Transcript for the 59-min version version of Crossing East: Exclusion & Resistance - Program Four

PROGRAM FOUR
Exclusion and Resistance

BILLBOARD

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

MUSIC UP

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

CASEY LEE: And some people do call this the Ellis Island of the West ?Give us your tired, your poor,? and Angel Island was known at the time as the Guardian of the Western Gate.

JAIDEEP SINGH: One year they say you?re white but not Caucasian and in the next year they say you?re Caucasian but not white.

DAWN MABALON: And so it makes these people who are nationals into alien they lose this kind of elevated status above alien.

PORTHIRA CHIMM: The laws out of 1996 was targeted at welfare reform. And it was clear, that America was telling immigrants that we don?t care about you and we blame you for our welfare ills.

HOST: I?m George Takei? When we return??Exclusion and Resistance? on Crossing East?

(NEWS BREAK)

(SEGMENT A)

MUSIC ? TAIKO ? ?ICE FALL?

FLUTE

HOST: I?m George Takei, your host for Crossing East? Our stories, our history, our America? We present Exclusion and Resistance. Chapter One? Yellow Peril by Jon Kalish.

KARI: Hello, Pappy/ I feel wacky/ Just had a little cup of saki/ Yes, sir, that?s my baby/ No, sir, I don?t mean maybe/ Yes, sir, that?s my baby now.

HOST: Comic singer Harry Stewart made a living performing as the stereotypical Harry Kari in the 1950?s and 60?s. This recording is part of a collection of Asian-Americana at New York University. The collection shows how Asians have been viewed as the Perpetual Foreigner in America. Professor Jack Tchen runs NYU?s Asian Pacific American Studies Institute.

TCHEN: Even though they may be American, American citizens, they?ve always been represented as the foreigner. Some times as the good foreigner, the friendly foreigner. Sometimes the Japanese are our friends and sometimes the Japanese are our evil enemies. Sometimes the Chinese are that way. Sometimes the Koreans are that way. And it?s constantly flipping back and forth.

HOST: White Americans of the late 19th century expressed their fears of an Asian invasion with the term ?Yellow Peril.? This fear led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It formally barred Chinese immigrants from entering the United States?the only time one racial ethnicity has been excluded from the U.S. But many other laws targeted immigrants before that.

ACTOR VOICES IN COLLAGE:

1790 ? Nationality Act ? only ?free white persons? could become naturalized US citizens?
1854 ? People v. Hall ? ruled that Chinese could not give testimony in court.
1862 ? California ?Anti Coolie? tax on the ?Mongolian race??
1882 ? Chinese Exclusion Act ? Only Chinese merchants, teachers, students, diplomats, and tourists were allowed to come.

HOST: The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 as a good-will gesture to China, a U.S. ally during World War Two. At the same time, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast were detained in internment camps. Exclusionary and discriminatory laws thrived in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, preventing Asians in America from becoming citizens and owning property, or revoking the citizenship of American women who married Asian men. Always there was the fear of the Yellow Peril?

SOUND: ELLIS ISLAND ANNOUNCEMENT

HOST: From 1892 to 1924, 20 million immigrants were welcomed to America through Ellis Island of New York City.

SOUND: CROSSFADE ELLIS ISLAND WITH KIDS AT ANGEL ISLAND

HOST: But on the other side of the country, at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, thousands of immigrants faced detention for weeks and months. Tour Guide Casey Lee?

CASEY LEE: And some people do call this the Ellis Island of the West. When people think of Ellis Island they get a very romanticized view of immigration. You have the statue of liberty that right next door welcoming people, ?Give us your tired, your poor,? and Angel Island was known at the time as the Guardian of the Western Gate.

HOST: From 1910-1940, during the time that the Angel Island Immigration Station was in operation, Asian immigrants were locked up in stark barracks and many endured lengthy interrogations by officials. This was not the welcome most had envisioned.

Chapter Two?Angel Island by Dmae Roberts and Michael Johnson.

SOUND: KIDS DISEMBARKING FROM BOAT

DMAE ROBERTS: The fog bell clangs and a group of fifty children exit down a ramp from a ferry to the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. For 30 years, Angel Island was the entry point for close to 175-thousand Chinese immigrants. Now it?s a national park where tourists and students can explore a dark time in American history.

SOUND: WALKING

ERIKA GEE: The gate up here used to lead to a covered walkway and it would go directly to the mess hall?

DMAE ROBERTS: Erika Gee, education director of Angel Island, wends her way through a maze of barbed wire fences leading to a series of yellow wooden barracks.

ERIKA GEE: And essentially with the covered walkway is that once immigrants went inside the administration building they pretty much didn?t go outside again. And so most of the time they really were inside and they didn?t really have free access outside?

DMAE ROBERTS: Immigrants from throughout the Pacific passed through Angel Island but it was the Chinese who were detained for anywhere from two weeks to two years. Families were split up and underwent medical examinations. Then they were housed in separate quarters.

ERIKA GEE: Women were held in this room probably in the first two to three years of the operations of the immigration station.

DMAE ROBERTS: We pass through a dark hallway and enter a gray room with no curtains. Gee points to rows of metal bunk beds stacked three on top of each other.

ERIKA GEE: You know these people were living in very close living quarters. Women and men were separated. Women traveling with children would also have their children with them. If boys were traveling with their mom and they were about 12, 13, or 14 boys would actually be housed with the men. So for kids this is a really scary thing. Imagine, you know, traveling and suddenly being separated?you had to go with all these men now.

DMAE ROBERTS: Gee says that health code inspectors set a maximum number of 60 people to be housed in this room. But she says they always exceeded that. Everything in the room is a shade of gray?even the walls and floors. It?s hard not to think of it as a dorm room in a jailhouse. The men?s quarters, located in a separate building, are bigger. More men immigrated. The people housed in these barracks never knew how long they would be detained or if they were going to be deported.

ERIKA GEE: So the men who were housed here would pretty much be in here all day. They would go downstairs to that mess hall, down the covered walkway and they would go for breakfast, they would go for lunch, and then they would go maybe for a snack in the afternoon, and then a dinner. You ate your meals, you might have a time outside, but the majority of it was spent confined into one room with lots and lots of other people.

DMAE ROBERTS: The only other activities were the daily interrogations. Through a translator, Chinese men, women and children were taken to a small room with a wooden desk and two chairs. They faced questioning about their lives back home and their relatives or friends in America. The interrogators were looking for any discrepancies in their stories so they could be used as reasons for deportation. Dale Ching was sixteen when he arrived at Angel Island and he remembers the fear and paranoia the interrogations brought.

DALE CHING: Well I was there for that many months and I was waiting, waiting for the interrogation. When after interrogation then we can more or less freely talk about things. Because after interrogation, we still worry about it because some stranger might be a spy to talk about you to an official. But you have to know who?s who to talk to.

DMAE ROBERTS: Ching now works as a docent for Angel Island and on his tours he talks about the lack of personal privacy.

DALE CHING: You?re going in to take a shower, no curtain. You?re going in to the toilet, you sit there in your commode and no partition between. But the sleeping quarter, ten o?clock, the light will go out. Every day. The light go out. And no matter what you do you have to go to bed. But the bathroom, yes, the light is on all the time. But you kind of scary to go.

DMAE ROBERTS: Ching was not alone in his reaction to the detention. Chinese detainees carved their responses all over the walls of the men?s barracks.

ERIKA GEE: So the poem reads: ?Detained in the wooden house for several tens of days / It is all because of the Mexican Exclusion Law which implicates me. It is a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess??

DMAE ROBERTS: Erika Gee points out poetry written in Chinese characters now barely visible on the walls.

ERIKA GEE: And then the second poem reads, ?From now on I am departing from this building / All of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me / Don?t say that everything within is the western style / Even if it is built of jade, it is turned into a cage.?

DMAE ROBERTS: A great deal of care went into creating this poetry. First one man wrote it. Then another carved the characters skillfully onto the barrack walls.

JUDY: People were very aware at Angel Island that they were being discriminated against because they were Chinese, and that they were unable to do anything about the situation?

DMAE ROBERTS: Judy Yung is the co-author of ?Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.? Along with Mark Him Lai and Jenny Lim, they documented the poetry and oral history of detainees.

JUDY YUNG: All the poems in this collection we know were written by men because the poems by the women were in a building that was destroyed in the fire in the 1940s, so we have no records of poems by women. Many of the poems I think reflect a sense of sadness, depression, loneliness, because these were immigrants that were being detained for weeks and months at a time and they were just feeling very frustrated and depressed and yearning to be freed or returned home.

MUSIC

JUDY YUNG: ?Random Thoughts Deep at Night.?

JUDY READS IN CANTONESE AND ENGLISH

JUDY YUNG: ?In the quiet of night I heard faintly the whistling of wind. The forms and shadows sadden me. Upon seeing the landscape I composed a poem. The floating clouds, the fog, darken the sky. The moon shines faintly as the insects chirp. Grief and bitterness entwined are heaven-sent. The sad person sits alone, leaning by a window.?

DMAE ROBERTS: The poetry conjures up images of male detainees carving onto walls as they lay in their bunk beds in overcrowded barracks. Some of the poetry like ?The Weak Shall Conquer? talks about revenge for mistreatment.

JUDY READS IN CANTONESE AND THEN IN ENGLISH.

JUDY YUNG: ?Leaving behind my writing brush and removing my sword I came to America. Who was to know two streams of tears would flow upon arriving here? If there comes a day when I shall have retained my ambition and become successful, I will certainly behead the barbarians and spare not a single blade of grass.?

DMAE ROBERTS: Judy Yung considers the poetry an act of resistance and protest.

JUDY: They are ways that the Chinese could vent their frustrations, express their anger, express how they feel that they?ve been wronged and how they hope someday to seek revenge and to right the wrong. I think that it?s one of the few evidences we have that early Chinese immigrants and what they thought about the Chinese exclusion act and the way they were incarcerated at the Angel Island immigration station.

SOUND OF KIDS AT ANGEL ISLAND FADE UP.

JUDY: If you read some of the poems it also says this is a record of what happened to us. It?s also a way for us to tell those who will be following us what to expect and to console them and to encourage and support them, especially if they bothered to carve them into the walls and not just penned or penciled them in, they must have thought about how this would be read by others and I wonder if it isn?t also a record of resistance for future generations.

DMAE ROBERTS: That?s what keeps Dale Ching giving tours to schoolchildren at Angel Island. He like other former detainees find it hard to even come back to face the fences that once locked them in.

DALE CHING: Everybody, they mention Angel Island they don?t want to talk about it. I can see why they don?t want to talk about it. At least I know I?m doing something. History is history.

KIDS AND MUSIC FADE OUT

HOST: ?Angel Island? by Dmae Roberts and Michael Johnson. We had help from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. Find photos and links to all our stories at CrossingEast.org.

You?re listening to Exclusion and Resistance?on Crossing East. I?m George Takei.

ANNOUNCER: This is PRI-Public Radio International.

MUSIC BREAK

(SEGMENT B)

MUSIC FADES DOWN

HOST: I?m George Takei, your host for Crossing East. We?re featuring stories about Exclusion policies and Resistance by Asian immigrants.

During the dreaded immigration review process, Chinese immigrants were asked minute details about their family history and living conditions in China. Their answers had to agree with those of their sponsors and witnesses to prove their identities and right to enter the US. Since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, every Chinese immigrant was interrogated in this way until 1943 when it was repealed.

With poverty and political chaos in China, many Chinese looked to America for refuge. But with the Exclusion Act barring all but a few, Chinese immigrants had to find another way around the system.

Children of parents who entered as paper sons still feel the sting of that interrogation process. Judy Yung is a professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her father entered as a paper son and her mother as a legitimate wife of a merchant.

Chapter Three. ?Paper Sons.?

INTERVIEWER: What are all your names?

JUDY YUNG: My Chinese name is Tom Bic Fong, but my birth certificate, and everything else, says that my name is Judy Yung.

INTERVIEWER: Your right to enter the United States will be considered by this Board.

JUDY YUNG: Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, only certain classes of immigrants could come to the United States from China between 1882 and 1943.

INTERVIEWER: The burden is upon you to prove that you are not subject to exclusion under any provision of the Immigration Laws and all evidence in your behalf must be submitted at this hearing.

JUDY YUNG: My father immigrated to America in 1921. 15 years old at the time. The way he came was that his uncle in the United States was able to buy papers that said he was the son of a merchant in Stockton by the name of Yung Ung.

INTERVIEWER: What are all your names?

JUDY YUNG: So my father, whose name was Tom Yip Jing, his surname is Tom, came to the United States, claiming to be Yung Hing?s son, the second son of this merchant in Stockton. The papers that were bought for him by his uncle cost 1500 dollars. One hundred dollars for every year of age.

INTERVIEWER: Advised as to the nature and crime for the penalty of perjury.

JUDY YUNG: Immigration had no way of knowing who was coming in as a merchant or as a son or a wife of a US citizen without putting them through some kind of interrogation or questioning.

INTERVIEWER: For the record, why are you appearing here today?

JUDY YUNG: The San Bruno, California National Archives branch has all of the Angel Island transcripts. And the reason why they kept all these files was that they had to recall files when new immigrants from the same family came through so they would ask the same questions and see that there?s a consistant pattern in terms of the responses about people?s background and identities. So I was able to go there and find my mother and my father?s immigration files and the transcripts of the interrogation.

INTERVIEWER: What are all your names? Why are you appearing here today? Please describe the house of your maternal grandparents in which you were living at Macao?

JUDY YUNG: And so those kinds of questions were asked of the immigrant and then they would ask the same questions of the sponsor, whether it was their husband, or their father, whoever was going to be the witness,

INTERVIEWER: Why are you appearing here today? What are all the names you know for your husband?

JUDY YUNG: And the answers had to agree.

INTERVIEWER: Your wife states that the north kitchen skylight is not equipped with glass and that the smoke from the stove goes out through that skylight. What do you say to that?

JUDY YUNG: One or two wrong answers could mean that you would be deportable.

INTERVIEWER: What do you say to that? The burden is upon you. What are all the names you know for your husband?

JUDY YUNG: And even people who were true sons and true wives would fail the examination because if the other person remembered differently. So people really fearful of that interrogation and they knew it was going to come and they would have these coaching notes that they would memorize prior to even coming to this country in able to prepare for these examinations.

INTERVIEWER: Alleged husband and father sworn and admonished that if at any time he should fail to understand the interpreter to immediately so state. Advised as to the nature and penalty for the crime of perjury.

JUDY YUNG: Those who were of the merchant class who had the right to bring their wives and children to this country would claim that they had more children than they did and then they would sell these identities to other fellow villagers so that they can come pose as sons and daughters of the merchant class. And then in 1906 the earthquake destroyed all the birth certificates, birth records at city hall in San Francisco. Anyone who stepped forward and claimed that they were US citizens would be believed and they could then also report that not only were they a US citizen but they had four sons in China, which then created four slots, by which they could sell these slots to others in China.

INTERVIEWER: Applicant 11-14 was too young to testify but gave evidence of regarding Jew Law Ying as her mother.

JUDY YUNG: And I think until the day he died he was always worried that he was going to be deported. So he told us never to tell anyone what our real surnames were and to never tell anyone who my father really is and where he really is from.

INTERVIEWER: Testimony has been taken from the alleged wife, applicant 11-13, and from Yung Hin Sen concerning their marriage and subsequent stay together in China.

JUDY YUNG: And when my mother came in 1940 my father was the witness, and so she was asked about a hundred questions. He was asked the same hundred questions.

INTERVIEWER: [CROSSING OVER EACH OTHER] Your wife states that the north kitchen skylight is not equipped with glass. Why are you appearing here today??What are all the names you know for your husband? Please describe the house of your maternal grandparents in which you were living at Macao? What are all your names? What do you say to that?

JUDY YUNG: I know I?m born in this country, I know I have rights. And I?m a US citizen, I know they can?t deport me, but it?s just that my father always drummed this into our heads. He always made us, you know, feel very afraid of immigration and of white authorities because we?re illegals, and we knew this.

INTERVIEWER: Advised as to the nature and penalty for the crime of perjury. Crime of perjury. Penalty for the crime of perjury.

JUDY YUNG: It just shows us how complicated and how expensive and how arduous this whole process was for everybody concerned.

INTERVIEWER: No discrepancies worthy of mention were brought out by the testimony.

JUDY YUNG: The paper son system was an act of resistance. It was an act of circumvention. Resistance can also be seen as finding ways to circumvent discriminatory and unfair laws to the Chinese immigrants. And I think what those immigration documents tell is, is how people had to lie in order to circumvent that immigration exclusionary law to make it into this country.

INTERVIEWER: Your right to enter the United States will be considered by this Board. The burden is upon you to prove that you are not subject to exclusion?

HOST: Paper Sons by Sara Caswell Kolbet featured Judy Yung and testimonies of her parents, printed in her book ?Unbound Voices.?

MUSIC ENDS

HOST: From 1907 to 1917 a few thousand men and a handful of women from the Punjab area in northern India made their way to North America. The Punjab was a rich agricultural region, but under British rule, many peasant farmers could not pay the high taxes. A famine from 1899 to 1903 decimated their cattle, and the farmers ended up losing their lands. There were Hindus and Muslims among those forced to seek their fortunes in America, but most were followers of the Sikh religion.

HOST: Judge Brar?s father Kehar Singh first arrived in California in 1913.

JUDGE BRAR: Dad and, and my uncle Dalsing came in 1913. They landed in San Francisco and they didn?t have the $5 apiece to pay the port fee and for $5 they turned them back. Now $5 doesn?t sound like a lot of money, but it was back then.

HOST: South Asians arrived in a society that first welcomed cheap labor, then excluded each Asian immigrant group in turn. By the early 1920s, Punjabis fleeing discrimination, racism, and religious persecution were looking to settle. They sought somewhere safe, somewhere rural to worship and live in peace. That search played a key role in fighting a legal battle that would represent all Asians in America.

Chapter Four? ?Defining American? by Sara Caswell Kolbet.

VALARIE KAUR: They worked as farmers. They made their way down California?s coast until they settled in Clovis, which is near Fresno in California?s central valley.

SARA KOLBET: Filmmaker Valarie Kaur has been tracing her grandfather?s history with the help of her father, Judge Brar.

JUDGE BRAR: Farmers would let them live in barns and, and at first they were a little bit hesitant to give them work because they looked so different. My dad used to tell me how, you know, at first it was kind of difficult to get work.

SARA KOLBET: Valarie Kaur named her film company New Moon Productions after the translation of the name of her grandfather?s village in India. For her latest film, ?Divided We Fall,? she interviewed her father about her grandfather, whom she calls ?Baba Ji.?

VALARIE KAUR (off mic): Why do you think Baba Ji came to America?

JUDGE BRAR: Well, Valarie, I think in those days in India it was the English that were ruling there and they pretty much treated the Indians as slaves. My dad and my uncle decided to come here for a better opportunity.

SARA KOLBET: Here in America, Kehar Singh faced legislated discrimination that was directed at all Asians with special restrictions placed on South Asians.

VALARIE KAUR: Due to the Asian Exclusion Acts my grandfather was not allowed to become a citizen. He was not allowed to own land. He was not allowed to leave the country, because he would not be allowed back once he returned. So he could not marry an Indian wife.

JAIDEEP SINGH: The Chinese had the China Exclusion Act in 1882. In 1907 there was a Gentleman?s Agreement between Theodore Roosevelt and the Emperor of Japan, which excluded Japanese. That same year, beginning in 1907, there were executive restrictions put in place by the president. To limit the number of South Asians.

SARA KOLBET: Jaideep Singh is a doctoral candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He points out the pattern of exclusion continued when California passed Alien Land Laws in 1913 and 1920 that kept non-citizens from owning land.

JAIDEEP SINGH: And these laws were specifically directed at Asians, primarily Chinese and Japanese, but also South Asians to an extent. Of course, Asians were very clever and they found ways to evade these laws. For example the 1913 law had a loophole.

JUDGE BRAR: So a lot of the Indians that came in those days married Mexican women or American women. Mostly Mexican because they were very similar to Indian women as far as their cooking and their culture was somewhat similar. They would marry those women and they would buy the property in the woman?s name.

JAIDEEP SINGH: And what many Asians did was to place that land in the name of their children or of friends? children who were American born, and therefore citizens by birth. By 1920, a second Alien Land Law was passed in California which closed that loophole. But you had these Alien Land Laws throughout the country, including places like Kansas that had almost no Asians.

SARA KOLBET: Only citizens could own land and only ?whites? could become citizens. But two men had the courage to question the definition of ?white? in the courts. Although their cases failed, they brought to light the racism of the court system at the time.

JAIDEEP SINGH: One year they say you?re white but not Caucasian and in the next year they say you?re Caucasian but not white.

BRUCE LABRACK: By the 1920s there was a fairly negative feeling in general about immigration to the United States from Asia.

SARA KOLBET: Bruce La Brack is a Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the University of the Pacific in California.

BRUCE LABRACK: The first case in which this did deny citizenship to a group of people was the Ozawa case?

JAIDEEP SINGH: ?in which Ozawa came before the United States Supreme Court and said look, I went to Berkeley high school, I went to the University of California, we speak English at home, my family goes to a Christian church. We are Americans in every way. He pointed to his skin and he said ?Look my skin is actually much whiter than Southern Europeans who have been granted citizenship.? So the Supreme Court said that you may be white but you?re not Caucasian.

SARA KOLBET: In 1922, the court ruled against giving Japanese-born Takao Ozawa US citizenship. It supported this decision by saying the founding fathers of America had only intended Caucasians to become citizens.

BRUCE LABRACK: On the basis of that decision there was a gentleman named Bhagat Singh Thind who was a Sikh who had served in the Army in World War I. And he took the case to the Supreme Court saying that the Indians, at least those in North India were actually descendants of the original Aryans. They were ethnologically speaking, biologically speaking, Europeans or Caucasians.

SARA KOLBET: In 1923, Bhagat Singh Thind was denied citizenship by the Supreme Court. The court decided since the common man mistook the word Caucasian to mean white, being a biological Caucasian wasn?t as important as being a ?free white person.?

JAIDEEP SINGH: If you look at the case it?s actually really remarkable, the mental gymnastics that the Supreme Court goes through in order to justify racism. And so as a result of the Thind decision several dozen South Asians lost, retroactively lost their citizenship.

SARA KOLBET: And they also lost the ability to own land. This was at a time when most Asian immigrants worked in agriculture. These land laws were in effect until after World War II.

VALARIE KAUR: As soon as the laws permitted my grandfather to own land, my grandfather bought 40 acres with his brother on Temperance and Bullard.

SARA KOLBET: Valarie Kaur.

VALARIE KAUR: And he grew plums and peaches and strawberries. He lived in an old wooden house. There was no tractor?they still used horses. And my father was actually born on this land, and I was born on this land as well.

SARA KOLBET: Judge Brar.

JUDGE BRAR: Well, my dad and my uncle Dalsing did not get married until after 1947, and that?s when the Asian Exclusion Act was lifted. And so they had an opportunity to go back to India and get married. My dad of course in 1950 got married to my mom. They came to this 40 acres that we?re on right now.

VALARIE KAUR (in tape): How did everyone know him? What did everyone think of him?

JUDGE BRAR: Well, you got to picture. Now you know, you see a lot of people with turbans and beards. In those days, I was the only Indian at my high school, in the entire high school. So you can imagine my dad having a really white, white beard and wearing a turban. It was very distinctive and people really liked him and he knew everybody in town. He always loved this country. So in ?72 when he became a citizen he voted in the next election and from there on he never missed a opportunity to vote. And even when he got older, could barely walk he would have me put him in the truck and we?d go to the voting booth to vote.

SARA KOLBET: Because her grandfather immigrated to the US with the first wave of South Asians in the early 20th century, Valarie Kaur is one of the few third generation Sikh-Americans. In tracing the journey of Kehar Singh, she?s found a connection with all Asian immigrants that shapes her definition of what it means to be American.

VALARIE KAUR: Even as the laws that kept my grandfather from becoming a citizen and from owning land were lifted in the 1940s, there have still been moments in our history, in American history that have made my grandfather and people in my community targets of hate and violence. I think laws only get us so far. I think what is required is a change in the culture itself to expand the circle of who looks like an American to include all Americans. So that people with Japanese faces, Chinese faces, Sikhs, Muslims, are seen not as foreigners, not as perpetual foreigners, not as enemies to America, but part of the very American fabric. And the fact that my grandfather has been part of American history since the 1900s makes me believe that only if we can get these stories out to Americans to make them see how diverse the picture of an American really is, only then can we create a community of true respect and solidarity and strength.

HOST: ?Defining American? by Catherine Stifter and Sara Caswell Kolbet with contributing producers Deepa Rangathan and Rupa Marya.

HOST: In a moment, a look at the struggle to be a naturalized citizen?.

DAWN MABALON: January 1930 a mob attacked a Filipino bunkhouse and people like Carlos Bulosan are organizing Filipino workers to fight for better wages and better conditions and also to agitate for citizenship. And so in 1934 the Tydings McDuffie Act is passed, and so it makes these people who are nationals into alien they lose this kind of elevated status above alien?. and so it?s this kind of 10-year limbo period for you know Filipinos in the United States not really knowing what their status is going to be.

HOST: This is Crossing East. I?m George Takei. Find out more about our series at CrossingEast.org.

ANNOUNCER: Our actor in this segment of Crossing East was Andres Alcala as the Interviewer. This is PRI ? Public Radio International.

MUSIC BREAK

(SEGMENT C)

HOST: I?m George Takei? this is Exclusion and Resistance?on Crossing East.

The Immigration Act of 1924 essentially cut off all immigration from Asia for 25 years. By the end of World War II there were only about 1500 Sikhs left in the United States.

The 1924 act also affected Filipinos who had been working in the U.S. The U.S. annexed and took over the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898. Filipino bachelors easily entered the U.S. throughout the 1920s and 30s. They filled the need for cheap labor; working on the sugar plantations in Hawaii, farms in California?s Central Valley and in hotels and restaurants of major cities. But when the depression hit, jobs were scarce.

In 1934, Congress passed the Tydings McDuffie Act limiting Filipino immigration to just 50 people a year. Then in 1935 came the Repatriation Act. Filipinos who volunteered to leave the country were given one-way tickets back to the Philippines if they agreed never to return.

Chapter Five? ?Planting the Seeds of Citizenship? by Stephanie Loleng

MUSIC FADES UNDER

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Eudosia Juanitas is a retired Stockton nurse who?s small in stature but large in warmth and hospitality. She arrived from the Philippines in 1936.

EUDOSIA JUANITAS: I was born March 1st, 1911, so I?m 94 years old. There was a Filipino that lived in our place and he came for vacation so he was looking for a wife (laughs) so I agreed.

DAWN MABALON: Many of the immigrants had come expecting to stay only for a few years.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Dawn Mabalon is Assistant Professor in the History Department at San Francisco State University.

DAWN MABALON: They were going to work, they were going to become rich, they were going to get their college educations and they were going to return.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Max Lamar is in his 90s. He came to San Francisco in 1930. First, he bluffed his way into restaurant work, saying he was 18. Eventually he worked on farms near Stockton.

MAX LAMAR: I told them I was 18. I worked in a restaurant, Filipino restaurant, I put the dishes on the table. Oh, it?s not counted hard work.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Max Lamar came to the U.S. as a bachelor.

MAX LAMAR: I was young.

Dawn Mabalon: The majority of the population was male. The Filipino American population before World War II.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Mabalon is third generation Filipino American. She grew up in Stockton?s Little Manila and is chair of the Little Manila Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to preserve Filipino history in Stockton.

Dawn Mabalon: The population is about 10 percent female, up until the 1940s.

Eudosia Juanitas: I came right away in the boat that?s was in 1936.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Eudosia Juanitas followed her husband to the Central Valley of California where he worked on a ranch as a labor contractor.

Eudosia Juanitas: We stayed there in the ranch there for five years. They planted celery.

Dawn Mabalon: Filipinos kind of fill that labor vacuum and in West Coast agriculture they really become the engine for economic growth in California in the 1920s and 1930s.

Eudosia Juanitas: My husband was in the farm. They have several men with him. Also in the packinghouse, I was in charge of taking care of the men that are packing celery. I did the bookkeeping there and watched the men. Even women have to work in the farm, like packing something on the farm. We were not given high wages. I was receiving only 90 cents an hour at that time, but it was good enough you know.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Max Lamar shared a small apartment not far from the place where he used to work. Rent was cheap.

Max Lamar: You work daytime, eight hours and then you go home, rest, then during weekends I go to dancehalls.

Dawn Mabalon: Filipinos had been working in the Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Pajaro Valley area throughout the 1920s, becoming a very significant and powerful labor force in that area. In January 1930, it was learned that Filipinos were trying to create a dancehall where it was reported that they would you know have contact with white women which enraged locals in Watsonville.

Max Lamar: Monday through Friday I work on the farm, Saturday, Sunday, I have good time, go to the dance.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Many Filipino men would go to dancehalls, wear their finest suits, and mingle with white women.

Max Lamar: ?that?s the time when I, my loneliness go away.

Dawn Mabalon: January 1930 a mob attacked a Filipino bunkhouse and Fermon Tabera was killed when he was shot through the heart. People like Carlos Bulosan are organizing Filipino workers to fight for better wages and better conditions and also to agitate for citizenship.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Carlos Bulosan in his book ?America is in the Heart,? wrote about vigilant Filipino workers, their whole-hearted support of the trade union movement, their hatred of low wages and other persecutions against them.

Dawn Mabalon ?And so in 1934 the Tydings McDuffie Act is passed, and so it makes these people who are nationals into alien. They lose this kind of elevated status above alien?. and so it?s this kind of 10-year limbo period for you know Filipinos in the United States not really knowing what their status is going to be.

Max Lamar: During World War II I was inducted in the army, US Army. I went to Honolulu, we stop there for a while and then straight to the Philippines ? then my brothers and sisters, they introduced me to a young Filipino woman.

STEPHANIE LOLENG: Jean Lamar, Max?s wife, remembers the whirlwind romance during his visit to her hometown in the Philippines.

Jean Lamar: Oh my God, it was one-month courtship and at the same time that?s when we got married?September 16, 1945.

Max Lamar: and then we have five children... Three girls, two boys. Married in the Philippines lived there for how many years and then come back to America.

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STEPHANIE LOLENG: The 1946 Loose Seller Act allowed Filipinos who were living in the U.S. to become naturalized citizens. The act was passed right at the end of World War II, after the Philippines was granted independence from the United States.

Eudosia Juanitas: I work hard to be a citizen. Filipinos were good soldiers, very good fighter. So they allowed the Filipinos to be citizens. It?s better to be a citizen.

HOST: ?Seeds of Citizenship? by Stephanie Loleng with Contributor Miae Kim.

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HOST: Citizenship is something that many Americans may take granted. But not the Nisei Japanese who fought with extraordinary valor as members of the 442nd Regimental Combat team, the most decorated unit to emerge from the second world war. They fought even though their families were behind barbed wire incarceration in U.S. Internment camps. The Chinese were allowed to become naturalized in 1943. And in 1946 Filipinos and South Asians. Then in 1952 with the McCarran Walter Act, Koreans and finally, after Nisei valor, Japanese were allowed to become U.S. citizens.

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HOST: As the United States left Cambodia in 1975, Pol Pot and his deadly Khmer Rouge regime took control of the country and forced people to move into the countryside to work in what would be known as ?The Killing Fields.?

Those who tried to escape fled to the border of Thailand through mine fields to make their way to refugee camps. Between 1975 and 1985, more than 700-thousand South East Asians arrived in the US. 120-thousand were Cambodians.

Andrew Thi was six years old when his parents and four sisters came to California. Though his family worked hard, Andrew still grew up in urban poverty. He wanted things he couldn?t afford and he got in trouble with the law for robbery and auto theft. And now because of a 1996 Immigration law, he faces deportation to a country he barely remembers.

Our final chapter?Cambodian Deportation by Robynn Takayama.

SOUND OF LAWN MOWERS

ANDREW: My name is Andrew Thi. I am 30 years old. I came to America on September ?81. I?m just here to help out because my parents are getting old.

DAD: He can do the heavy stuff, loading and mow the lawn, blower, and cut the tree.

ANDREW: It make the job easier when you have helper as me, as his son. And have experience. Make the job faster?

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Andrew has been helping his dad with the gardening business since he was a little kid. His older sister, Sing says their dad built the business up from nothing when they arrived in the United States.

SING THI: My dad tried to go to school learn basic English and he would help do gardening and help the church. Clean the church and they like the way he work. That?s when he start cutting grasses, and mowing lawn and cutting flowers and they teach him.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: In 1990, over 60% of all South East Asian households headed by refugees were on public assistance. That?s three times the rate of African Americans and four times the rate of Latinos.

ANDREW THI: We was very poor. The way we survive, I mean, they gave us welfare money. Medicare just to survive. Because, come on. We just came to America from Cambodia, you know what I mean?

SING THI: We would wear like mismatched clothes and the pants were just second hand clothing. We got it from church.

BILL HING: In the beginning, there were sponsorship programs where the United States called on churches and community organizations to sponsor refugees.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Bill Hing is a professor of Law and Asian American Studies at UC Davis. He says the U.S. felt obligated to receive the thousands of refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge. However, he believes the federal government?s resettlement plan failed in helping refugees adapt to life in America.

BILL HING: It really was up to the federal government to come up with any other programs. The only kind of programs they really had during those first 10 year periods were a little bit of language training and job training. The rest of your life in that neighborhood, in that community, it?s entirely up to you.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Porthira Chimm worked with refugees at Cambodian Community Development Inc. in Oakland, California.

He says the resettlement plan lacked much needed mental health and social services. And parents were too overwhelmed with issues of survival to even consider becoming naturalized citizens.

PORTHIRA CHIMM: These are folks that suffered through mass starvation, that were highly traumatized, that were culled to be farmers and told not to learn by a regime that murdered you if you were educated whatsoever. And they were expected to come to America and learn history and learn how to read and write, when many of these folks didn?t know how to read and write in Cambodian. And so there was a lot of obstacles faced by folks like Andrew.

ANDREW THI: Maybe it?s the environment, it?s your surroundings, the poverty, the place, that?s why all the bad things, the crimes, theft.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Andrew, who was an honor student and received a scholarship to attend Cal State Hayward, laughs nervously when he recalls the time his life turned in the wrong direction.

ANDREW THI: I remember the first thing I ever stole was a token from the Malibu Grand Prix. Like a car race place? You pop the token machine? You reach your hand and stole the token. You take the token and go sell and make money back. It was like I got addicted to it!

Living in a poverty area, You?re not 16 yet. You can?t get a license yet. It?s just a lifestyle of a teen. You want to get around, you want to hang around, you want to take your girls out. You know what I mean? You don?t have the patience to wait for your parents, wait for the bus. Eh, you need a ride, I get it right there.

SING THI: I guess maybe he just started hanging around with the wrong friends and then he?s just stealing cars! My dad warn him, what have you been doing? You better stop! And then you might go to jail for a long, long time. My dad did warn him about that. And I guess he didn?t really listen.

ANDREW THI: My first time I got caught was my sophomore year in high school. I got caught stealing cars, joy riding, doing what I gotta do just to have fun.

And when I got caught, they sent me to six months in camp. Then I go on a home pass. I do some more car burglary, got caught again. Then they sent me almost two years total my first time in juvenile hall. Then when I got popped for a robbery somewhere in L.A., it cost me five years in prison.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Bill Hing.

BILL HING: For many, many years now, policy makers and the public I suppose are upset when they hear that there are immigrants that commit crimes. And that?s been embodied in the immigration laws so that since 1986, there?s been additions made to the law to broaden when people can be deported for criminal convictions.

ANDREW THI: With our situation of not being a citizen, it?s totally different from people that being a citizen, right? The unfortunate thing about the Asian is that when you commit a crime and you?re not a citizen, you finish doing your time there?s another process you have to handle. It?s called INS. They will take your papers and ship you back to your country. It doesn?t matter how long you?ve been here.

BILL HING: But prior to 1996 you had a chance to ask a judge, an immigration judge, for a waiver, for forgiveness basically. ?Your honor, let me stay in the US. I?ve learned my lesson. I am rehabilitated now.? And if the judge believed you, the judge could grant this waiver and give you your green card back. Well in 1996, Congress felt that that possibility was too generous. So Congress took away that possibility from any aggravated felon.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Porthira Chimm

PORTHIRA CHIMM: In many ways the laws out of 1996 was targeted at?it wasn?t just immigration, but welfare reform. And it was clear, that America was telling immigrants that we don?t care about you and that we blame you for our welfare ills.

ANDREW THI: They could take your life any time they want by the pick of the draw, the name. To me, sometime I just feel so helpless, I mean like wow, when is my name called up.

ROBYNN TAKAYAMA: Now he waits for the Immigration and Naturalization service, currently under The Department of Homeland Security to call. took over INS in 2002. Although there are more than 1500 Cambodian Americans to be deported, Cambodia is only accepting a small number each month. So deportees like Andrew do their best to live their lives until they are notified that their deportation date is scheduled.

ANDREW THI: I?ve got to face the music when it?s time to go. But see that?s the weak point is that you don?t know when it is. It might be the next day. To be honest with you, it might be when I get home! And what can you do?

SING THI: If they going to deport my brother back to Cambodia, it?s going to be really hard because my dad, he traveled, walking through muds and through dead bodies and he does everything for us to try to get away from that.

ANDREW THI: I wasn?t born here. I was granted to live here to earn a new life.
And I made the wrong choice. I mean, they didn?t put a gun to my head and say you?ve got to do this. It was my choice and I made it. To make some little money. To get better things.

But I will do something in my power to show to America, to the world, to society, to my community I am a changed person. I mean, everything. I do every day is good.

SOUND: MOWER STARTS

DAD: Andrew, you can leave, I can finish it up. Don?t worry about it.

ANDREW THI: Before, I don?t plan for the future, right, but now I look at the bright side. Whatever happens, happens. That?s meant to be. But while I?m still here, I?m going to make the best of my life and go forward with it.

SOUND: MOWER FADES

HOST: Cambodian Deportation by Robynn Takayama with Contributor Miae Kim.

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HOST: We came in many waves? always in search of the American Dream?

And always excluded?

We rose up against injustice?

And raised new generations of Americans.

These are our stories, our history, our America?

I?ve been your host ?George Takei

ANNOUNCER:

Crossing East is produced with funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and individual donors of MediaRites Productions.

Special thanks to Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and to KQED-FM in San Francisco.

Our theme music is by Shasta Taiko from their CD Spirit Drum.

With additional music by Jon Jang from his CD Two Flowers on a Stem

And from Angelo Pizarro.

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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