KSBW 8 Project CommUNITY special: AAPI Heritage on the Central Coast
From small fishing villages along the Monterey Peninsula to vast farmland of the Salinas Valley, the influence of Asian culture has deep roots on the Central Coast - but so does the history of anti-Asian violence and discrimination.
Nearly a third of all Asian Americans live in California and its Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) population is growing. In the last decade, more than half of those immigrating to California were born in Asia.
AAPI Heritage Month, which goes from May 1-31, is a time to honor the historic impact Asian Americans have had across the country and here in our local community. May was chosen for AAPI Heritage Month to honor the first Japanese to immigrate to the U.S. which happened on May 7, 1843. It also commemorates the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, where most of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants
In this special edition KSBW 8 Project CommUNITY report, we looked at if the lessons from the past can help protect and heal our AAPI communities today.
Chinese History in Monterey
For more than a century Asian and Pacific Islanders have come to California as economic migrants looking for opportunity. Opportunity that they found along the coastline of the Monterey Bay as early as the 1800s, but with that opportunity also came discrimination, prejudice and violence.
Gerry Low-Sabado is a fifth-generation Monterey Peninsula local but says for most of her life she didn't know about her ancestors. That was, until a trip to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in the 1990s.
“We told my mom, we saw a picture in the cabin of a lady who looks like she's standing in front of grandma's house,” said Low-Sabado.
It was her grandmother's house. Still standing today. The home is located just off the Monterey Peninsula rec trail a block up from Cannery Row. And the woman in the picture was her great-grandmother.
“They arrived at the mouth of the Carmel River in 1851 and then they settled here in Point Lobos and built the village here,” said Low-Sabado. “Quock Mui was born in Point Lobos in 1859. She is the first documented Chinese female born in the Monterey area.”
Quock Mui spoke five languages and became known as Spanish Mary because she would translate documents in different languages for various communities. After discovering this remarkable family history Low-Sabado shifted her focus to her great-grandfather. She learned that he worked on the railroad and then as a fisherman.
Phuong Nguyen, an Asian American studies professor at Cal State Monterey Bay, says the Chinese started the state's commercial fishing industry on the Monterey Peninsula. Where they exported millions of pounds of abalone, shrimp and squid.
“They were the first. They had fishing villages in Carmel Bay, Point Lobos, Point Alones … and they were the first to really see the value in commercial fishing,” said Nguyen.
With that success came struggle and discrimination.
In 1882, the Chinese exclusion act was passed which blocked immigration from China. Several local ordinances were also passed.
“To ban the drying of squid, ban the abalone. There were also ordinances that were passed that were color-blind at their face but were very specific, specifically targeted at Chinese and other Asians, for example, laws that banned particular nets that were used knowing that only Chinese used those nets,” said Nguyen.
Twenty-four years later, in May of 1906, a fire of suspicious origins tore through Low-Sabado’s great-grandfather’s community in Point Alones destroying almost all of the homes. One of the largest Chinese fishing villages on the west coast was burned to the ground.
Many of the residents of that village were forced to move, but Low-Sabado’s family stayed on the peninsula.
“They still continued on. They made laws that prevented them from fishing the way they had, well they fished at night. Every time there was an obstacle thrown in their way, they figured out a way to continue to survive,” said Low-Sabado.
Low-Sabado says she's inspired by her ancestor's perseverance despite injustice and she's determined to keep their legacy alive.
“What's important to me is that people understand our Chinese American story here and it goes on,” said Low-Sabado.
Her advocacy has led to a plaque at the now Hopkins Marine Station where her great-grandfather's fishing village once stood acknowledging the impact of Chinese fishing history on the Monterey Peninsula. She's also created the walk of remembrance to mark the anniversary of the Point Alones village being burned down.
“People have tried to exclude us all along the way. Their story still lives on. And I'm going to make sure it lives on too,” said Low-Sabado.
Filipino Farmers and the Watsonville Riots
While the Chinese settled in the small fishing neighborhoods of the Monterey Peninsula others, including Japanese and Filipino immigrants, sought work in the agriculture fields of the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys. In the early part of the 20th century, Filipinos were U.S. nationals and had a legal right to work but many still faced discrimination and hostility. It boiled over into violence on January 19, 1930, in Watsonville when Filipino field workers were attacked, beaten and killed.
"At one point the dance hall was over here somewhere," said Frank Malodora, while he points to an empty lot at the end of Beach Road in Pajaro outside of Watsonville.
The dance hall during the 1920s and '30s was often packed with Filipinos dancing or the men mingling with white women.
The hall was also where white mobs attacked Filipino farmworkers during the Watsonville Riots of 1930.
After the mob attacked the hall, Maldolora said the rioters would, "head back downtown and wherever they met Filiponos, they attacked them."
The attacks against Filipino's grew into five days of violence from Jan. 19-23. It included throwing Filipino's off the Pajaro Bridge. Rioters also shot up a bunkhouse in Murphy's Crossing Labor Camp, where they killed 22-year-old Fermin Tobera as he slept.
The violence in Watsonville would spark riots in other California cities across the Bay Area and Central Valley.
Madolora came to the Central Coast at 5 years old in 1957 from the Philippines. At the time Filipinos were manual labor workers, mainly in agriculture. They stuck together when others in Watsonville ostracized them.
Growing up and having to learn English, Madolora recalls being harassed, beaten and excluded. But says he didn't experience large-scale violence like the 1930 riots, let alone learn about them.
"And I don't think there was enough written about it," Madolora said.
University of California Santa Cruz is on a mission to change that.
A team of professors, graduate and undergraduate students are preserving Filipino history through the eyes and voices of Central Coast Filipinos. The project is called Watsonville Is In The Heart.
"I was surprised about how little there was about the history of Asians in the Central Coast," said Steve McKay, associate professor of sociology at UCSC.
Third-year UCSC Ph.D. candidate and Santa Cruz native Meleia Simon-Reynolds is part of the project. During her kindergarten through 12th-grade education, she said she missed out on learning about local Filipino history. She identifies as a mixed Filipino. She said the project at UCSC Matters because she wants to integrate the Filipino history of migration and vitality back into the grade school curriculum.
"There wasn't a lot of room for other stories as far as SC history goes. So I think if I had learned about Filipino-American history in the local area or even other Asian-American history, other kinds of histories, I would’ve felt more connection here, more inclusive," Simon-Reynolds said. "Because people are so unaware of these structures and struggles that were happening, I think it really allows these things to perpetuate, As we are seeing now with the uptick in anti-Asian hate crime."
AAPI Hate
Ninety-one years later attacks on Asian-American and Pacific Islanders are on the rise across the country.
Since March 2020 more than 6,600 hate incidents have been reported to the organization Stop AAPI Hate.
More than 700 of those were reported in the Bay Area alone but were also reported in Santa Cruz and Carmel. Chinese Americans reported nearly 44-percent of hate incidents, more than other races or ethnic groups. by state, California had the highest number of hate incident reports by far, accounting for 40% of the total.
There is an ongoing effort to stop Asian hate across the country and here on the Central Coast protests and rallies continue to be held. Including last month when a rally was held in front of Colton Hall in Monterey.
On Thursday, May 20, President Joe Biden signed a new bill addressing the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act creates a process for crimes to be investigated and documented by state and federal law enforcement officials. It also establishes a position at the justice department to handle those reviews. Vice president Kamala Harris attended the singing and spoke.
“Here's the truth: racism exists in America, xenophobia exists in America, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, it all exists. And so, the work to address injustice, wherever it exists, remains the work ahead,“ said Harris.
Harris made history when she was sworn in as the first Asian American vice president in U.S. history. Her mother was born in India and moved here to attend grad school at UC Berkeley.
Effects of Pearl Harbor
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt called it a day that will live in infamy. The surprise attack against U.S. forces in Hawaii killed more than 2,400 personnel and drew the United States into World War II. It also set off an unprecedented level of discrimination against Japanese Americans
Just two months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued an executive order, forcing more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.
The Tanimura family from Salinas was one of 3,500 Central Coast families sent to the camps.
For almost a century the Tanimura Family has worked the land in California. From Watsonville to Castroville, Aromas to the Salinas Valley the Tanimura family put down roots.
The first Tanimura's arrived on American soil from Japan back in the 1800s.... but it was the five brothers, and four sisters of this generation led by big brother George that really forged a future in farming beginning in the 1920s.
“At fifteen, his dad had given him the responsibility of their small farm, so that’s when he went to work,“ said Gary Tanimura.
But it wasn't always easy. In 1913 California had enacted the alien land law barring Asian immigrants from owning land, adding restrictions in the 1920s barring American-born children of Asian immigrants from even leasing land.
“My dad and his friends wanted to grow lettuce in Castroville because of the cool weather but they needed to get someone to sign lease papers to rent land,“ said Gary.
They worked around the law, partnering with others when they had to weather the hard years of the depression and slowly built their farming business until world war II. Two of the brothers were drafted and fought for this country while the rest of the family was shipped off to an internment camp.
"We were first put away here at the rodeo grounds. 3,500 people there. stayed there about three months,” said Gary.
After that, they spent three and a half years at a camp in Arizona.
After the war, with no money and few options, the family came back to California and actually lived in a barn for a time. Slowly they worked their way back. Eventually, they pooled their money to buy a 20-acre ranch in Aromas.
"My grandad was trimming lettuce in a packing shed and saw the opportunity. Here's this wonderful group of Japanese growers no one wanted to do business with and he was able to go out and befriend them and gain their trust,” said Mike Antle, talking about the Tanimura workers.
It worked out well for both families and in the early 1980’s they formed Tanimura & Antle, which went on to become a produce powerhouse.
“Working together, hard work and you can be successful. That's the beauty of America...the land of opportunity. Hopefully, that never changes here in America.”
It would take 40 years for the u-s government to officially apologize for the internment camps. The Civil Liberties Act signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. It gave each surviving victim of the camps $20,000. President Reagan said the bill was about more than compensation.
“So what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. for here we admit a wrong. here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law,” said Reagan.
The California State Legislature issued its own apology in 2020.
Pacific Islanders on the Central Coast
AAPI Month also celebrates the heritage of Pacific Islanders including people from Tonga. A small country located in the southwestern Pacific, the Kingdom of Tonga includes nearly 170 islands but only 36 are inhabited. With a current population of just over 100,000 people, Tonga has experienced a steady migration since the 1950s.
Many Tongans have settled in the U.S., including a small but strong community in Seaside.
According to pastor Samiu Molitika who does a church service every Sunday in Pacific Grove in the Tongan language there are between 300 and 400 Tongans living on the Central Coast.
The original wave of Tongans came here via the former Fort Ord. For Kamela Latu, it was an uncle who served at Fort Ord.
“So, when he got here it was a beautiful place and he was stationed out at Fort Ord so he figured he'd call the families and get them together out here and that's how we came out here,” said Latu.
And many never looked back, choosing the peninsula over their native island kingdom.
Fort Ord may have brought the first Tongans but others followed for economic and educational opportunities.
For many parents raising second-generation Tongans born in the U.S can be a struggle as parents accustomed to life in tonga struggle to raise children who are more Americanized.
Latu grew up in the 1970's Seaside.
“When we were growing up we were somewhat Americanized slash Tongan we still had to have that tradition in us so we were struggling,” said Latu.
But Asian Pacific Islanders, which include Tongans facing a different challenge, a wave of hate and attacks on fellow islanders across the U.S. If there's one thing the Tongan community on the Central Coast wants the public to know, it’s that they may be a small group but they have big hearts.