Man: So we're recording now, starting our conversation in 3, 2... Man two: Welcome to "This Filipino American Life," a podcast that explores the nuanced experiences of Filipinos in the United States, at iba pa. My name is Joe Bernardo, and I'm joined by my fellow hosts... Kat: Kat.

Bernardo: and... Mike: Mike.

Bernardo: Today we have our guest, who serves as the host of the show "Lost LA," Nathan Masters.

Welcome to the podcast.

Kat: Welcome, Nathan.

Masters: Yeah, so happy to be here.

Thanks.

Bernardo: We are at the historic Tribal Cafe.

This was once called Travellers Cafe, which was a Filipino restaurant actually dating back to the 1940s.

In the eighties, it closed down, but then Joshua Jose opened this as Tribal Cafe in 2005.

So I wanted to ask you what did you know about kind of the Filipino American community coming into this episode?

Masters: I mean, honestly, not a lot, right?

So we've been researching the episode for a few months, so learned a lot through that, but what I'll say is that this has been, like, the most requested episode that we've done, so I'm happy that we're finally doing it.

Yeah.

Announcer: This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and Creative Recovery L.A. Masters: There's still a lot that I have to learn by interviewing people, but the episode we're gonna start with the story of Pedro Flores, who I'm sure all your listeners know popularized the yo-yo in America.

That history was sort of forgotten.

Bernardo: Mm-hmm.

Masters: We think that's an interesting place to start, and we're gonna interview Florante Ibanez.

Kat: Aw.

Florante.

Masters: So he shepherded the Filipino American Library for a long time, but he also collected a lot of materials related to the yo-yo and Flores' history, and that's now part of the archives at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Ibanez: This one's interesting.

It's by the Goody Company, like, in the forties, fifties, sixties.

Masters: Most Americans probably are not aware that the yo-yo emerges from the Filipino American community.

Ibanez: The common story is that it was actually even back in Grecian times because there's a vase supposedly showing somebody with something that looks like a yo-yo... Masters: OK.

I see.

Yeah.

Ibanez: that's dangling from their finger.

Masters: So there are precursors, but it was a Filipino American man named Pedro Flores who popularized it as a toy... Ibanez: Right.

Masters: here in Southern California.

Ibanez: Yes.

He originally had his factory up in Santa Barbara.

He was a porter at a hotel, working there after he had decided not to finish Hastings Law School, and he wanted to become a businessman, so he thought of this yo-yo idea based on the fact that he read somewhere about the guy who did the paddle ball with this rubber band.

Masters: Right.

Ibanez: So he thought of the yo-yo, which was a toy that they were using in the Philippines for a number of years... Masters: Mm-hmm.

Ibanez: and even our national hero in the Philippines Jose Rizal journaled himself coming to America and showing people it and demonstrating it and even saying that it was used as a weapon in the Philippines.

Masters: A weapon?

Ibanez: Yes.

It's in the archives of the Philippines, his excerpt from his journal.

He says that, so it's like, "Oh."

Masters: So Flores was familiar with the yo-yo from his childhood.

Ibanez: Right.

So he opened up a factory in Santa Barbara, and he started manufacturing it, and the difference between his yo-yo and the bandalores that were patented by other people beforehand that looked like yo-yos was that with their yo-yos or their bandalores the string was attached to the axle, so it would just go up and down and up and down and up and down.

His idea was to just make a loop on the axle so it would stay down.

So like those games walking the dog.

Masters: I've seen it.

It's impressive.

Ibanez: So that was his twist on it.

Masters: But the name itself was a winning element.

Yo-yo has a real ring to it.

Ibanez: in Tagalog, my understanding is that it means go and come back or go and go, and so, you know, it kind of fit.

He moved down to L.A., and he actually opened up two places in Los Angeles and had 3 factories going all at once, and he did, like, 30,000 yo-yos in one month.

He became so popular that the owner of the Duncan Yo-yo company at the time wanted to buy him out.

The story goes that was kind of their downfall because when he tooled up for plastic instead of wood, he had to sell this company, as well.

$750,000 is what Duncan paid Pedro Flores.

Masters: That's a lot of money back then.

Ibanez: That's pretty amazing for a Filipino immigrant during the Depression.

Masters: Yeah.

Ibanez: He became the main salesman for Duncan after that, and then he had demonstration teams, mainly made up of Filipino immigrants like himself, sponsored by Duncan's money to go around the country to demonstrate the yo-yo.

Man: In 1932, I met Pedro, and he said, "Come here.

You look like a gentleman," and he said, "You have to do plenty tricks to be a demonstrator."

"I will come back in two weeks," I said.

I went to practice in my room day and night, day and night.

So he brought me to the Duncan office.

"Well, I'll show you everything now," I said.

The manager said, "You are all right."

Heh.

Ha ha ha!

Ibanez: So these are a couple of yo-yos that I kept.

I was gonna donate these actually to Greg.

These are from the private home collection.

There's even a reference book, but it's kind of dated.

Masters: And it joins this collection that Florante donated, what, a couple of years ago?

Greg: That's right.

Florante's collection consists of about 25 boxes of material relating to his activism and his membership of the Filipino American community.

Ibanez: I was a student here back in '69 right out of high school, and during that time, I was active in the antiwar movement.

Masters: So you really are an activist at heart?

Ibanez: Yeah.

I guess.

Masters: In addition to a librarian.

Ibanez: Right.

Masters: And it kind of comes together here in this collection.

Ibanez: I think the whole point here is that we have to tell our own stories because the mainstream media and what's in mainstream archives don't really tell our stories.

Masters: We've all toyed around with a yo-yo, but how many of us know that it was invented right here in Southern California by a Filipino immigrant?

Like so much of Filipino American history, Pedro Flores' story was pushed to the margins.

Now, Florante's collection will help scholars, journalists, and other researchers pull it back where it belongs.

Bernardo: One of the hard parts about trying to understand the Filipino American community is it's not very visible because of the history of colonization, right?

Masters: Right.

Bernardo: So when Filipino Americans come to the United States, they have a command of English that many other Asian immigrants don't, and so Filipinos are more dispersed.

So then visibly in the built environment, it doesn't look like Filipinos exist in a certain neighborhood.

If they do have an establishment here, the signs are in English, so it kind of blends into the whole environment.

Masters: We're actually gonna go to the site of the original Little Manila.

At least from what I've heard, there really are no traces of that history-- Kat: Is that Bunker Hill?

Bernardo: It's right by Little Tokyo.

Masters: Little Tokyo.

Yeah.

Kat: Oh.

Wow!

OK. See, I don't even know.

[Laughter] Masters: It's no wonder Kat was surprised.

Go to the site of Little Manila today, and there's no sign that it was once the beating heart of L.A.'s Filipino community.

That's why I met up there with Linda Espana-Maram, whose research has helped preserve the memory of Little Manila long after it disappeared from the landscape.

So this seems like such an L.A. place because there are these multiple layers of history.

Today, we call this Little Tokyo.

During World War II, it was Bronzeville, but there's this whole older, deeper layer of history that's been almost completely forgotten today.

Espana-Maram: It has been.

Little Manila existed only for about 20 years.

It started forming right around the early 1920s.

It was formed by this multi-ethnic family from the Philippines.

It was George Weiss who first came here.

He was from Philadelphia.

He went to the Philippines as a merchant... Masters: Mm-hmm.

Espana-Maram: married a Filipina, and then when she passed away, he came back to the U.S. with his young son, who was multi-ethnic Filipino, and started one of the earliest small groceries right around here in L.A. Masters: And this became a cultural hub for the Filipino community.

Espana-Maram: Yes, it did, but it was a cultural hub specifically for young, single, heterosexual men because they made up the larger portion of immigration during this period.

Masters: The majority of Filipino Americans were single men.

Espana-Maram: The vast majority, right, so if you look at the establishments in Little Manila at the time, you have pool halls, you have gyms, and taxi dance halls, and you have restaurants or other places of leisure that were here, and it tells you some of the things the population was doing.

Masters: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All services for men, right?

Espana-Maram: Yes.

Masters: So what's really shocking about Little Manila today is that there's no visual markers of it.

I mean, there's really no sign that it ever existed here.

Espana-Maram: No, there isn't.

Masters: Yeah.

Espana-Maram: Because the Filipinos would come to Little Manila, they would have a good time.

They also had labor.

A lot of them lived in homes.

They were domestics.

Some of them were students.

They went to USC, but the rooming houses for the workers were not owned by Filipinos.

Masters: One of the more prominent Filipino Americans from the early 20th century is Pedro Flores, but he wasn't really typical of the Filipino community at the time.

Espana-Maram: No.

There's a few who rose, who became entrepreneurs here in L.A. One became a mechanic, owning his shop.

He landed in Los Angeles, didn't know what to do, and then he worked for a mechanic, learned a trade there, and then decided he's gonna open his own shop in Boyle Heights, but those are very few and far between.

Masters: So after World War II, the Filipino community relocated to a place that was more suited for, like, a family lifestyle.

Espana-Maram: Some of them relocated to places outside of Little Manila because they were finally able to lease land and farm a little bit.

Some of them went to San Francisco, Stockton, further up north, where there were larger groups of Filipinos, and some of them actually had money because after the war Filipinos emerged not as workers.

They emerged as heroes.

Masters: So it's your work that's really keeping the memory of Little Manila alive.

Espana-Maram: I'm the child of a post-1965 immigrants, right?

My parents did not learn Filipino American history, right?

So they learned about U.S. history because they went to school there, and so when they immigrated here along with the big wave of Filipino immigrants, there's a disconnect there between Filipino American history that had taken place before 1965 and then 1965 on, and it's my hope that other people will look into more about Little Manila from that time period.

Masters: Linda's not alone in keeping the memory of those early years alive, and probably nobody did more than the woman lovingly known within the community as Auntie Helen, the late Helen Brown.

As a young student at Pasadena City College in the 1930s, Brown was researching a paper on her native city of Manila but couldn't find any relevant materials in the school or public libraries.

Although she finished her report with the help of her father's home library, she knew there was a gap to fill.

Over the years, she amassed thousands of books and other reading materials, a collection that became a public resource and community hub named the Filipino American Library.

Man: Oh, my goodness, Helen.

Wow!

"Makibaka."

Helen: What's that mean, Roy?

Roy: That's the struggle.

Keep on the fight and never be afraid.

Yeah, this is very precious, so you better take good care of it, Helen.

Bernardo: Going to the Filipino American Library, at least for me, was like a resource to find out more about my own identity, which was really made invisible and made hidden to me because of all these historical forces.

Kat: She was one of the first people that I learned about when I was in college taking a Filipino American experience course and being involved with the student organizations there.

Seeing her as such a historical figure and knowing that there's direct connections in terms of relationships was pretty amazing to me.

Masters: Helen Brown inspired generations of Filipino Americans to find community in their shared history.

Over at the Echo Park Branch Library, the sister and brother team of Joselyn Geaga-Rosenthal and Jaime Geaga carry on her work with their burgeoning Philippine Heritage Collection.

Geaga-Rosenthal: See, Nathan, these are our book collection.

Masters: This is the book collection.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Reme Grefalda gave us the seed for this.

She is based in Washington, D.C. Masters: She gave the initial collection of books.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Right.

About 100.

Masters: And it's been growing.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Yeah.

Masters: About a 100?

So you've really grown it quite a bit.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Yeah.

Masters: Pretty soon, you're gonna run out of room here.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Hopefully.

Masters: Yeah.

Books are a powerful way to bring people together.

That's the idea behind the popular book club Jaime and Joselyn organized to complement their collection.

Geaga-Rosenthal: We always go back to "America Is in the Heart."

Masters: Appropriately, the club's named in honor of the Filipino American writer Carlos Buloson, whose autobiographical novel "America Is in the Heart" has become an American classic.

"America Is in the Heart."

You read the book in college.

Geaga: I did.

I read it the seventies, early seventies, and when I read it, it's one of the things that radicalized me.

Masters: Uh-huh.

Geaga: I start to understand the history of the U.S., start to learn about Filipino immigration.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Carlos Buloson immigrated to America in 1930, and the book talked about the grinding poverty and his town where he came from.

He educated himself in the L.A. Public Library System.

Masters: Wow.

Places like this.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Right.

The Central Library actually, and he wrote books, he was published.

Masters: Still in print today.

Geaga-Rosenthal: An American classic.

I came here in '65 with my mother and my 3 brothers, siblings.

The 5 of us came on the last voyage of this ship that plied the Pacific Ocean between America and Asia.

Masters: This was the last voyage?

Geaga-Rosenthal: It was the last voyage of this ship.

Masters: Both of you together?

Geaga-Rosenthal: Yes.

Masters: OK. Geaga-Rosenthal: We were in second class because that's all we could afford.

My father had been here a year and saved enough.

That's a huge chunk of money to bring your whole family altogether.

Masters: How long did it take?

Geaga: 21 days.

Masters: 21 days crossing the ocean.

Geaga-Rosenthal: Everything I do with my own family honors my mom because she was the role model for me with motherhood and family and community.

Geaga: For me, I think it's trying to curate, document the Filipino American immigrant experience, which there is a dearth of material there.

Masters: It's a great example of how powerful books and literature can be.

Geaga: Mm-hmm.

Masters: So we've talked a little bit about "Lost LA," but I guess I'm curious what are you trying to accomplish with the podcast?

How did it start, and what's your goal?

Bernardo: We started 2016.

We just kind of said, "You know, we have all these kind of informal discussions about the Filipino American community and the issues that we deal with, but there hasn't been anything really archived."

Mike: My recollection is that it really was because you didn't want to have to write all this stuff down.

Bernardo: Oh, yeah.

Mike: Because we're gonna talk about it anyways, let's just record us talking about it.

I think in trying to really kind of document our community was a way to, like, tell our story in a way that only we could tell it.

At least we know that we preserved our part of that story for ourselves.

Masters: I love that you describe it as an archive, though, because you're thinking about it intentionally as a resource for future generations.

I mean, so much that happens in the world is ephemeral unless you document it, right, but you're making sure it's documented and preserved.

Bernardo: Yeah, exactly.

Masters: Earlier this morning, we drove around in the jeepney.

You've all been on that?

Mike: Oh, yeah.

Bernardo: Yeah.

Mike: We're all connected with Filipino Workers Center, which is where I think you went, right?

Aquilina Soriano Versoza: So this is our jeepney here.

It's our one really visible piece of Filipino culture that rides around.

Masters: It's amazing.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Versoza: And our jeepney driver Rio.

Ready?

Sige.

[Engine revving] Masters: After World War II, Filipinos converted surplus combat Jeeps into public transportation vehicles.

Since then, the jeepney's become a symbol of Filipino culture, and you'll still see them everywhere on the streets of Manila.

Here in HiFi, the Filipino Worker Center uses their 1944 jeepney to lead tours of the neighborhood and remind anyone on the road that Filipinos have long made their home here.

Versoza: The only jeepney tour in the entire United States.

Masters: Really?

Wow.

Versoza: Yes.

We are now at our first stop, which is the Valor Monument.

It is the first memorial monument built to honor the Filipino World War II veterans.

Masters: World War II, and what's interesting about that period is the Philippines were part of the United States, an American colony.

Versoza: That's correct.

Yeah.

The Valor Memorial was built in 2006.

It was really to honor the Filipino World War II veterans because they fought side by side with the American forces in the Philippines against the Imperial Japanese Army.

Masters: Under General MacArthur.

Versoza: Yes.

Masters: Yeah.

Versoza: Correct.

Masters: Yeah.

Versoza: And then there was the Batan Death March, where more than 10,000 Filipino soldiers actually died during that long march.

Then, even though the war was over, they had to fight for equal rights and equity, for the rights that were promised originally but then were, through the Rescission Act, denied those rights.

Masters: They were denied those rights after fighting for the United States in World War II?

Versoza: The only country denied, just to Filipinos.

Masters: Is there a happy ending to that, the story of that fight, or are you--yeah?

Versoza: In 1990, there was some rights, like the ability to gain U.S. citizenship, to veterans, but there was a fight for additional reparations.

So in 2017, there was full recognition, and there was gold medals of honor also given to the veterans, but by that time there were very, very few left.

[Speaks Filipino] So next we're gonna go to Dollar Hits.

All right.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Masters: They're a handhold?

Versoza: Sometime we probably do want to update, like, the vinyl because it's starting to disintegrate, but it's original from the 1950s.

Masters: This is from the 1950s?

Versoza: This is from the 1950s.

Masters: Wow.

That's held up much better than you'd ever think.

[Horn honks] Versoza: That's right.

Masters: Wow.

Versoza: This is one of the plazas that has had Filipino businesses for a long time.

We have Temple Seafood Market, and we're going now to Dollar Hits.

Masters: Dollar Hits-Temple.

Versoza: Hello.

Kumusta po.

Ha ha ha!

Masters: Hello.

It smells delicious in here.

Versoza: Yes.

You can't get to know Historic Filipinotown if you don't try the food.

Masters: I've never had Filipino street food before.

Versoza: Never.

Masters: No, no.

Versoza: All right.

Masters: I'm excited.

Versoza: All right.

Yes.

It's delicious.

Ha ha ha!

So this is also called turo turo, which means, like, point point, where you come in and point to what you want to.

We're gonna order some savory and sweet.

Masters: All right.

I'm game.

Yeah.

Where do we start?

Versoza: I think let's start out with the barbecue.

So let's start savory, right?

Let's try it out.

Masters: Let's do it.

OK. Mmm.

That's really good.

Mmm.

Versoza: So this is the camote cue.

Masters: Mmm.

Crispy on the outside and like a potato in the middle.

Yeah.

Versoza: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Next we have one of the classics of Filipino food, which is called balut.

So they're fermented duck eggs.

We're gonna crack them open, and they have, like, a just forming embryo in them.

Masters: OK. Versoza: Yes.

Masters: OK. Versoza: OK. You're going to peel it.

If you like salt, you can add a little bit of salt to it.

Masters: I do like salt.

Versoza: This is, like, good sustenance in the Philippines.

Masters: Mm-hmm.

Probably really good protein.

Versoza: Mm-hmm.

Masters: Mmm.

[Versoza speaks Filipino] Versoza: Next we have a regular Filipino drink kind of like aguas frescas but our own type.

So it's cantaloupe, a cantaloupe drink.

Masters: Cheers.

Versoza: Cheers.

Masters: That's delicious.

Versoza: You really taste the fresh cantaloupe.

Masters: Yeah.

This is delicious.

[Engine revving] Versoza: Gingtong.

It means a mural.

OK.

So now we're at the mural.

Masters: That is a big mural.

Versoza: 4,000 years of history is documented in this mural.

Masters: 4,000?

So where does it start?

Versoza: It starts way back in the Philippines when there were many different tribes and societies growing in the more than 7,000 islands of the Philippines, and then there were many years of colonialism under Spain.

Central to this is also the farmworkers.

So the two big figures in the middle are Philip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong.

They were farmworkers but then became leaders in the farmworker movement, came together with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to form the United Farm Workers, but they already started organizing strikes for their basic rights to raise wages around issues of actually being able to have access to restrooms, heat protections, things like that on the job, and then when they came together, approached Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to join them to actually launch a grape strike in Delano.

At that time, they said they weren't ready, but the Filipino manong said, "You know what?

This is the time.

We're gonna go ahead and do it anyways," so they went out, they struck, they were on a picket line, and then they were getting attacked by the owners, who had hired armed guys to come and attack the picket lines.

The Mexican farmworkers saw that, and like, "We can't let our brothers actually go through this," so they then came together and decided to join the strike.

Masters: That's a less visible aspect of that history because most Americans when they learn in history class, they learn about the strike, they learned that's Cesar Chavez, and they don't learn about the Filipino workers who drove that action.

Versoza: Yes, that's really true, and that's a big shame because it misses a lot of the lessons of what we learned, like how coming together makes us so much more powerful, so... Masters: Yeah, and I see the mural, I mean, it goes all the way up to very recent--I mean, Historic Filipinotown is represented here, so-- Versoza: Definitely.

There's been some revisions because originally when it was made there was no Historic Filipinotown, and our jeepney has been painted into the mural now, and although it's very small, you can see me.

I'm the driver in the jeepney, you know?

Ha ha ha!

Masters: So you're in this mural, too.

Versoza: I am in this mural.

Yeah.

Masters: That's amazing.

As big as this mural is, it's not even the most visible marker of Historic Filipinotown today.

In 2022, the community unveiled an 82-foot-wide steel arch across Beverly Boulevard.

Made possible by a broad coalition that included city officials and community activists like Aquilina, the gateway arch leaves motorists with no doubt about the neighborhood they're entering.

Kat: I love the stories of how we're connected to other communities.

I just feel like my life as a Filipino American or as an Asian American or as an Angeleno, like, those are--I strongly identify with those, and there are times where I may not have felt as even welcome in our own community, but I definitely feel at home as an Angeleno.

Mike: The community isn't just a community.

The community is, like, interlaced with all the other communities around it, so... Kat: And that's what's beautiful about the cultures is they can flow in and out and have that, so it can be distinct and together at the same time, you know what I mean?

Mike: That's the L.A. story, right?

Announcer: This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and Creative Recovery L.A.