

Drawn by opportunity, Filipinos and their families helped shape the city's story.

Today, three generations reflect on the past, present, and future as America marks its 250th year.

(upbeat music) - This entire area was our playground in the 1930s, 1940s.

So on fourth Street in 1931, I was born in a house there.

So there's a lot of history here between all three ethnic minority groups, the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos.

- Being in California is so special as an ethnic studies instructor, right?

We are a state where in recent years, ethnic studies became a requirement at the high school level, the community college level, the CSU.

I'm very appreciative of the ways in which we lean here.

- I think one of the greatest functions of being an artist is the limitless power of imagining a better world than the one that already exists 250 years since the American Revolution.

It's funny, but what I know right now is that I am looking for the next one.

(chuckles) (dramatic music) - [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

(bright music) - I was very fortunate to meet two other generations of Filipino kids at the Japanese American Museum.

Did your parents come in... - My parents were, My dad was born in '69.

- That was the first time that I was on a panel that covered that range of Filipino American experience and perspectives.

- My dad's like second eldest brother.

To be honest, at first I was intimidated.

I just kind of felt the pressure of that.

After I got over that though, I was like, "Hey, let's chat."

(Brandon chuckles) I am an educator and I am a filmmaker.

- Wow, filmmaker.

- Nice to meet you, Brandon.

Sitting at a table with Brandon and Manong Robert, it kind of reminds me of before the advent of technology and phones and social media and I don't know, "Candy Crush," the things that take all of our generations away from each other, like what it may have been to just sit and talk.

I'm the mother of three and I am a full-time professor of ethnic studies at Evergreen Valley College, and I also work with the local Filipino American National Historical Society Chapter.

- Alyssa and Brenda, their life experiences are much different than mine.

In general, I'm an aerospace engineer, retired for some time now.

And most of my time has been spent doing Filipino American history here.

Try to document that, make sure it gets preserved and told.

- [Melissa] Right.

(upbeat music) - We had our very first Pinoytown tour in 2019.

Sometimes we have a group of four to five and other times we had a group of 20.

You have to use your imagination because a lot of the buildings have disappeared.

The Chinese community built their Chinatown in the late 1800s.

1900, Japanese immigrants came.

In the 1920s, a lot of the Filipinos also did the same thing.

And they formed an enclave, which we now call Pinoytown.

(upbeat music) This area is called the Valley of Heart's Delight.

The reason it's the Valley of Heart's Delight because of all the Chinese laborers, the Japanese laborers, the Mexican laborers, and the Filipino laborers.

On the backs of those men built the Valley of Heart's Delight.

It's a good thing they did because it ultimately became Silicon Valley.

(upbeat music) - You had fourth and Jackson from 1929 to 1934.

The pool hall was the spot.

It had ping pong, a snack bar.

As you can tell, we're getting to learn from Manong Robert, a historian, local historian who grew up here in the 1930s.

In the Filipino languages, when we say manong versus mister, Mister is very formal.

It offers respect, but there's a distance.

But manong, it says hello elder, like with love.

Hello elder with a deep respect because of what you bring for us as elder.

We are looking at page 11, page 11.

We're kind of very- - We have very sharp guides.

Melissa is so expressive and dynamic in her talks.

And the guide do the talking and I do the walking behind them and I give cover commentary.

Can you interpret ragsak?

Ragsak means happy and I'm really happy to see all of you here today.

(upbeat music) - I am the child of Filipino immigrants who came in the 1970s.

It's like, "Oh, I'm Filipino American."

Right?

But as I've grown and learned, I've also started to identify or articulate the lineages of each of my parents.

As you remember, the Philippines is over 7,100 islands, over 100 languages that through colonization became a people, right?

But there were many, many people.

So my father, his culture is from the Kalinga tribe in the north and my mother is from Dagami, Leyte, and her people are called the Waray.

(gentle music) The courses I teach here are introduction to ethnic studies, Asian American culture and experience, and women of color in the United States.

Teaching at the community college is wild because we have quite an age range.

We can have students as young as 14 to as old as 72.

For instance, I'm going to say grandmas and grandpas that may have come out of a refugee crisis, put their kids to school and they're now like, "Now, I want to learn."

Right?

So you go to Instagram and you take a look at the account called 21st Century.

It's a beautiful challenge to see how I can be present across that map of individuals in terms of immigration status, whether they're documented, undocumented, whether they're first generation to third generation, whether they're monolingual or multilingual.

I want us to note that I think about our strength.

My cultural heritage that allows me to ask the question about history, culture, stories, movement, survival, resilience.

Then we get to become closer to the remembering that we are all responsible to and for one another.

You know, to live well.

Like really at the end of the day.

Yeah.

So what does it mean for us as Filipinos to see the American dream and go for it at the cost of a lot, you know?

- Yeah, yeah, - It was really tough for the first Filipinos because there were riots, especially when the agricultural workers, the farm laborers were trying to be organized by activists like Larry Itliong.

And there was tremendous backlash and riots against that.

And of course, the biggest one is the grape strike in 1965.

Did you ever hear about that?

- I took like an Asian American studies class and yeah, they talked about like the Delano grape strike.

- Oh, you actually covered that.

- Like I didn't learn too much about my Filipino heritage and Filipino American history in general until I hit college.

- Yeah.

(bright music) - It was in college that I started getting a lot more connected with my Filipino heritage.

(bright music) I am a filmmaker, poet, educator, activist, and I also go by the name of Kuya B for all of these things.

The word kuya in Tagalog means older brother.

So at Youth Speaks, I am a teaching artist.

For today's writing prompt, make a list of urban legends, myths, or superstitions you grew up hearing as a kid.

For each of the, I collaborate on this spoken word curriculum that kind of gives students the tools they need necessary to talk about their own lives.

My nana planted orange trees in her backyard and 13 years after her passing, her great grandchildren enjoyed the fruit.

Motion is only motion if it ripples across generations.

I'm from the Bay.

The intersection, I think some really beautiful through line that I have in all of this is my students also started calling me kuya.

(upbeat music) - In the 1940s.

I was a paper boy and my route included Pinoytown.

(bright music) My contemporaries would play around here.

You have to imagine the pumps were here, garage, and the mechanics were here and we had a lot of crowds and activity here.

So it became an attraction for us kids.

(bright music) One of the houses that we lived in, I remember the house because directly across the street in 1936, the Japanese temple was being built and it was a great attraction for his kids.

And I remember the Executive Order 9066, April 1942, it enabled the military authorities to remove all of the first and second generation Japanese born here.

So therefore, American citizens.

But nevertheless, they had to be evacuated.

We were on the porch and we saw the Iwasaki family carrying their bags and clothing and then they assembled out here on the street and walked that way.

And that's the last we saw them.

All the trials, tribulations, anti-Asian, anti-Filipino hatred guess still persists now to this day, unfortunately.

I didn't have any problem with my identity.

- Hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- Yeah, I'm Filipino, right?

I'm going to a white school.

Yeah, well, okay.

There was no questioning until, of course, when you run into the discrimination.

- Right.

- We had no discrimination here.

- Right.

- In Chinatown or in the high school.

But outside of it, there was.

- Even though I consider myself an American, I have the strong feeling about my heritage.

But yet I'm an American.

Some Americans don't see it that way.

At the time that we went to school, it was all anti-Asian, anti-Filipinos.

We just endured it.

- Right.

- Yeah.

(somber music) - This is an experience that may be familiar to many groups of people, but in the Filipino culture, there's this concept of lihim.

Lihim is like to bury, to put below ground, to leave untouched, unheard.

So there's trauma, there's difficulty, there's trials and tribulations, right?

That families or generations may have experienced that.

And that the way to move forward is to never speak to it again.

The way to move forward is to not look back, just look forward.

- Because I think the question that you're trying to get at, it's nice to be in the space with other like older generation Fil-Ams who have also weathered this kind of crazy in their lives 'cause I feel like it's, our own culture is set up to be something that's not valuable, you know, in the United States and like in this imperial society.

So I was growing up definitely feeling like that, like kind of feeling ashamed of being Filipino, which was very like unfortunate as a kid.

I had performed a poem at an annual event where they basically pulled a lot of like big business owners and I guess important people and they reached out to me as a poet to perform poetry at this event.

And I was like, "Hey, let's go."

As soon as I walked through the door, one of the workers was like, "Hey, are you a part of the catering staff?"

And I was like, part of the job sometimes, to be honest, being like a Brown artist around here, you know?

A lot of unlearning.

But now, no one can tell me to be ashamed of being Filipino.

Like I'm very loud about it now.

- You know, who wrote American History?

- Right.

- The Whites.

- Yeah.

- And so it's anti-Asian.

- Yeah.

- As well as anti non-Whites.

- Yeah.

- Right.

- When I hear what you've gone through and what you've done, Melissa, and your educators, that's one thing that I think that's saving us is that first of all, Asian studies, and a lot of the university and schools teaching about Filipino history.

(ambient music) This shot, it shows my friends, local Pinays having their picture taken with the water tower in the back.

And the fact that it has the girls in front is, makes it even iconic for Pinoytown.

(unintelligible tour guide) From my point of view, kapwa means that there is an association and a bond amongst a group of Filipinos that are deeply, deeply supportive culturally, but because of the identity between you and that other person and you have a larger family.

The younger ones can kneel.

(crowd laughing) - [Speaker] He's pretending to be your Filmmaker.

Right.

(upbeat music) - Kapwa is the Filipino understanding that I am you and you are me.

It's seeing the self in other.

So it's different than empathy, like putting myself in your shoes.

And through kapwa, when there's that understanding of a shared humanity, then there is a practice of looking out for one another.

(upbeat music) When I think about California, that gets seen a lot as like a leading voice that's always like pushing the envelope, right?

Like how can we be more just?

How can we be more open?

How can we support people all across the spectrum of, you know, either gender identity or citizenship or non-citizenship, right?

Like that kind of opening, I think, is so beautiful when I think about how Filipinos found their way here.

- Like a lot of the Filipinos were taught, you know?

It was the land of the golden promise and for some reason, California became the prime focus for them.

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And the Pacific Ocean in particular is so magical, right?

Because you know, when you're looking at the sunset on the other end is Philippines, right?

So what this beautiful thing that California holds I think was this landing place where communities were here, oh, we landed here because of the Navy.

Oh, we landed here because of agricultural work and the ways in which we then invited families to come.

(gentle music) - One of the things I do love about California is how we look out for each other 'cause some of the crazy (silence) happening in California right now is all of the ICE raids that are happening.

Like in my classes, I teach students know your rights workshops because you know, like a lot of my students also have family members or may themselves be undocumented.

There's such like vile narratives going on about immigrants in this country.

(upbeat music) - Ken Ying Low, famous Chinese restaurant.

What I'm doing now, trying to capture the story of the immigrant Filipino.

So if you use your imagination and you are there standing here, you'll see the Filipinos lined up among those businesses.

You could listen and you could hear the three different languages.

And in the hustle and bustle, the cars going back and forth.

And if your nose was sensitive enough, like mine was, I think, you could smell the food coming out of the Chinese restaurants and the Filipino restaurants.

That's the way that it appeared to me way back when in 1940s.

- When I talk about storytelling as medicine, speaking the word, writing, telling, truth telling is a way that breaks open our ability to heal.

(Mom speaking in foreign language) - Mom, I'm old enough.

(Mom speaking in foreign language) - Can we just get burrito?

(Mom speaking in foreign language) - My first film out of college was a Filipino American short film called "The Last Supper" that I co-directed with Nolan.

(gentle music) It is a nod to generational difference between first generation immigrants and their children, specifically Filipinos.

(workers speaking in foreign language) - It was a nod to our childhood, a nod to Filipinos in the Bay Area, but we wanted to make a film.

It's like this is the truth of it all.

This is our experience, this is our lives.

- What about your dad?

- Filipino.

(resident laughs) - Your dad might know our dad then.

- And this was the experience of how it feels to grow up as a second generation Filipino American in the Bay Area.

Second generation meaning that we were not the ones who immigrated here, it's our parents who immigrated here.

And we are basically the first generation who was born and raised here.

(upbeat music) (Brandon sighing) Man, "The Last Supper" was a film to work on.

It was kind of crazy.

(upbeat music) So I think a lot about like how filmmaking and poetry is enabling the younger generation to kind of like break outside of the box and tell their own stories is narrative strategy, that swing that actively swings that pendulum back, right?

For myself, like being involved in a lot of open mic spaces to be like making films on, like okay, what is this experience?

And to hear the, just the affirmation, the upliftment, the centering of like young voices trying to tell their stories.

I think this is, it does bring me a lot of hope in these times as well though.

I'm going to be also like tabling at like FAHM Jam at Berryessa in San Jose this year.

- Cool, yeah.

- And that's always such a beautiful place for me to see what's up with the community.

(upbeat music) FAHM Jam is a celebration of Filipino American History Month where we can celebrate like the joy of being Filipino.

- There's a lot for us to celebrate today.

And thanks to the Filipino American National Historical Society, we are able to celebrate Filipino American history month every year in the month of October.

Congress passed it in 2009.

- What I was doing there, is documenting like all of the people at FAHM Jam, some of the performances, some highlights in the crowd, intimate moments.

(bright music) Together, we're showing that being Filipino American isn't one single story.

It's a living expression of pride, creativity, and community that keeps our culture alive.

- FAHM Jam is a festival and really just in celebration like of us in a way that is something that we can share with everybody.

I love to bring the whole family so that they can get a sense of that cultural heritage.

Oh my kids super enjoy attending.

What's nice too is when they're walking through the crowd is they might see a friend from school.

I'm like, "Hey, it's nice to see you here," and then connect on that level.

- Hey, what's up, Professor?

How are you?

- Good.

Good to see you.

So you're doing your thing too?

- Oh, I am, I am.

(crowd chattering) (upbeat music) -This is Brandon... this is Mateo -Mateo.

What's up Dante?

(crowd chattering) (upbeat music) - We've been here long before the US was even a country.

Okay?

We've been here since 1587.

Right, everyone?

October... So should we start way before the American Revolution.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Right?

Like 200 years before, 1587 - Yeah, before.

- Filipinos were on Spanish Galleons and lo and behold, they see this huge rock and it's Morro Bay.

They arrive and our ancestors, Filipino men on the ship are instructed to go down and scout the area, right?

But this is the earliest recording of Filipinos just setting foot, not yet settling.

- But I think it's strong in New Orleans because it was one of the major settlements of Filipinos when they jumped ship.

- In the bayous of Louisiana where you have these men who jump ship, they're like, "I'm not doing this anymore."

And we're going to build our bahay kubos, right?

We're going use the material that is here and build our village out of the water and sustain ourselves the way we know how in the Philippines.

We'll do that here.

- Yeah.

And by the way, a lot of the Filipinos fought at the Battle of New Orleans.

There were Filipinos in there in that battle.

And not only that, there are Filipinos in the Civil War.

And then in the First World War, there were Filipinos in there.

So there's an Asian element from from the revolutionary war on.

♪ O say, can you see - Something I can be inspired by the American Revolution is the fact that revolutions happen when the people recognize that they have power and they recognize if their representatives are not changing things, then the people will.

- In this moment of time, in the 250-year birthday of America, I think patriotism is a term that's being challenged in a really lovely way actually.

And the examples of patriotism I'm seeing is when everyday people are having the backs of other everyday people.

- In my high school, there were Filipinos and Filipino Americans.

A lot of poems, a lot of arts, almost all of it is asking for change, demanding for change.

See, I want to see a city that we can pass through unbroken.

A city that calls us home because all we have is each other.

(bright music) - What we are doing here in the valley is contributing to the larger picture of the Filipino-American experience.

That story being told.

And I thought that's really that important.

Every one of you should do the same, interview your mom, interview your dad.

Doesn't matter if they're from the Philippines or Germany or if the Netherlands, get their story because ultimately, it will become part of American history.

Deeply in my heart, I thank you all for being here and listening to our story.

(upbeat music) - [Audience Member] Thank you.

(crowd applauding) - Go to college straight down 6th Street at San Jose State.

My brother became a business ad major.

I became a mechanical engineer.

I was very fortunate to go to the California Institute of Technology.

I didn't know how powered school that was and became a rocket engineer.

So it really- - A rocket scientist.

He's a rocket scientist.

I didn't know that was real.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] You can visit our website for more information and additional resources.

It's all at generations250.org.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

(bright music) (upbeat music)