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Photo Op prior to ground breaking. AFO Original members Manual Roxas Post 798, Filipino Women’s Club of Stockton, Manuel Roxas Women’s Auxiliary 798, Santo Nino Filipino Catholic Association, Filipino Medical & Allied Profession Society

FILIPINO CENTER PLAZA

By Dr. Richard Tenaza, Doris Montillo Unsod, and Lois Sayhoun

Photos copyrighted Associated Filipino Organizations of San Joaquin County.

This is the story of how the Filipino American community of Stockton, CA, and vicinity came together to assist fellow Filipino Americans in a time of dire need. The cooperation they exhibited to achieve their common goal is a fundamental feature of Filipino culture called bayanihan (pronounced as buy-uh-nee-hun).

In the early 1960s, the City of Stockton announced plans to bulldoze its downtown Asian neighborhood to make room for a crosstown freeway. Many of the lowest income residents of this low-income neighborhood were of Filipino descent, which caused concern in the Filipino American community at large. The late Professor Dawn Mabalon has called the historic neighborhood “Little Manila”. In her book, Little Manila is in the Heart, she describes it in its heyday as having been a vibrant community of hotels, pool halls, dance halls, restaurants, grocery stores, churches, union halls, and barbershops, and home to the largest community of Filipinos outside of the Philippines.

The late Jose Bernardo, and his colleague Eulogio “Ted” Lapuz, were among the community-minded Filipino American Stocktonians who fretted for the welfare of Pinoys who would be uprooted when the City demolished their domiciles in Little Manila. To obtain actual data to test their subjective concerns, Jose and Ted, assisted by a cadre of UC Davis students, surveyed residents of the neighborhood. Their data revealed that hundreds of inhabitants whose homes were to be bulldozed were elderly, unmarried, Filipino men, mainly ex-farm workers retired due to age and infirmity, with no kin to assist them.

With the facts before them, and with Jose and Ted at the helm, several Filipino American organizations in San Joaquin County banded together into a new 501c3 association they called the Associated Filipino Organizations of San Joaquin County to help house displaced Filipinos. Among the first to join were the Filipino Catholic Association of Stockton, Filipino Women’s Club of Stockton, Inc., Manuel A. Roxas Post #798 of the American Legion, and the Santo Nino Association of San Joaquin County and Vicinity.

Ted Lapuz was AFO’s first president, and Jose was its advisor. They decided to build a new affordable housing complex to accommodate the soon-to-be refugees of Little Manila. Ten organizations put $1,000 each into a seed money pot to help demonstrate their earnestness. But before seeking funding to build an affordable refuge for those fleeing the bulldozers and wrecking balls, they had to find land upon which to construct the facility they envisioned.

By chance, Jose met a Chinese American attorney from Stockton named Ted Lee, who specialized in redevelopment law, and was at the time, under contract with the City of Stockton. Attorney Lee showed Jose a square block (2-acre lot) of City-owned land in Stockton’s redevelopment zone and advised him how he might be able to acquire it. Following Mr. Lee’s advice, and with earnest money in hand, Jose got the City to pledge the land on which the Filipino Center is now situated to AFO for an affordable housing project. Jose was in the

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construction business and had built a 40-story building in Los Angeles, experience that must have guided his evaluation of the site.

Early in 1968, with land pledged by The City, the AFO approached the FHA about guaranteeing a HUD loan needed to build the 10-story affordable housing apartment building and the 30,000 square foot commercial building. It was a struggle, but three years later, in April 1971, FHA authorities finally agreed to insure a HUD mortgage to build the Filipino Center (aka Filipino Center Plaza). Elated, AFO members had a ground-breaking ceremony in July 1971 and began working. Philippine Vice President, Fernando Lopez, came to Stockton from Manila to officiate the ground-breaking and scoop the first shovelful of earth. In February 1972, seven months after the groundbreaking, HUD signed the agreement to lend AFO $2.8 million to build the Center. Once the loan was acquired, AFO returned the seed money advances to the organizations that had made them.

On August 12, 1972, the Filipino Center was completed and opened for occupancy. Forty years later, AFO made the final HUD loan payment, and AFO now owns the property free and clear. AFO continues providing affordable housing to tenants pre-approved by HUD, but the proportion of residents who are of Filipino descent has declined considerably. A Filipino Center Barrio Fiesta, to occur each August, was established to celebrate the opening of the Filipino Center and the Filipino Bayanihan Spirit.

Remember how in the beginning of this story, Little Manila was destroyed to clear a pathway for a crosstown freeway? Well, the freeway was finally completed in 1993, a quarter century later.

HOW DID ALL THOSE FILIPINO FARM WORKERS GET HERE AND WHY DID SO MANY OF THEM REMAIN SINGLE?

The Filipinos were the third major group of Asians to work in California’s agricultural fields. The Chinese were first. Chinese came to California in the 1850s to mine gold, spent the 1860s building the transcontinental railroad, and in the 1970s, were employed to build 1,100 miles of levees to turn 3,000 square miles of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta swamp into a couple hundred or so fertile agricultural islands. After transforming the swamp into agricultural land, Chinese labored in the fields of Euro-American farm owners. Then in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned immigration of Chinese laborers and Japanese workers took over. That lasted until 1907 when the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the US and Japanese Governments halted immigration of Japanese laborers to the US.

Meanwhile, the US had paid Spain $20,000,000 for the Philippines and then fought and won a war against the people of the Philippines to seal the deal and make the Filipinos colonial subjects or “nationals” of America. As nationals, Filipinos could freely enter the US, but were prohibited from owning land, becoming naturalized citizens, or, in states such as California, from marrying white women.

In the 1920’s over 30,000 Filipino men came to California to work in the fields, but hardly any Filipino women came. The ratio of Filipino men to Filipino women was about 15:1. According to Ronald Takaki, 93% of the Filipino men coming to California in the 1920s were single, and 84% were under 30. A few men married dark-skinned women of other races and some bucked the anti-miscegenation laws of California and adjacent states and took their white betrothed to states like Washington, Utah, or New Mexico to wed. My Filipino father and white mother went from California to Washington to marry.

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Actual Construction took only one year

July 1971 ground breaking

However, due to poverty, lack of opportunity, and anti-miscegenation laws, many—perhaps most—Filipino men who came to California in the 1920s never married. And that is why so many elderly Filipino men who had never been married, lived in Little Manila when it was destroyed to make room for a freeway, a freeway that wasn’t built until after many of them had died of old age.

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The Filipino Center’s Golden Jubilee

August 12, 2022, will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Filipino Center. To celebrate this event, the Filipino Center Board of Directors* will host a Golden Jubilee Celebration at the Stockton Golf & Country Club on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, August 20, 2022. For further information email AFO Board Secretary, Ms. Lois Magaoay Sahyoun at lmsahyoun@aol.com.

*Doris Unsod, President; Lois Sahyoun, Secretary; Denise Rico, Treasurer; Al Fillon, Director; Phillip Nisperos, Director; Richard Tenaza, Director.

337 E Weber Ave. • Stockton, CA 95202 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 4616 Stockton, CA 95204 209-932-9037 Email: fanhsmuseum@aol.com www.fanhsmuseum.com

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Membership applications can be requested by sending an email to: STOCKTONFANHS@outlook.com

By Linda Claramo, President

@fanhsstockton www.fanhsstockton.com

August 1972 Completion

2021 - Residential building after 49 years of service

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