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(upbeat music) - Welcome to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a Philadelphia Story.

I'm your host, Robert Buscher.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a demographic that encompasses over 40 unique countries and cultures of origin, everything east of Istanbul and west of California.

As a mixed race Japanese American, I grew up learning about the history of my community through the stories of our elders.

Unfortunately, because this history is missing for most school curriculums, I knew very little about other AAPI communities until I became an ethnic study scholar.

In this series, we will share the local history of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders through conversation with some of Philadelphia's most prominent Asian-American community members.

Together, we will explore the unique experiences of being AAPI in Philadelphia.

On today's episode, we are discussing the history of U.S imperialism in Asia Pacific during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

We will also explore how overseas expansion ultimately resulted in Asian and Pacific Islander communities settling in the Philadelphia region.

I'm joined by panelists Debbie Wei, co-founder of Asian Americans United, and former curriculum specialist of Asian Pacific American studies for the school district of Philadelphia.

Samip Mallick, executive director of the south Asian American Digital Archive, and Dr. Rommel Rivera, president of the Association of Philippine Physicians in America.

Welcome, and thank you all for joining us.

Debbie, I'd like to start the conversation off with you.

Can you give us a little more context on the role that the city of Philadelphia played in the old China trade and specifically how this led to wealth generation for some of Philadelphia's prominent merchants?

- Sure, I don't think people really understand the role of China in even the founding of the United States, but if you think about what we learned as kids in elementary school and the Boston Tea Party, the tea came from China and the issue, this taxation, was really about Americans not wanting Britain as an intermediary to the China trade.

So, war is being fought over, largely over the China trade.

Shortly after the revolution, Robert Morris, Morris Street, Morrisville, Pennsylvania, that Morris, he initiated the American China trade for the Americas.

And so the port of Philadelphia became a major center of China trade in the 18th century.

The richest Philadelphians bought, imported delicate porcelains.

So ubiquitous, we now call it China, silks, furniture, decorative items, and China didn't really want that much from the U.S.

They wanted like ginseng, little bit of cotton, main thing was Spanish bullion silver.

And so, there was a trade deficit with China, because that sounds familiar and people didn't wanna have to pay cash for these goods.

So, they started importing drugs, opium, and highly addictive, that's why we ban opioids right now.

And China passed laws against importation, but the British ignored it.

So, I wanna focus on Stephen Girard because he's everywhere.

Girard Avenue, Girard College, Girard Estates, Girard School, there used to be The Girard Bank.

He started out as a slave trader in the Caribbean.

And in fact, in 1905, they dug up his basement and they found all these slave cells to down there, like literally tiers of holding cells with manacles, the whole nine yards, that slave trade was interrupted by the Haitian rebellion.

So then he moved into the China trade and started importing drugs into China.

So these were drug dealers, like no make no mistake.

This is illegal and they're run drugs into China.

By the early 18 hundreds, the Qing Dynasty emperors were aware that opium was like just destroying the country and sent official named Lin Zexu to the docks to confiscate the opium that was being unloaded there.

He destroyed 20,000 chests of opium, 2.6 million pounds.

Actually Lin Zexu is considered a rebel by the British and is considered a hero by the Chinese and his statue sits on the corner of 10th & Vine in Chinatown.

To give you an idea of an importance of this history to both China and the US.

- Thank you for that, Debbie.

I think we're gonna return to some of those points a little bit later in the conversation, but I wanted to pivot now, since we are talking about British imperialism and bring Samip the conversation, Samip your organization, SADA, recently began a walking tour here in old city, Philadelphia that discovers some of the early topics related to Asian Americans, specifically south Asians.

Can you talk about the highlights of some of those historical research that your organization has done?

- Absolutely, Rob.

Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of the panel.

So this walking tour that you mentioned, it's called Revolution Remix.

It's a walking tour that starts at the Liberty Bell and kind of winds its way around old city ending up at Race Street pier on the banks of Delaware River and share stories of south Asian American, south Asians in those spaces from the 1780s all the way up to the present day.

So more than 200 years of history in spaces that many would consider the heart of the American Republic, but stories that certainly I knew nothing about until we started researching for this tour.

And I'd wager that most Philadelphians also know nothing about.

So the story that I'll share that maybe connects with Debbie's, with the histories that Debbie was sharing as well is one that actually takes place at the very last site of the tour at Race Street Pier, because it was not just the goods that were traveling back and forth between Asia and the United States, it was also people who were working on these ships and many individuals who were of south Asian, southeast Asian, east Asian and Middle Eastern descent were working as laborers on these ships that were carrying this goods back and forth.

There's one history in particular that were able to trace of someone named Singh Kisa who in 1785 arrived here in Philadelphia.

He had been working along with a number of other south Asians on a ship that had arrived in Baltimore initially.

And they were trying to find their way back to India, back to their home.

But unfortunately here in Philadelphia, they were being charged an exorbitant amount to get a return voyage back to south Asia, back to India.

And so Singh Kisa wrote a letter in 1785, asking for help from Benjamin Franklin saying, please help us get back home, we're unable to afford the journey back home, can you please help us?

And unfortunately we don't have much more about him from that point forward.

We don't know if he was able to make it back or not.

But what we do know is that his story really represents that of a number of others like him who were either here in the United States and ended up kind of establishing themselves here where hopefully at some point were able to find their way home.

- Thanks for that Samip.

And I'd like to pivot a little bit back to the topic of US imperialism and bring Dr. Rivera into this conversation.

Can you talk a little bit about the role that the US colonization of the Philippines had on establishing the first Filipino American communities here in Philadelphia?

- Well, thank you Rob for the question.

United States is very much part of the history of the Philippines.

After more than three centuries of Spanish colonization, that's from 1521 to 1898, the Philippines was ceded the United States through the Treaty of Paris after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish American war of 1898.

What Filipinos thought was their eventual independence from Spain was followed by 48 years of American colonization of the Philippines, from 1898 to 1946.

Right after the takeover of the Americans, of the Philippines, war broke out between American forces and the Filipino nationalists who sought independence rather than a change from one colonial power to another.

The ensuing Philippine American war lasted for three years, Filipinos were over powered by the American superiority and many deaths in the Philippines side, 2000 Filipinos died out of that war.

And 200,000 Filipino civilians died.

On the American side, only 4,200 died.

Now I want to mention two aspects of the American occupation in the Philippines as it relates to Philadelphia.

One is the us Navy and the second one is the Pensionado Program or the US government sponsored program.

Now the US Navy right after the takeover of the Philippines, the United States started recruiting Filipinos to the American Navy.

In fact, in 1901, the then president, William McKinley, enacted a bill asking 500 Filipinos to be enlisted to the American Navy.

By World War I, that is 1914 to 1918, about 6,000 Filipinos were in the US Navy.

Even after the Philippine gained its independence, the US continued to recruit Filipinos to the US Navy.

Now the Pensionado Program, that is the US government's scholarship program, it started in 1903.

It recruited students from the Philippines to come to United States to study.

And basically studied medicine, nursing, teaching, mathematics, they studied the American way of thinking and then brought it back to the Philippines to basically Americanize the educational system of the Philippines.

Two notables that I want to mention are Dr. Honoria Acosta-Sison.

She studied at the Women's Medical College in 1903.

She became the first female physician in the Philippines.

The second one that I wanna mention is Olivia Salamanca, who studied at the Women's Medical College 1904.

She became the second female physician in the Philippines.

- Thanks for sharing that.

And I think it actually segues nicely into one of the other points I think Samip, that you were planning to make related to some of the south Asian women that actually studied medicine here in Pennsylvania.

- That's right, Rob and Dr. Rivera, thank you that's a perfect segue as well into one of the stories that I was hoping to share of Dr. Anandibai Joshee who was also the first south Asian woman to study medicine anywhere in the world who came here to Philadelphia in 1883 and graduated from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886.

And I think maybe just connecting and reflecting on what you were sharing.

These are such important Philadelphia stories.

These are moments of pride for our city.

Philadelphia was a place where people could come to pursue their education, to pursue their freedom.

And they're ones that I hope really, we would really take and recognize and recognize today and really be proud of in terms of the history of our city.

And hopefully one day we'll see blue markers all over our city that talk about the history of Asian Americans in our city in the ways that these women hundred years ago came here to pursue their degrees where they couldn't have done that anywhere else in the world.

- Thanks for that Samip.

And Debbie, I'd like to bring you back in the conversation now, and we were talking a little bit about how the economic imperialism in China had taken place as a result of the opium war.

I was wondering if you could comment a little bit about the annexation of Hawaii and the other Pacific territories in the United States, specifically how the actions that were taking place at that point differed from economic imperialism that was in Asia.

- So all of these are things that create push factors that bring people to the United States.

And a lot of it is the creation of American empire.

What happened in 1898 was that the US until that point was consolidating the US territories, taking over indigenous people's land.

And when, by the time they finished that, they looked up, they realized that Europe had colonized all over the world and the US empire was restricted to this continent.

So in 1898, they decided I got to, we got to remedy this.

They invaded in one year, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii.

And they went in and basically colonized.

So what colonization is, what's different is that the United States didn't actually take over China in terms of the government, they did with the other foreign powers take over economically.

But in colonization, it's actually the destruction of what exists there and really taking it and saying, this is ours.

And so with, in the case of Hawaii, in particular, Hawaii was an independent nation.

It had a king and a queen.

It had foreign diplomats around the world.

It was a recognized independent kingdom and so the annexation of Hawaii was one that was done against the will of the Hawaiian people and eventually became a state of the United States.

- Yeah, thanks for that.

And I was wondering if you could actually, as a follow up to that comment on some of the discourse related to the American public's perception of this expansion overseas.

- Yeah, I think at the time, what gets lost a to a lot of times in history, because history's told from the perspective of the people that kind of win the argument is the resistance.

There was a huge anti-imperialist league in the United States that really spoke out very forcefully against all these things that were have happening.

And I always like to point to the lesser known stories.

One of the major founds of resistance in the Philippines was actually the Buffalo soldiers who were sent to a fight there.

At least seven defected to the Filipino side.

And one in particular, the one that was made a general in the Filipino side, David Fagen, they recognized that this was wrong, that the United States shouldn't be doing this, that it was very similar to what was happening to their own people at a home.

So you see these kind of fights, both big and small, famous people and not so famous people resisting quite a bit.

- Thanks for sharing that story.

And I think it actually segues nicely back into the conversation around Filipinos here in Philadelphia.

So Dr. Rivera, in your previous response, you talked a little bit about the US Naval service and the role that that had for the Filipino community, but can you talk more about how that helped to establish the community here and the nightlife aspect in the 1930s?

- Sure, yeah, thanks.

So Philadelphia, like the Hampton Roads in Virginia, Jacksonville in Florida, San Diego in California, is a Naval port and the destination of many Filipino Navy personnel.

The arrival of these Navy personnel led to thriving Filipino communities in these areas.

Philadelphia has a country's first Naval shipyard, just FYI.

So in 1912, about 200, mostly discharged Filipino Navy men organized themselves and form the Filipino American Association of Philadelphia or FAAPI; F A A P I. FAAPI is reportedly the oldest, continuously active Filipino organization in the US.

So it was formed by discharged Navy men.

I had the honor to serve as his 35th president and currently serve as the chairman to the board of FAAPI.

FAAPI actually brought other organization.

It was sort of the mother organization that gave birth to other succeeding Filipino American organizations in the area.

But the Filipino community in Philadelphia that started with the arrival of the US Navy man assigned to the Philadelphia Navy yard, started to grow and started to hold festivals, banquets, dinner galas, and celebrate important aspects of history, religious events, family, and social events in the 1930s.

Philadelphia actually became a popular weekend nightlife destination for Filipinos in the entire northeast.

Now regarding celebrations, the Philippian independence day celebrations include a flag racing ceremony at the USS Olympia, currently part of the independence Seaport museum in the Delaware river front.

The USS Olympia was the American flagship of Commodore George Dewey during the battle of Manila bay that defeated the Spaniards and started the American colonization of the Philippines.

So of a lot of history of the USS Olympia.

And we celebrate sort of the independence of the Philippines in the occupying battleship.

- I find that so fascinating and it's one of those really unique histories that we have because the Seaport Museum does have the USS Olympia right here in Philadelphia.

But one of those other really interest connections was, Samip, turning to you, the Ghadar Party.

And I think when we talk about the resistance to British imperialism among south Asians, typically I've always thought of Ghadar Party as a west coast entity, but obviously they were active here in Philadelphia.

So could you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yeah, the Ghadar Party was an organization that was founded and based in San Francisco from 1913 onwards.

And it was an organization that was working to free India.

What we now think of India, and Pakistan, Bangladesh were all until 1947, a British colony.

And so the Ghadar Party was working to free British India from British colonial rule through armed revolution.

Their ideology was that they wanted to encourage Indians to rise up against a British.

And certainly the organization is well known for being based in San Francisco and active on the west coast.

But Ghadar Party members were also active here on the east coast as well as all across the country and around the world.

And there's one particularly notable event that occurred in 1920 here in Philadelphia, a march that started at the Liberty Bell and ended in west Philadelphia.

They marched three miles west on Market Street from the Liberty bell and where they declared that Philadelphia's allegiance with Indians and the freedom from British.

And I think the reason they selected both Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell is that as we all know, Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell are really important symbols of American democracy and American democracy was an inspiration for those Indian revolutionaries at that time.

In fact, when they got to the end of their march and they claimed that there were 10,000 people marching in the streets with them, here in Philadelphia, they read its declaration.

And if you don't mind, I'll read just a paragraph of it, but they really speaks to why American democracy was so powerful for them as a symbol.

They say, whereas America, as opposed to imperialism and tyranny all over the world.

And whereas the American ideal is for independence of all people, great and small.

And whereas the people of India are in a state of revolt against British tyranny and have attempted to establish a provisional government, which has been lately reported to be crushed by British militarism, be resolved therefore, that's this mass meeting of citizens of Philadelphia, most hardly support the struggle of the people of India in their efforts and fight to establish a free and independent republic of their own.

And so really speaks to the ways that, American democracy, once again, was an inspiration actively for these Indian revolutionaries.

- That's really fascinating.

And I really appreciate that you shared that direct quote because I think it use some really perspective on how important it was for the east Asian revolutionaries to see the United States as that beacon of hope and yet at the same time period the Philippines was actively at a colony of the United States and as well as these other Pacific island territories that we're talking about.

I'm wondering if we could sort of pivot the conversation in our last few minutes here to talk more about how these topics are remembered today in your respective communities.

Maybe we can go back to Debbie to start us off, but thinking specifically again about Girard, I mean, we know Girard college for the many good things that it does in our city and the idea that Gerard is this philanthropist, it's a bit different from how we're talking about him in this conversation.

So maybe you could comment on that.

- Yeah, I mean, I think it's important, what we're seeing most recently is a reframing of the history so that, and it's important to know that, some things ha happened in a certain way because you don't want that stuff to happen again.

And that's why we learn history.

I think it's important, you'll see all over the country, people kind of lifting up this hidden history that's been kept from the public for a long time.

Not to denigrate the United States as a country, but to lift up those that, because in any of these situations, there were voices of opposition.

There was a great Philadelphia named Nathan Dunn, who was a Quaker who refused to deal drugs in China.

He refused to take part in the opium trade and he was a China trader, opened a Chinese museum in Philadelphia.

Hundreds of thousands of people went to that museum that burnt to the ground, unfortunately, but for all of these stories about heroes that maybe were a little bit less than heroic, there are real heroes that were trying to do the right thing.

And those are the people that I'm like most interested in as a historian and researcher.

- Thanks for that, Debbie.

And I'd like to have the same kind of question moving over to Dr. Rivera.

You about this a little bit with regards to how the Filipino American community does celebrate independence state at the USS Olympia, but can you comment a little more on how the community perceives that time period of colonization.

- The American colonization of the Philippines brought on pros and cons?

The cons definitely, you have the colonial mentality as well as being low self esteem, the oppressed mind and all those things, but it brought the western educational system to the country.

That's why I was able to come in here in the United States because we were taught the American way, the American medicine, and a lot of nurses also came to the United States because they were taught the American system of nursing.

So there are positive aspects to the American colonization in the Philippines, the educational system at the forefront of that.

- Thanks for sharing that.

And Samip in our last couple minutes here, maybe you could talk a little bit about how maybe particularly your organization remembers this period of colonization.

- Yeah, thanks, Rob.

And to the last point you made as well.

I think one thing that's often struck me is how the American ideals don't match the realities that we face, right?

And I think the ironies of that are often the ones that we should hold onto and recognize.

For our organization and the work that we do, I think these histories can be really inspirational, particularly in thinking about the ways that our communities have always resisted tyranny, have always resisted imperialism.

And those are histories that because often we don't know them in our own communities, we're not able to draw from.

And so I really see this as an opening point for us to recognize the ways that Asian Americans and south Asians and for the work that our community, our organization does have been always political and really goes against that the idea of our communities being apolitical or are quiet.

The other is recognizing the ways that these histories demonstrate the shared histories that we have within the Asian American community and with other communities of color and other immigrant communities.

For example, the stories that Dr. Rivera and I shared about the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, why that's so important for both the Filipino and the south Asian community, or thinking about 1946, the year that the Luce-Celler Act was passed in the United States, which allowed south Asians and Filipino Americans to become American citizens for the first time in many years.

So these histories, they're really intertwined.

And I think that certainly as we recognize our shared past, that's how we build a shared future.

- I hope this discussion has been engaging and informative.

You can join the conversation too.

Just email us talkback@whyy.org.

For WHYY, I'm Rob Buscher, thank you.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by.