Transcript for the 59-min version version of Crossing East: First Contacts - Program One

PROGRAM ONE
First Contacts

BILLBOARD

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ANNOUNCER: Major Funding for this series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with support from PRI ? Public Radio International.

HOST: This is Crossing East? Our stories, our history, our America?

BOB KENNEDY: Chinese ships were incredibly seaworthy, and it?s not surprising that they survived all the way across the Pacific.

JUDY YUNG: ?Ku li,? the two characters, mean ?bitter strength.?

CATHY ROLAND: But there are so many people up and down this coast that are of Hawaiian descent, as I am, but they don?t know.

MARINA ESPINA: So they decided to build their a la Filipino villages with their houses just like the ones that you find in the southern part of the Philippines now. So they had that built along the bayous and the marshes of Louisiana.

HOST: I?m George Takei? Crossing East begins with ?First Contacts? when we return?

(NEWS BREAK)

(MUSIC BREAK)

SEGMENT A

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HOST: I?m your host George Takei and this is Crossing East? Our stories, our history, our America?

Think of the first Asians in America. And images of railroad builders, gold miners and laundry workers come to mind. But Asians came east from Asia to explore the new continent long before there was an America. Sailors and adventurers from China, Japan, the Philippines and Hawaii boarded ships heading east in the 16th century. Some scholars speculate even earlier. Depending on how far back you want to go, it?s safe to say that Asians have a long history of Crossing East to America.

We present?

?First Contacts.? Chapter One ? The Bering Strait

SOUND?MUSIC FADES UP

HOST: The middle of the Ice Age. 20 thousand years ago. Immense sheets of polar ice locked up so much water the sea level dropped. It was a time of land bridges. Britain to Europe, Tasmania to Australia?and Asia to America.

For a few thousand years, Alaska and Siberia were joined by land. And people walked across the dry, cold grasslands. They hunted mammoth and musk ox across the fifty-five mile tract of land now called The Bering Strait. These were the ancestors of the Native peoples of the Americas and they were crossing east from Asia.

Stories and legends abound of first contacts between Native Americans and Asians before the 1500s. Japanese and Chinese pottery have been found on America?s coast. Shipbuilding practices on both sides of the ocean show similarities. Chinese tales speak of men who traveled to Fusang, the land of the Extreme East. Some claim that was Mexico.

Native peoples of Alaska stayed in relatively frequent contact with their Siberian neighbors, and new waves of Siberian peoples occasionally traveled the 55 miles to Alaska, rejuvenating the population.

But it is when the United States was first defining itself as a new nation that the recorded history of Asians in America begins.

Chapter Two. ?Unsung Sailors? by Sara Caswell Kolbet.

SOUND: LADY WASHINGTON BELL

SOUND: WATER LAPPING

HOST: The Lady Washington is a replica of an 18th century sailing vessel. The ship travels the length of the West Coast all year round. The mostly volunteer sailors on board live and work much as did the sailors of old. Belaying lines, unfurling sails, climbing the riggings, navigating with a compass?

SOUNDS OF THE SHIP

HOST: The first recorded Chinese in North America arrived as sailors. They came as ?men before the mast? on Spanish galleons, as sailors to East Coast ports, and as shipbuilders to the Northwest Coast. China has a strong seafaring tradition, and in the 1700s, long before the California Gold Rush drew opportunists from all over the world, it was the sailors from China who made their way to the new country of America.

MUSIC

SOUND: OCEAN WATER

SAILOR: We came mostly from the Guangdong Province in China, on the southeast coast. Our fathers were fishermen and our grandfathers were shipbuilders. But we were adventurers. We wanted to see the world!

SOUND: LADY WASHINGTON SAILORS

SAILOR: When I was a child, I heard great stories of the Chinese Treasure Ships many centuries ago. I loved to hear tales of Chinese admiral Tseng-Ho and his sailing adventures from Africa to Australia. Every country wanted to trade with China. Then, they came to China to get our fine silk, furs, cotton, and porcelain. And the British hungered for our tea.

MUSIC AND SOUND DOWN

JACK TCHEN: The maritime tradition and the shipbuilding tradition has been very strong in China and in Asia. In fact, Asia was immersed in a vast intra-Asian trade that would extend into Africa, and of course, in ancient times through the Silk Route into the Mediterranean.

BOB KENNEDY: 99% of the people in the 18th century, early 19th century never went more than 20 miles from home. These people were given a chance to go see the world. It would have been a rough life but it would have been a good life. As a sailor you got three meals a day. Uh, you didn?t live with your farm animals.

SOUND: LADY WASHINGTON CREW

MUSIC

SAILOR: When the British and American sailing ships came, I went to the docks. I wanted a chance to explore, to leave China. To have adventures. I offered myself as a translator. I heard other men offer themselves as carpenters and laborers.

BOB KENNEDY: It would have taken eight months to a year to get to the Northwest coast from Boston. Then it took eight weeks to ten weeks to get to Hawaii. Four months to get to China, depending on wind, wave. The original Lady Washington was crewed with between 12 and 15 men. Sailors would jump ship in China and go to a homeward-bound ship. Uh, they would replace those sailors with Chinese.

MUSIC

SAILOR: Their ships were so different from ours. Their language, too. But we all understood the language of sailing.

BOB KENNEDY: Chinese ships were incredibly seaworthy. They had watertight compartments before western civilization. They had batten sails. They had balanced rudders. They had the compass. And it?s not surprising that they survived all the way across the Pacific.

The Japanese official was educated enough that he also knew Chinese so that they had a common language to talk.

MUSIC

SAILOR: When the Lady Washington landed in Japan, Captain John Kendrick tried to sell furs there and I had to translate for him. He was lucky he had Chinese on board. I wrote the Japanese officials a letter saying: ?This ship belongs to the Red Hairs from a land called America. Its cargo includes copper, iron, and fifty guns. In going from Flower Country to Skin Grass Country we do not pass your land, but we have drifted here under the stress of wind and wave. There are one hundred persons aboard this ship. The captain?s name is Kendrick.?

BOB KENNEDY: Three days after Kendrick left the shogunate army showed up to boot him out of Japan. So, Kendrick was lucky then.

MUSIC DOWN

JACK TCHEN: I think the very first Asians who enter into the United States come into the ports of the Northeast through trading lanes that are ultimately exchanging goods with different parts of Asia. This country was actually quite poor. It was just surviving the Revolutionary War. New York City for example was in great debt. And it sought to build up its wealth through trade with China.

SOUND: PORT SOUNDS, PEOPLE TALKING

As people were jumping ship or migrating from place to place looking for a better life, they began to find that places like New York City and Baltimore and Boston would have a port district made up of the working people tied to the ships and the trade. They would be people from all around the world. So I think these port districts created port cultures that were quite intermingled and in fact the forerunner to what we now think of as multicultural America.

MUSIC

SAILOR: Few of us had tombstones when we died. So many died at sea. But in Boston, there is a cemetery with a tombstone that says?

?Here lies Inter'd the body of Chow Mandarin, a native of China, aged 19 years??

Chow died in 1768. He died on board the Mac of Boston when the masthead fell on him. His own captain buried him and gave him a tombstone?

MUSIC DOWN

SOUND: PEOPLE ON THE DOCK

JACK TCHEN: We have bits and pieces of information about Chinese sailors who end up staying in New York City, marrying with Irish women oftentimes and having children. Having bank accounts, having property. So it?s clear that there are people of Asian descent who are settling in these ports in the Northeast as early as the 1800s.

SOUND: SEA GULLS

SAILOR: By 1855 we had a small community in New York. Some men had been there 20 years. We lived by the docks and we worked where we could ? selling goods, cigar making, cooking? I ran a boardinghouse. There were so few Chinese women. Most Chinese men married Irish women. We had children and we built decent lives.

JACK TCHEN: They were seen as heathens marrying heathens. They were not in fact considered white. So when you have Chinese intermarrying with Irish, I think these very fundamentalists believed that this was quite dangerous. This kind of race intermingling would lower the racial stock and the vitality of the nation.

SAILOR: Some newspapers wrote terrible articles about us and our Irish wives. They drew cartoons of us as savages and our wives as apes, with our children as confused animals who couldn?t speak any language.

SOUND: DOCK WORKERS & BIRDS

JACK TCHEN: We tend to think of multiculturalism as something very recent, but in fact this nation is founded on a complex multicultural heritage. These port cultures, uh are actually fundamental, I think, and border cultures. These places are just as defining as any notion of American purity. In fact, I think they really represent what the American experiment in fact is all about.

MUSIC

BOB KENNEDY: I work with crew and um, crew is closer than family. I have a family of over 450 people on this boat. I put my life in their hands every day. If they don?t belay a line correctly I can die. And I trust these people.

SAILOR: I loved working on the ship. It brought me closer to my fellow sailors. I didn?t know the same language. I didn?t sing the same songs. But we became brothers!

SOUND: LADY WASHINGTON CREW SINGING

HOST: In ?Unsung Sailors? we heard from Professor Jack Tchen of New York University and Bob Kennedy and the crew of the Lady Washington sailing ship.

This segment of Crossing East is brought to you by the Portland Chinese Classical Garden ?a cultural heritage destination at Portland Chinese Garden Dot Com.

More ?First Contacts? in a moment?I?m George Takei.

ANNOUNCER: In this segment of Crossing East, we heard Jason Wong as the Sailor. You?re listening to PRI ? Public Radio International.

SINGING DOWN

MUSIC BREAK

SEGMENT B

HOST: This is Crossing East? I?m George Takei.

Chapter Three of ?First Contacts.? ?Kanaka Village?

HBC STORE AMBIENCE FADES UP

WOMAN: Wonderful. Will this be on your HBC credit and HBC rewards for you today? No? These are great socks.

HOST: Few department stores can boast a three hundred year history. But here at the Hudson?s Bay Company store, there is a replica of a frontier trading post from the time when trading companies were the world?s most powerful instruments of globalization. Manager Suzan La Grove.

SOUND: SUZAN LAGROVE IN HBC GALLERY: Right now we?re looking at a typical retail store from the late 1800s? We?ve got you know, Bovril, which was good for your soups, etc. Good old cod liver oil, everybody needs that. You got your flour, your sugar, your coffee, your tea, some soap, your basic dishes, good old HBC point blanket to keep you warm. Your flannel shirts and your wool socks. And of course your gold pan, and your lanterns, and snowshoes, paddles for your canoe ? all these essentials of life.

HOST: To get these essentials, fur trappers traded fur pelts and then Hudson?s Bay Company sold the pelts for as much as a 3-thousand percent profit in China in the 1700s. Many British and American companies, while fighting over the territory of North America, hired anyone they could find to trap and transport those furs, including many Hawaiians.

SOUND: EXCAVATION

HOST: Hawaiian coral can be found mixed together in the foundation bricks of an excavated building in Fort Vancouver, Washington. This fort was the main supply depot and headquarters for Hudson?s Bay Company?s fur trading business. Fort Vancouver was built in the early 1800s and is one of the only physical reminders of the importance of Hawaii and Hawaiians in the making of the Pacific Northwest.

But there are other reminders: the town of Aloha, the Owyhee River. There are also memories of people whose Hawaiian ancestors crossed east to settle in America long before other settlers crossed west.

SOUND: WATER LAPPING & GULLS

SOUND: CATHY ROLAND SINGING

CATHY ROLAND: I?m Cathy Roland, and my great-grandfather came here from Hawaii in the mid-1800s.

The Hudson?s Bay Company was instrumental in bringing the Hawaiians here to the coast. They brought them here to work for the fur trade. My great-grandfather came here with the Hudson?s Bay Company and they, they arrived in Fort Vancouver, Washington. That was their main post at the time. He worked for many years with them. He became an interpreter very quickly, it seemed that he had an affinity for the language, and then he ended up going out on the trap lines and once you do the river systems a few times you know your way around. He became a guide.

He worked for them for ten years; it was two five-year terms. And at the end of that they told him they would either return them back to the Hawaiian Islands or they would offer them land here.

SOUND OF SEAGULLS DOWN

BRUCE WATSON: I?m Bruce Watson. Why did the Hawaiians leave Hawaii? There seems to be a whole variety of reasons, one of which is a pure sense of adventure. Perhaps a breakdown of the culture, the in-fighting that was going on. The Polynesians were great travelers, and they wanted to see the world, they wanted to travel.

TOM KOPPEL: I am Tom Koppel. To put this into perspective ? before Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii the Russians were already in Alaska. Captain Cook on an earlier voyage had already discovered Antarctica. The Spanish had been in Mexico for hundreds of years. So there was this very isolated large society and suddenly Captain Cook came and Hawaii was opened to whaling and missionaries and trade and it was such a shock.

BRUCE WATSON: The fur trade started with the furs that were brought back from the Cook expedition and sold in China for a great amount. Word got out to New England as well as England and so there was a rush and of course Hawaii is a midway point between China and the Northwest coast. It became a natural station for all the ships to stop. And of course they were picking up people as they went through.

SOUND: CHANTING AND WAVES

TOM KOPPEL: It was part of the deal that they could go back. The Hudson?s Bay Company had ships going back and forth a couple of times a year. At the same time when the ships went back they were bringing furs to places like China but they were stopping in Hawaii so they could drop off employees.

CATHY ROLAND: So they really encouraged them to stay and marry within the community and populate the coast, like, you know. So he, he chose to stay, with many of them did, he was not the only one by any means. Yes. My great-grandfather married into the native community. Mostly it was the men who came here to the coast for the fur trade. All of them, the French, the Hawaiians, the British, they all married with the native community. That?s why there?s such a mix of race here right now.

BRUCE WATSON: In the maritime fur trade there was East Indian Lascars who were working there. There were Chinese. Africans. French. Scots. English. There were people from Switzerland, there were people from Germany. You name it.

TOM KOPPEL: At the Hudson?s Bay forts, so we?re talking about before settlement; you had these outposts that were basically forts in the middle of Indian Territory. Now the most interesting of these fur trading communities was Fort Vancouver, by far the largest. It was bigger even than any town the Russians had in Alaska like Sitka. It had a population of over 500 fur trade employees. Of those, about half were Hawaiians. They lived outside the Fort in what was called the Kanaka Village. The word Kanaka simply means ?human being? or ?person.?

SOUND: WALKING OUTSIDE IN FORT VANCOUVER

SOUND: OPENING GATE

DOUG WILSON: I am Doug Wilson. In the 1850s the Americans began to refer to this place where we?re standing here as ?Kanaka Village.?

SOUND: DIGGING, SCRAPING

DOUG WILSON: So archaeologically, Fort Vancouver is the premiere historical archaeological site in the Pacific Northwest. And there have been excavations here since the 1940s. And you can see that we?ve delineated a few of the houses that were here. We have three on our property; there were actually two across the fence there that are related to native Hawaiians. One on some of the historical maps referred to it as ?Billy?s House,? which was William Kahelehele, who was the native Hawaiian preacher that was brought out by John McLoughlin to minister to the Hawaiians.

SOUND OF SCRAPING DOWN

LARRY BELL: I am Larry Bell, and I am European, Cosalish, and Hawaiian. On my Hawaiian side I am a descendent of William Mahoi, a Hawaiian laborer to the northwest coast of North America. There was very little information written about these people. The Hudson?s Bay Company may have employed someone, in this case William Mahoi who came from Honolulu. All they?re going to show is his name, and that is an anglified version, his name Mahoi. They?re going to show his name, what he did, how much he paid, when he started, when he left, end of story.

CATHY ROLAND: Mom and Dad and I went in I?m sure it was ?74, we went down to Hawaii for the very first time. Every family that had the name Naukana it seems showed up. There was 350 Naukanas in the airport. Every one of them with a flower lei on their arm. And they had to greet you with this flower lei and a kiss. Every one has to go on. So they?d pile them on until you were just buried under them and then they?d take off the lump, put it on the table, and along would come the next load. We have pictures of Uncle Paul just barely peeking out of these plumeria leis. It?s just beautiful. So I spent a lot of time visiting them and staying with them to get to know them. And just by being there you drink up this culture. All of a sudden you start seeing the similarities ? the way we lived here and the way they lived there. We had a few different dogs, and each one we called ?pokai.? Uncle Paul thought that was Hawaiian for ?dog.? So for years we had these dogs ?pokai.? Then once we got down there we realized that ?pokai? meant ?cat.? For years we had these dogs called ?cat.?

LARRY BELL: The knowledge of my ancestry certainly influenced my spirituality. To me, they were a people of their time and they worshiped and knew their ancestors in the way they did. So as a result of that, I?ve sort of taken on a greater respect and praise or worship for the gods of my ancestors. And throughout my research I had help from my ancestors. I believe my ancestors are with me on the other side. That they are on the other side waiting for me. And these are things I didn?t believe before.

CATHY ROLAND: I remember my uncles especially singing. They sang beautifully. And they sang songs that were, they called them Hapa Haole songs. Because they are often about Hawaii, like ?Beyond the Reef? and ?Blue Hawaii.? They weren?t in the Hawaiian language, but they were from Hawaii?these songs.

SOUND: CATHY ROLAND SINGING ?MORNING DEW?

TOM KOPPEL: There are lots of place names on the Northwest coast that have Hawaiian references although a lot of them are generic. They?re things like ?Kanaka Creek,? ?Kanaka Bar,? there?s an ?Owyhee River.? But then there?s a few towns, such as Kalama, Washington.

MAYOR PETE POULSEN: This plaque is to honor John Kalama and other Hawaiians and the role they played, along with the Native American Indians, in developing the Pacific Northwest. The 175th Anniversary of John Kalama?s arrival to the Pacific Northwest. Kalama, the little town with the big Aloha Spirit.

SOUND: CONCH & HAWAIIAN CHANTING

SOUND: HAWAIIAN DANCERS DANCE

MARIE KALAMA: I am Marie Kalama. I am the great-granddaughter of John Kalama, who the town is named after. The majority of us live on the Nisqually Indian reservation. This is probably the first time I am aware of that his ancestors came and walked his path. All of us that came are doing that. We get a part of him by being here. We?ve got a 40-foot warrior canoe. All the pullers are the great-grandchildren or the great-great grandchildren of John Kalama. Every one of them. It touches your heart, no matter where you?re from. When you walk where your grandfather or your great-grandfather was, or see a home they lived in or see a monument of them. It kind of touches your heart. No matter if you?re Native American or Hawaiian or any other culture.

SOUND: CHANTING & DRUMMING IN BOAT ON WATER

LARRY BELL: We as a group, as a society, I think in general have forgotten our past. We accept who we are today, we get by our daily lives, pay our credit cards and try to get to work on time and raise children, not realizing that there is a past here.

CATHY ROLAND: I grew up always knowing that we had a Hawaiian connection through my great-grandfather. I knew we were connected to the indigenous people here. But there are so many people up and down this coast that are of Hawaiian descent as I am but they don?t know. We weren?t white enough to be white. We weren?t Indian enough to be Indian. It was the Hawaiians that embraced us. If you had an ounce of Hawaiian blood in you, you were family, and welcome back home.

SOUND: CATHY ROLAND SINGING ?ALOHA OI?

HOST: ?Kanaka Village? by Sara Caswell Kolbet. Special thanks to the town of Kalama, Washington. We had funding from Humanities Washington for this story.

SINGING DOWN

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HOST: I?m George Takei?Here is the story of the first global drug wars?Chapter Four of First Contacts. ?Bitter Strength.?

The first English ship came to China in 1626. And the English became addicted to Chinese tea. By 1785, the English East India Company paid China 35 million pounds sterling per year for it. Most of Britain, America and some other European countries loved their tea. But rather than pay cash, they wanted to trade with China. But China didn?t need any goods. It was growing increasingly wealthy from tea sales. So Britain began selling Indian opium to China. And the British used their profits to buy tea. The opium trade was not legal in either country, and China fought back. Thus began the Opium Wars.

MUSIC FADES UNDER

SAILOR: The Chinese government was weak. First the Opium Wars?So much fighting in China. The Tai Ping Rebellion. The Boxer Rebellion?It was a terrible, terrible time.

JACK TCHEN: By the 1830s opium accounted for fully 2/3 of the value of all British imports into China. It was really becoming the chief trade item exchanged for tea. This spawns a series of battles in which the British and then the Americans join in, are defending the right to open trade, quote, unquote open trade in the name of a drug traffic as a wedge to further open up access to the markets within China as well as the goods that they want from China.

JUDY YUNG: They had to give extra territorial rights to Britain and later Germany, Russia, US, Japan, other countries also that set up treaties where they could trade with more than just the few ports that were open for trade in the middle 1800s. There was economic instability, and on top of that the natural disasters that constantly were always there. All these combinations I think led to poverty conditions.

JACK TCHEN: What we tend not to know about is the history of what?s now called the Coolie Trade. British and American ships in particular would be packing hundreds, thousands of South Asians as well as Chinese into those very same ships that were used to traffic enslaved Africans.

SAILOR: Some of us were drugged and taken to the ships. Some of us were taken in broad daylight and lost our freedom in a roll of the dice. We did not go willingly with these men. They made us sign papers and threw us like cargo into crowded, stinking ships. They call us ?coolie.? We cry to lose our families?our homes?

MUSIC UP UNDERNEATH

JUDY YUNG: Ku Li, the two characters, mean ?bitter strength.? The coolie trade also included Asian Indians as well as Chinese. And so coolie is really a Tamil term, an Indian term, and for Chinese they took that Indian term and made it into a compound term, ?bitter strength.? Men were either recruited or coerced into becoming contract laborers or coolie labor and then sent to Peru, mainly, and to Cuba and to the West Indies to work on the plantations under very harsh conditions.

JACK TCHEN: From 1838 to 1870 there were over half a million Chinese and South Asian men who were shipped in this coolie trade.

SAILOR: Many of us died before we could work off the eight years on the contract. But some of us lived. And we stayed and raised families in South America and the Caribbean. Some escaped from the ships and settled in New York, New Orleans? In any American port?we were there?

JACK TCHEN: Even though the government may have been officially saying the coolie trade was evil, and kind of began to officially ban it in the mid-19th century, merchants were still heavily involved in trafficking of human bodies as well as drugs.

MUSIC

SAILOR: We came from China, India. Three generations from now, our descendents will be proud to say we, Coolie Workers, helped to build America.

JACK TCHEN: If different parts of Asia are seen as shifting perils, then we?re never going to be able to get beyond a historical cycle in which the American self is always defined as new and progressive and these foreigners are somehow defined as dangerous, potential spies, or perpetual foreigners, others who can never be part of the American dream or the American vision of we the people.

SAILOR: In just a few years, our cousins will come by choice. They will earn money to send home to their families. They will follow the dream of Gold Mountain, ?Gum San?. They will work the mines and railroads just as we sailed the seas. We Ku Li workers. We workers with bitter strength.

HOST: You heard ?Bitter Strength? by Sara Caswell Kolbet featuring Professor Jack Tchen, of New York University?s Asian Pacific American Studies Institute. You also heard Judy Yung, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This segment of Crossing East is brought to you by the Portland Chinese Classical Garden ?a cultural heritage destination at Portland Chinese Garden Dot Com.

?I?m George Takei.

ANNOUNCER: In this segment of Crossing East, we heard Jason Wong as the Sailor. This is PRI, Public Radio International.

MUSIC BREAK

SEGMENT C

HOST: This is Crossing East. I?m George Takei.

FAXON: We?re going to make a shrimp dish for you? it?s called pancit?

HOST: Lillian Mae Faxon rinses a bowl of shrimp in her kitchen. She will cook the shrimp with oil and garlic to make pancit, a Filipino noodle dish. Faxon is a seventh generation Filipina in Louisiana. Her family represents a chapter in American history that?s often overlooked. Few have heard the story of the Manila Men, the first Filipino explorers in America?

When we think of Asian history in the New World, the Chinese laborers who built California?s railroads usually come to mind. That was in the early 1860s. But there?s evidence America?s first contact with Asians was much earlier than that.

Our final chapter of ?First Contacts?? ?Manila Men? by Ruby de Luna.

PLAY PIECE

NARRATION: Louisiana?s rich history often focuses on its Spanish and French roots. But deep in the bayous of New Orleans is a little known fact about the Manilamen, Filipino seamen who created the first Asian settlement in North America. Gary Okihiro is professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

PROF. OKIHIRO: The Manilamen are largely Filipino but also Chinese sailors who sailed on these Spanish galleons since 1565, which traversed the Pacific Ocean between Manila and Acapulco, in Mexico.

MARINA ESPINA: ?and they had to jump ship in Acapulco, to get away from their cruel masters.

NARRATION: Marina Espina wrote the book ?Filipinos in Louisiana,? when she was on the faculty at the University of New Orleans and researching Filipinos in Louisiana.

MARINA ESPINA: Going back to the Manilamen?they didn?t want to go home because they were treated badly, harshly. And they were not paid. So they decided to just jump ship and just run away from their master, as far as they can.

OKIHIRO: Wherever these ships landed, many of the crew ran away and so ship captains would have to commandeer, which is a very gentle term, actually kidnap, a lot of workers to actually man their ships because they needed those bodies so yes, upon arrival in a place like Acapulco, I would suspect that a good number or percentage of the crew actually ran away from the ship.

ESPINA: And they came drifting themselves to Louisiana and they settled in the marshes and the bayous of Louisiana.

OKIHIRO: The Manilamen were not exemplary of the typical immigrant story?

The typical migrant story was one of necessities and also opportunities. And that?s the typical narrative within US history. Now many, well actually a few historians, including myself, have seen Asian migration to the Americas not in those terms but more analogous to the African slave trade, that is, that many of these early migrants were in fact lured if not forced on board ships and deployed as labor. And those labor then were transported to the new world because of necessities whether on European ships or on European plantations in the new world.

So the Manilamen thus were not seeking to come to America, you see. The Spaniards went to the Philippines in the first instance, got their labor and goods from the Philippines and China and so forth and used their labor to transport these goods which enriched them and the Spanish empire since 1565.

ESPINA: Being Filipino seamen who were very adept in their trade, and they were good fishermen, too. So they decided to build their a la Filipino villages with their houses. And just like the ones that you find in the southern part of the Philippines now with stilt housing the post, they will not touch water. So they had that built along the bayous and the marshes of Louisiana.

The environment was there for them to establish a good life. Although they did not have any wealth, they didn?t have any money; but they were able to survive because of their trade, like fishing.

They didn?t know that they were in New Orleans. They didn?t know where they were until one instant where Italian luggermen, fishermen, came across this settlement in St. Malo in St. Bernard parish.

NARRATION: Lafcadio Hearn, a reporter for Harper?s Weekly, came across the Manilamen and was the first to write about them.

MUSIC

ACTOR: Below the houses are patches of grass and pools of water and stretches of gray mud, pitted with the hoof-prints of hogs. Sometimes these hoof-prints are crossed with the tracks of an alligator, and a pig is missing. Chickens are there too?sorry-looking creatures; many have but one leg, others have but one foot: the crabs have bitten them off. All these domestic creatures of the place live on fish.

ESPINA: So finally, Lafcadio Hearn who was the reporter of the Times-State in Louisiana. And with an artist he decided to visit the village because he was intrigued. Who are these people? His article was published in Harpers Weekly in 1883.

ACTOR: Such is the land; its human inhabitants are not less strange. Most of them are cinnamon-colored men. The features are irregular without being actually repulsive; some have the cheekbones very prominent, and the eyes of several are set slightly aslant. The hair is generally intensely black and straight, but with some individuals it is curly and browner. In Manila there are several varieties of the Malay race, and these Louisiana settlers represent more than one type.

ESPINA: And they lived in harmony. They would go out in their fishing boats. Because they were already professional fishermen when they came to the new world so they would go out fishing everyday and then at night in their leisure time they would play craps?

ACTOR: It is at Hilario?s great casa that the Manila men pass stormy evenings, playing monte or a species of Spanish keno. When the cantador, the caller sings out the numbers, he always accompanies the annunciation with some rude poetry characteristic of fisher life or Catholic faith:

Pareja de uno:
Dos piquetes de rivero...
Numero cuatro
Las casa del gato.
Seis con su nueve
Arriba y abajo?

NARRATION: It was their search for new fishing grounds that also led the men to meet some of the bayou women, many of them German, Italian and French transplants. Espina says it was the beginning of interracial marriages and second-generation Filipinos.

ESPINA: Because of that isolation they didn?t mingle with the community, so we lost about 2-3 generations of Filipinos that way? so we lost that time except for a few who had the idea of going to another parish, the Jefferson parish, where it?s full of sea life, seafood and all that, so they decided to establish a good settlement over there which became very popular. They call it Manila Village.

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ISABEL WELCH: I?m Isabel Gedoria Welch. My mother?s father was pure Filipino. But my mother?s mother, she was all the European nations. My father came from Manila, Philippine islands in about 1920. And he worked in California, and them went up to Alaska, came down to Utah and then to Texas. I was born and raised around and in Manila Village?because my father was a fisherman. And the boat that we lived in was my home. My father was a commercial fisherman and most of the time trawled, but just he, my mother and I were on the boat and she did all the things a sailor would do on the boat, plus she would do whatever thing a woman would do on the boat?she?d do the cooking, the washing and everything.

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We usually would get up before 4 in the morning. And we?d head out to wherever daddy think maybe there might be some shrimp. And when we get there, we?d let down the tail of the trawl and that would be one of my good jobs.

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If we caught a lot of shrimp we just put it up on the deck and the shrimp, fish crab, everything had to go in there. And then he would tie the tail out and send it out again, the tail of the trawl. While we?re dragging the second time we?d be separating the shrimp from everything else that was on the deck, you see??we made maybe 2-3 drags a day and then we?d head into Manila Village ?cause we had a camp in Manila village and we stayed there.

There was always men that worked on the platform that helped daddy wash and put the shrimp into huge baskets and they?d drag it, well, they had like a little cart going, to the boiling room. And they?d boil the shrimp, you see, and then take it out and spread it out on the platform, you see, and the sun would dry it.

ESPINA: One of the biggest contributions of the Filipinos in Manila Village was the drying of the shrimp, which was an industry. And they went as far wide as China and all over America?the people in Manila Village put Manila Village in the map.

FILIPINO FOLK MUSIC

WELCH: When the shrimp would get real, real dried, they?d spread the shrimp out on to the platform and it looked like they were dancing on it. They?d put big brogans on?big, big heavy shoes, you know heavy, heavy shoes, and they?d get on that shrimp; sometimes it would be anywhere from 4 to 6 men. And that?s where the thing came from on dancing the shrimp.

The children always tried to get in there with them and do that with them but of course we didn?t have the big shoes.

NARRATION: Once the shrimp were released from their brittle shell, they were packed into barrels and shipped overseas. Dried shrimp was the main industry that put Manila Village on the map. In the early 1920?s machines replaced the traditional shrimp dance. Manila Village would continue to produce dried shrimp for several decades.

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WELCH: I?m very sorry to say Manila Village does not exist anymore? Unfortunately, the whole village was beginning to deteriorate. People wasn?t staying there anymore?Then in 1965 hurricane Betsy came and just wiped it all away. The only thing left was some posts and everything?I don?t think there are even any kind of markers around.

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ESPINA: If you delve into the New Orleans life they had the Mardi gras, the Filipinos were very, very active. You see, in the Philippines they always had this Ati-atihan, they had the mariones, there would be dancing during the fiesta or the patron saint celebration so Mardi gras was a natural for these Filipinos.

LILLIAN MAE BURTANOG FAXON: I?m Lillian Mae Faxon. And we?re sitting in my kitchen looking at old pictures and discussing other subjects about the family. Well, I have one sister here, that?s Joyce Pasqual, I have an aunt by marriage, her name is Eiola Martinez, she was married to my uncle, who was the brother of my mother. And I have one daughter here, Rhonda Fox. And also Marina is our guest today.

Mardi gras has been a part of our lives as far back as I can remember because there were always Filipino dances and we went with our parents. The grown ups were there and all of the children were there also.

EIOLA MARTINEZ: We used to go to the dance and take the little ones with us and sit them on a bench and dance with them.

FAXON: And like Joyce said, she was only three years old when she was on the float.

JOYCE PASQUAL: Yup, and I was in the ball, too.

NARRATION: The Filipinos were known for their fishing skills. But the rest of New Orleans took notice of the community in 1935. A Filipino named Slim del Prado organized and designed a float for the Mardi gras parade, Filipino style. From the float, women threw handmade flowers to the crowd while the men strummed guitars. The float was impressive. It won first prize.

PASQUAL: I?m Joyce Burtanog Pasqual, I?m the sister of Lillian Mae Faxon and that?s me right there.

NARRATION: Joyce Pasqual was a little girl when she rode the winning float. She says the float was remarkable at the time because it was the first motorized float in the parade.

PASQUAL: You don?t see the truck under here. There?s a truck pulling this? it was not pulled by mules like most of the floats were at that time. And I think that?s why people were amazed. The floats were beautiful themselves but they were amazed how this was moving without being done with mules.

FAXON: Without a tractor or mules.

PASQUAL: Most of them was mules in those days, they didn?t have no tractor. And it was all handmade and I can remember when Mae was on a float, and they try to pull the flowers off and we?d hit them with the paddles so they wouldn?t pull the flowers or we wouldn?t have no more flowers by the time we got to Canal Street.

FAXON: It was really pretty because it was made like a boat and the men had oars so as we were rolling down the street, they were rowing, you see. So it really did make a good impression.

NARRATION: It was a significant moment for the Filipino community. Author Marina Espina says the recognition helped raise the community?s visibility.

ESPINA: And that was the beginning of their identity in New Orleans. They were known as Filipinos, not anymore Asian, not chinks, not any other derogatory names, but they were known as Filipinos? the Mardi gras was their important, important event to be known as Filipinos, not any other ethnic group.

FAXON: When I was a child I can remember shopping with my mother and one of the sales girls talked to another sales girl and she says, I wonder what nationality they are. And the other one said it must be Chinese. She says no, she doesn?t look Chinese. It has to be something else. I said we?re Filipinos!

HOST: Manila Men by Ruby de Luna? with the voices of, Nestor Enriquez, Marina Espina, Isabel Gedoria Welch, Lillian Mae Burtanog Faxon, Joyce Burtanog Pascual, Rhonda Richoux Fox and Gary Okihiro, Professor at Columbia University.

Special thanks to Fred and Dorothy Cordova of the Filipino American National Historical Society.

We bid a fond farewell to the Burtanog sisters and their ancestors, the Manila Men, as we close our segment on First Contacts to America.

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HOST: We came in many waves across the ocean, across lands, to America.

We worked, we built lives, we brought much to this country?
? first on sailing ships
?then in gold mines and railroad tunnels
But always in search of a dream?

This is Crossing East?our stories, our history, our America?
I?m your host?George Takei?

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ANNOUNCER:

Crossing East is produced with funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Spirit Mountain Community Fund and individual donors of MediaRites Productions.

Music for this program was provided by Angelo Pizarro.

Additional music and our theme music is by Shasta Taiko from their CD Spirit Drum.

Our actors were, in Manila Men, Andres Alcala and in Unsung Sailors and Bitter Strength? Jason Wong

Our lead scholar is Judy Yung, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Managing Editor is Catherine Stifter, The Associate Producer is Sara Caswell Kolbet. The Crossing East Engineer is Clark Salisbury with technical assistance by Michael Johnson. The Marketing and Outreach Director is Ping Khaw. The Executive Producer is Dmae Roberts.

To find out more about Crossing East and this program?go to CrossingEast.org.

Support for Crossing East comes from this station and Public Radio International stations and is made possible in part by the PRI Series Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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