Filipino American tapped for California's new Attorney General

Assemblymember Rob Bonta in front of a portrait of a former tenant of the International Hotel,
was nominated to become California's next Attorney General.

Picking the site of the old International Hotel in San Francisco for Rob Bonta's first press conference after being nominated as California's new Attorney General is full of meaning tying the past with the future. 

“Thank you, Governor Newsom, for the privilege and honor of a lifetime,” Bonta said on Wednesday, speaking from I-Hotel Manilatown Center. “I’m so humbled in the trust, faith and the confidence that you placed in me.

“I stand here because of so many people who come before me, including people like the Asian Americans and Filipino Americans who assembled right here at the International Hotel on August 4, 1977,” he said, speaking in front of portraits of former I-Hotel tenants.

The I-Hotel was the last remaining vestige of the city's Manilatown and the home for elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants. It was the site of years of protests as young Asian Americans fought to save the affordable residential hotel for its residents.The protests helped fuel a rise in AAPI political activism. 

Bonta’s mother was on hand today to witness Newsom announce  her son's selection. In the 1970s, she worked with Emil de Guzman organizing the protests to save the hotel. "He has a certain tenaciousness that I saw when he was a young kid," said de Guzman, who has known Bonta and his family for decades.

If Assemblyman Bonta's nomination is approved -- and it is likely he will be approved by the Democrat-majority in the state legislature -- he would become the first Filipino American to occupy that high-profile post which is often the launching pad for higher office.

The 48-year old legislator is filling the seat vacated by Xavier Becerra, who was recently sworn in as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

One of Bonta's noteworthy pieces of legislation was to make the state recognize and observe the birthday of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American labor leader who led the nationwide grape boycott  in 1965 and with Cesar Chavez, formed the United Farmworkers.

Throughout his career in public service, Bonta has taken on big fights to reverse historic injustice – many affecting communities of color. He has been a leader in the fight to reform California's  justice system and stand up to the forces of hate.

“Rob represents what makes California great – our desire to take on righteous fights and reverse systematic injustices,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Growing up with parents steeped in social justice movements, Rob has become a national leader in the fight to repair our justice system and defend the rights of every Californian. And most importantly, at this moment when so many communities are under attack for who they are and who they love, Rob has fought to strengthen hate crime laws and protect our communities from the forces of hate. He will be a phenomenal Attorney General, and I can’t wait to see him get to work.”

Assemblymember Rob Bonta was elected to the California State Assembly’s 18th District in 2012, where he represents the cities of Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro. He became the first Filipino American state legislator in California’s then 160-plus-year history.

“I became a lawyer because I saw the law as the best way to make a positive difference for the most people, and it would be an honor of a lifetime to serve as the attorney for the people of this great state.," said Bonta.

"As California’s Attorney General, I will work tirelessly every day to ensure that every Californian who has been wronged can find justice and that every person is treated fairly under the law.”

Newsom made the announcement at the historic International Hotel in San Francisco, a site where Asian and Pacific Islander Californians famously rallied in 1977 to save homes of elderly residents and preserve their community. The protests helped fuel a rise in AAPI political activism. Bonta’s mother, who helped organize the protest at the International Hotel, was on hand today to witness the Governor making his selection.

Bonta grew up the son of activists. His mother, Cynthia, a proud Filipina, immigrated to California in the 1960s. His father, Warren, who grew up in Ventura County, was committed to service and social justice from a young age. As a student, the elder Bonta joined Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights organizing in Alabama to pass the Voting Rights Act. 

Warren and Cynthia Bonta were working as missionaries in the Philippines when Rob was born, training young people to serve the needs of rural Philippine villages through service, community organizing and ministry.

When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, the Bonta family decided to return to the U.S.

Shortly after leaving the Philippines, the Bontas moved to a trailer in La Paz, in the Tehachapi Mountains outside Bakersfield and served in the headquarters for the United Farm Workers movement. Rob Bontas parents worked alongside Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Philip Veracruz, organizing Latino and Filipino farmworkers for racial, economic and civil rights. 

It was in La Paz, surrounded by other UFW families, that Rob Bonta’s parents gave him his first lessons in right and wrong and taught him that everyone had an obligation to speak out when another person is treated unfairly.

Growing up, Bonta had been inspired by characters like Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird” to pursue justice through the law, and reflecting on the stories of the farmworkers his family had known only strengthened that resolve. Bonta was accepted to Yale Law School. It was also at Yale that he met his wife Mia, who he calls “his partner in life and in service.”

TWITTER / BONTA

California Assemblymember Rob Bonta, left, and his family.

After law school, Bonta moved back to California and went into private practice, working pro-bono to protect Californians from exploitation and racial profiling. A few years later, Bonta decided to pursue his passion for public service and put his legal experience to work to help his community full-time. Bonta served nine years as a Deputy City Attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, representing the city and its employees, before running for local office in Alameda County.

At the State Capitol, Bonta passed major reforms that reversed long-standing injustices. He quickly became a statewide leader in the fights for racial, economic and environmental justice, advancing reforms that put California on the cutting edge.

The AAPI communities make up about 16% of California's population of 40 million, according to the US Census. Attacks against AAPI have been occurring throughout the state but concentrations of incidents have been in the Los Angeles and San Francisco urban areas. 

Bonta's nomination was the result of a lobbying campaign by AAPI leaders that began the day after the November presidential election that saw Harris take the Vice President post. All of California's Filipino American elected officials sent a letter to Newsom's office urging him to pick Bonta. Potential rivals withdrew their name in favor of the Assemlymember.

“Rob is a fighter for justice and will protect Californians at every opportunity,” David Chiu, a Democratic assemblyman and member of the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) legislative caucus, tweeted on Wednesday. “This is a historic nomination for API communities at a time when it could not be more critical.”

If named AG, one of the issues he'll tackle is the current wave of violence targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As an Assemblymember, Bonta introduced a number of bills to improve hate crime statutes, support victims of hate violence, and build bridges between law enforcement and targeted communities.

Bonta told the San Francisco Chronicle that one of his top priorities would be to “protect those facing the forces of hate” and hold accountable perpetrators of hate crimes.

“Hate crimes targeting the API community have skyrocketed over the last year, and we need a champion who will make the pursuit of justice for these victims a top priority,” fellow Assemblymember Evan Low told the Chronicle.

“I have full faith AG Bonta is the right person to meet this moment.”

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this posting incorrectly said Xavier Becerra replaced Kamala Harris. Becerra was elected to the AG post in 2016.

Two historic Filipino American hotels connected by BLM marchers

KQED

Filipino American demonstrators marched in support of Black Lives Matter.

Two hotels that played roles in Filipino American history were connected June 10 by scores of demonstrators marching in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The march began at the Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel in the officially designated Filipino Town in the South of Market area of San Francisco. The hotel still house elderly members of the Gran Oriente, one of several fraternal organizations Filipinos created in the early 1900s for comradeship and self-protection.

The demonstrators then walked a mile and a half to the International Hotel in what used to be Manilatown. The I-Hotel was the last vestiges of Manilatown and served as the home of elderly Filipinos and Chinese up until 1977 when its tenants were violently evicted by the San Francisco Police.

The eviction was the culmination of a decade-long battle to save the I-hotel that provided low-rent housing for mostly Filipino and Chinese tenants.

The Singapore-based owners of low-income housing first tried to evict the tenants in 1968. Joining the protests against the eviction were hundreds of members of the Black community, including the Black Panthers and the congregations of several predominantly black churches. 

Blacks joined the human barricade of thousands of Asian Americans ringing the hotel five deep to prevent several attempts to evict the elderly tenants.

“They've had our backs for so long,” Gianni Magpantay told KQED. “In this event, we're sharing some history on the International Hotel that got raided by 400 riot police and our Black brothers sisters showed up for us,” Magpantay said on why it is now important for the Filipino community to show up for the Black community.

Eli Frances Abad, who is Filipino American, organized the event. He recalled the historical location and historical advocacy “They were there when they were being evicted and they formed a barricade around the hotel to protect the Filipinos, so it’s our duty and responsibility to protect, stand and fight with them.”

Abad said that the black and Filipino communities have more shared histories than cultural differences.

“The black community has a lot of historical connection with the Filipinos. We have black Filipinos. We have black roots.” referencing the indigenous Negritos, whom anthropologists say are the earliest inhabitants  of the Philippines.

50 years ago: First skirmish of the International Hotel saga

Photo by National Register of HIstorical Places

The International Hotel was home for Filipino and Chinese elderly.

ON THIS DATE, 50 years ago, Nov. 27, 1968 - 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants from the Manilatown neighborhood of San Francisco began a nine-year-long, anti-eviction campaign against Financial District encroachment after receiving an eviction notice.

Widespread student and community grass-roots support imprinted this event as a milestone in Asian American and housing advocacy history. 

The campaign culminated in the deployment of over 400 riot police, mounted patrols, anti-sniper units and fire ladder trucks in a 3 a.m. eviction raid on August 4, 1977. A 3,000-person human barricade was brutally cleared away by authorities before tenants were physically removed from the premises. 

The three-storey brick structure was demolished in 1077 leaving an empty hole in what was Manilatown and a gaping wound in the heart and soul of the Asian American community.

RELATED: 

• The day the International Hotel fell
• 1968 -- the year the Asian American community mobilized

The developers eventually sold the empty lot on Kearney Street to the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese. With the input of housing activists, former tenants and city planners, over 104 affordable senior housing units and community space were built on that site and opened up in 2005. 

I covered this story as a fledgling reporter for the Philippine News. It was my first taste of journalism and ever since then it awakened an awareness in me that impacted my life in so many ways.

The battle for the International Hotel will go down in the annals of Asian American history as a watershed event. It galvanized the fledgling Asian American student movement on the college campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, united generations of the elderly and the youth seeking a cause and gave birth to a consciousness that Asian Americans matter, that their history matters, and sparked a legacy of activism that was launched with the 1965 Grape Strike that continues to this day. Asian Americans would no longer be the quiet subservient people living forever on the margins of society. 

i made it to manilatown.
the people here can name every fish back home.
they sang songs at night.
waiting so long for the International Hotel.
i dreamt of a place to gather with them. 

Al Robles 

Excerpt from Wandering Manong

_________________________________________________________________________________

1968 -- when Asian Americans discovered each other and a movement took hold

1968 WAS A HELLUVA YEAR! Fifty years later, the calamitous events of that landmark year continue to impact today's Asian Americans.

A half-century allows us to view that year with more perspective, minus the passion experienced by those of us who cheered, fought, rallied and cried through those 365 days.

Recent specials recalling that landmark year by CNN do a good job covering that year but it left out the chapter on Asian America and the AAPI communities.

It was  the year that marked the shedding of the quiet and separate communities of what used to be called "Orientals" -- primarily Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos -- scattered throughout the country. It was the year that gave birth of Asian-Americans (with the hyphen), a term that united the disparate communities under a common banner and combined gave it a new-found leverage in political circles and a voice that could not be ignored.

it's become popular to blame Baby Boomers for the state of our country today: Everything from our degraded environment, growing traffic jams and distrust in government to the redefining of the American Dream and the election of the Donald Trump.

But we need to take a new look at what came out of that year and the many simultaneous revolutions that were nurtured or was born in that mixture of radical free-thinking and questioning of the status quo. 

It was my first full year at UC-Berkeley in the College of Environmental Design to fulfill a lifetime dream of becoming an architect. Little did I know of the twists and turns that was in my future that would steer me down a different path. 

I also didn't know that Cal -- along with San Francisco State and other college campuses -- would play important roles for Asian/Americans that year. 1968 marked the beginning of a decade of social consciousness, self discovery and political reckoning for Asian Americans.

1968 did not occur in a vacuum. Earlier in that decade, the Civil Rights Movement, the student-led Free Speech Movement, the Filipino-instigated UFW grape strike and the fledgling movement against the Vietnam War provided a bubbling cauldron of social unrest and dissatisfaction with the status quo. 

Asian America was born
Activist and historian Yuji Ichioka coined the term “Asian American” to serve as what sociologist Dina Okamoto now calls a “rallying cry to build this broad, collective identity around.” The Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos saw what was growing in the African American and Latino communities and felt left out of the battles for civil rights. Calling yourself Asian American meant self-identifying a people that rejected the derogatory “Oriental” label. It meant discovering a sense of kinship in a population that remained quite small until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act loosened quotas set in place for non-European immigrants and further changed the AAPI communities, a revolution within a revolution that continues to this day.

Tet Offensive
The year started with the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government and politicians kept telling the American TV viewing audience that the U.S. military sees "The light at the end of the tunnel. Though militarily a failure, the Tet Offensive showed how wrong U.S. leaders were. The nd of the war was not near, as the U.S. military and the President Lyndon Johnson administration claimed. The boldness of the strategy and its implementation belied the belief that Americans would easily steamroll over Asians.

My Lai Massacre
The murder of Vietnamese villagers - men, women, children - by U.S. troops in March of 1968 was, for many Americans, the turning point in a war for the hearts and minds of the U.S. public. The military campaign in Vietnam became a moral issue and raised the question, "What is happening to our young American men?" Americans, used to being depicted as the good guys, begin questioning that image. The war and its atrocities fed the growing anti-war movement and placed Asia and (by extension) Asian Americans into the consciousness of Americans. The following month, President Johnson declared that he would not run for a second term.

Third World Liberation Front
Also in March, at San Francisco State, Asian American students joined with other students of color to form the Third World Liberation Front with the Black Students Union, the Mexican American Student Confederation, the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA), the Latin American Students Organization, and an American Indian student organization. They allied themselves with the the more militant Brown Berets and Black Panthers to form an historic partnership. The Asian American Political Alliance joined TWLF by summertime. A member of PACE was elected as the TWLF first chairperson. In an age before social media, chapters were quickly formed in other campuses including UC Berkeley, UCLA, San Jose State and throughout the U.S.

The assassinations of MLK and RFK

The assassinations of the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Robert Kennedy was like a one-two punch in the gut. It convinced the legions of their followers that "the system" didn't work. If change were to come, it would have to come from outside conventional means. Both men sought the end of the Vietnam morass. In the last few years of his life, MLK began preaching against the Vietnam War, bringing the lexicon and values of the Civil Rights Movement -- which up to then was considered a black-only movement -- to emerge within the Asian/American movement. Kennedy was supposed to be the man who would bring the troops home. He was supposed to be the standard bearer for a reform of the government institutions to accommodate the new, diverse America. With the death of these two leaders, hope for an orderly and peaceful change also died. 

Growing militancy
In May, the Asian American Political Alliance was formed at UC Berkeley. The AAPA S.F. chapter became active in the increasingly militant SFSU TWLF. The liberation front staged a sit-in at SF State President Summerskill's office. Resulted in opening of 412 admission slots for students of color applicants over the next two semesters, and the creation of at least 10 faculty positions for minority professors. Sit-ins also involved first major act of police violence against student demonstrators with clubbings, 10 injuries requiring hospitalization, and 26 arrests. Summerskill resigned a few months later and there was no fulfillment of earlier agreements. Student frustration leads to divergence from traditional protest channels.

Student movement goes international
In June 30, 1968 Berkeley mayor Wallace Johnson declares a state of emergency and a three day curfew in the city in response to violence in the wake of student demonstrations at Cal in support of Paris May Uprising of students and workers the previous month. Student uprisings in Columbia University, Great Britain, Manila, Tokyo and other cities gave the impression of real revolution and pundits shaking their heads and asking, "What the hell is going on?" This is when I got my first exposure to tear gas as the city, Alameda County and the state brought the full force of law enforcement to control the student demonstrators.

Olympic protest

That summer, two African American sprinters, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, were on the Olympic podium in Mexico (which had recently violently slammed down student demonstrators at the University of Mexico) and when the national anthem was played, they each raised a gloved fist to bring international attention and to show solidarity with the (what was considered the more radical) Black Power movement. The two students of San Jose State were the peers of thousands of college students of color who saw the sprinters' unconventional protest as a signal to take the so-called revolution off the campus and into streets and institutions of power.

The International Hotel
On October 28, 1968, the first eviction notice was served on 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants of the International Hotel in the Manilatown district of San Francisco. This marked the beginning of a nine-year long anti-eviction campaign against financial district redevelopment interests. Widespread student and community grass-roots support imprinted this event as a milestone in Asian American civil rights history. Students allied themselves with the manongs. An attack on the senior citizens' home was an attack on Asian American heritage. "Remember the I-Hotel" became a rallying cry for thousands of Asian American students for the following decade. The campaign culminated in 1974 with the deployment of over 300 riot police, mounted patrols, anti-sniper units and fire ladders in an early morning eviction raid. A 3,000-person human barricade that surrounded the three story brick structure was brutally cleared away by authorities before the elderly tenants were physically removed from the premises.

The International Hotel was located on the final block in a once thriving Filipino American enclave. Originally consisting of over ten square blocks and located near the edge of San Francisco Chinatown, Manilatown was considered home to many Filipino farmworkers, merchant marines and service workers. 

Student strikes

In November, "On strike! Shut it down!" became a famiiar cry as the student strike at San Francisco State began in which PACE played a leading role. The strike at San Francisco State College lasted five months, longer than any other academic student strike in American higher education history, and, miraculously, was less violent than any that were to come. The strike inspired sympathy strikes on various campuses in California. As the militant students linked up with the anti-war movement and civil rights movement, the feeling of a genuine revolution was in the air, much to the dismay of the status quo which unintentionally created a simmering backlash that was kept under wraps for decades but has finally emerged, full-throttle, under the Trump administration. The student strikes at SF State resulted in the nation's first College of Ethnic Studies and the first Filipino American Studies courses. Similar efforts results in ethnic studies becoming a legitimate course of study at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA and schools throughout the country.

Nixon elected
Partly as a backlash against 1968's turmoil most Americans wanted more stability, Richard Nixon was elected after sabotaging the peace talks in Paris, thus, allowing the Vietnam War to continue until 1974 at the cost of thousands of lives. It was the first election when the Dixiecrats, southern Democrats, showed their true racist colors and voted for Nixon. Nixon would go on with his dirty tricks leading to Watergate his eventual resignation in disgrace. America lost their trust in government. The Presidency hasn't been the same since.

* * *

With the luxury of time, it strikes me what seemed like social progress to many of us, was a threat to many more. What was happening on the campuses affected only a tiny fraction of America. One only had to drive a few miles to California's suburbs and into the Central Valley to discover that what many of us saw as necessary and progressive, was filling the people of the Heartland and South with fear and resentment. 

A generation gap developed between parents who came of age in the 1940s and ’50s and the more experimental views of 1960s youth. The gap was even more pronounced among first generation immigrant parents and their children who have become too "Americanized." Some saw long hair and bell bottoms as signs of anarchy while others saw explorations with drugs and sex as immoral. Critics often labeled student protesters as self-indulgent and inexperienced. 

And they represented the broader American citizenry who saw these uppity people of color as a threat to their established social and economic position on top of the heap.

It's important to remind ourselves that while Asian Americans were struggling with identity, social unrest was going on throughout American society. Besides the anti-war movement which had taken over the so-called hippie movement which culminated in the Summer of Love the year before, women were asserting themselves, environmentalists were organizing, African Americans were still being beaten in American cities, Chicanos were walking off of campuses. 

It also wasn't just the United States that was in tumult. Violent student riots in Japan, France, Great Britain and Germany roiled the status quo in those countries. And just to remind students how bad a backlash can be, Russia invaded Czecholslovakia to quash any dreams of creating a democracy.

With all this upheaval going on in the world, it is no wonder that the generation that fought WWII would feel that the world was falling apart. When the Beatles sang "Revolution," all that middle America heard was the word "revolution," and not the rest of the lyrics:

But when you talk about destruction; 

Don't you know that you can count me out

The lessons of 1968 are continually being  relearned -- in each wave of new immigrants who come to this land -- from South Asia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, South Korea or the People's Republic of China. Newcomers have no idea what it means to be Asian in this country. Every time a door is closed, a promotion denied, a person is attacked or belittled because of his or her looks or accent, every time a just cause is ignored -- that is happening to all of us. 

Today's Harvard discrimination case threatening affirmative action, the cultural phenomenon of #AsianAugust giving AAPI people representation and immigration trends that indicate more people coming from Asia may or may not auger a new Asian American Age as some pundits have proclaimed, but opinion columnist Ross Douthat may have hit on something when he wrote in the New York Times about the dawning of this era.

"So after the Trumpian moment passes, our ethno-political fights will be gradually reshaped by how Asians relate to American culture, how American politics relates to them, and how they (because 'Asian' contains multitudes) relate to one another."

In 1968, we had no idea that we would still be fighting the same causes, but today, our battle fields have  extended far beyond the east and west coasts and Hawaii, but in areas we don't usually associate with Asian America -- the Midwest and the Deep South. 

The struggles for equality, equity and recognition have gone beyond the college campuses and are now being fought in the courts, the halls of academe, the nation's newsrooms and corporate boardrooms, Congress, state legislatures and the city halls and school boards scattered across our country. 

Fifty years later, the so-called "revolution" as it turns out, was one of mind and spirit as well as political and cultural. Again, as the cultural icons of 1968, The Beatles, say -- it wasn't a revolution, but more of an evolution.

Don't you know it's gonna be 

 All right, all right, all right

______________________________________________________________________________

40 years ago, the International Hotel fell

NANCY WONG

3000 protestors ringed the hotel in an unsuccessful attempt to save the International Hotel and its elderly Filipino and Chinese  tenants.

FORTY YEARS ago, when the elderly tenants of the International Hotel in San Francisco were evicted, a chapter in Asian/American history ended ... and a new chapter began.

The plight of the elderly Filipinos and Chinese who were fighting to keep their home in the last remaining block of Manilatown sparked a generation of Asian/Americans more keenly aware of the discrimination faced by earlier generations,  and the need to tell the story of the manongs to future generations.

The struggle to save the hotel and prevent the final eviction -- in many ways -- was Asian America's Selma. Activists encircled the I-Hotel block four-deep. Police descended on the three-story brick structure by horse, truncheon and sledgehammers. 

The decade-long back-and-forth struggle in the streets, courts and city hall  gave birth to the affordable housing movement repeated in cities across the U.S. and beyond the AAPI community.

RELATED: The International Hotel lives on

The I-Hotel struggle, along with Filipino farmworker-instigated Grape Strike in 1965, was one of the catalysts for Asian/Americans becoming part of the civil rights movement sweeping over the nation in the 1960s and 1970s giving birth to Asian/American history being taught in our colleges and inspired the formation of a host of political, civil rights and legal organizations advocating for the community.

The Asian/American activists who rallied behind the elderly tenants, ate with them, listened to their stories and linked arms with thousands of others to prevent the eviction, like ripples in a pond, became affordable housing advocates, politicians, filmmakers, medical professionals, union organizers, teachers, artists, lawyers, writers and journalists.

As I was covering the entire struggle for the Philippine News, one of the other journalists doing the same thing for community newspapers was a fresh-scrubbed, straight out of college, Randall Yip. Now a television producer for one of the local stations, he also curates a Internet news site, AsAm News. He covered the I-Hotel struggle for two Asian/American publications, East West and the San Francisco Journal, both of which have ceased publishing.

He interviewed some of the key people who took part in trying to save the I-Hotel. Read his story here.

***

On Friday night August 4 from 6 – 9 p.m., a 40th anniversary panel discussion will be held at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation to commemorate the 40th anniversary. A free screening of The Fall of the I-Hotel will also be held.

Unsung heroes: Dad, the Major

ANOTHER Memorial Day is upon us. I think of my dad - an Army man, through and through. The Army-Navy game every winter was the one football game he would never miss even though he didn't have a stake in the game other than he was in the Army. 

Unlike other veterans he never talked about what he did during World War II or the Korean War. To this day he remains an enigma to me.

So last week, out of curiosity, I Googled his name "Melchor V. Diokno." He died before this computer age so I was surprised to see his name pop up. It turns out there's a webpage about him and his service in the Philippine Scouts, an elite unit of the U.S. Army. His uniform is on display in a museum at the San Francisco Presidio.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier versions  of this post used an outdated link to the page about the Philippine Scouts that no longer exists. The new link brings you to the correct page.

So, another chapter is filled in about a man who rarely talked about himself. Maybe it's because no one asked him about his war experiences. I tried to get him to open up his experiences in the military, but he would divert the conversation to something else. 

There are a few tidbits gathered through the years: Such as when he found his way home after being a POW, he was so emaciated, dirty and "smelly," his daughter Benicia ran into the house because she didn't recognize him. My mother also said that he was in charge of the grave detail of the POW camp. The POWs used the daily ritual of burying the dead as a means of escaping the camp. The prisoners would be hidden from the guards by placing the dead prisoners on top of them. When the guards were not looking, they would dash into the surrounding jungle.

It seems the more I learn about him, the more questions are raised.

Many of my nieces and nephews also knew another side of him. He had this ability to pull candy out of their ears. Sure, maybe they were humoring an old man but he took so much pleasure in their company and the surprised and delighted look on their faces when he would seemingly find candy in their ear. 

My father had hoped to continue his service but after being skipped over for promotion, he retired as a major. I know he was disappointed. In today's context, I can't help but think he was denied the promotion to colonel not because he didn't deserve it. He didn't fit the prototypical image of a high-ranking Army officer in 1954 America because he was not brash enough or loud enough, short of stature at 5'2" and his skin was several shades too dark.

I don't know how many Brigade commanders sought him as their Executive Officer. He was forever the XO, excellent at managing day-to-day but in the eyes of his superior officers, but not good enough to lead. Sound familiar?

But he couldn't fathom that the country he fought and bled for might be capable of discrimination. He didn't say a single disparaging word.  In the view of that generation of immigrant soldiers, America could do no wrong.

He was proud of his service to his country -- as I am proud of him, as all of us should be. This Memorial Day, don't forget him and the other Asian/American servicemen and women of that first generation who served their adopted country.

One of my greatest regrets is never sitting down and having a serious conversation about what he did in WWII and his views of the state of Filipino America. Let this be a message to all of you who have never really talked with your parents. Do it!

Here's a column I wrote for the Contra Costa Times (June 27, 2004) for Father's Day:

Unspoken conversations with my father

MY FATHER was a man of few words. We didn’t have long conversations. He never dispensed advice like the father in “Father Knows Best.” He would rather show than tell.

One day when I was 7 or 8, he took me to get a haircut at the International Hotel in San Francisco’s Manilatown. I thought it strange because for two bits, we could get a haircut just down the street at Mr. Willis house. A former barber, Mr Willis had set up shop in his garage and that’s where everybody in the Warren Way neighborhood got their haircuts.

The I-Hotel was home for many of the manongs, the elderly men who made up the first wave of Filipino immigrants who came to the United States in the 1920s-1930s. They found jobs in California’s farm fields and worked in the kitchens of the city’s hotels and restaurants. Some found a career in the Merchant Marine and lived in the residence hotels of Manilatown between journeys.

The International Hotel, the last vestige of San Francisco's Manilatown. 

Manilatown used to stretch for blocks along Kearney Street, just below Chinatown. The Filipinos and Chinese shared Portsmouth Square where they would get some sun, gossip or play checkers or mah jong. By the time my father and I made our trip, the financial district had gobbled up most of Manilatown. All that was left of the Filipino neighborhood was the hotel, two Filipino restaurants and the pool hall across the street managed by a white woman who had married a Filipino. Still, for hundreds of bachelor men (because immigration law limited the number of Filipinas) it was a home.

We walked up the hotel’s stairs and knocked on one of the doors. Inside were a couple of elderly men waiting for a haircut from the room’s tenant.

In the corner there was a single bed, a bureau where a statuette of the Virgin Mary was framed by a pair of unlit candles, a cushioned chair covered with a crisp, white doily, and a high stool on which one of the men sat with a bedsheet draped around his neck. Old photos were pinned up around the small room. It had the smell of a barbershop with the feint presence of after-shave and Pomade. One small window opening to Kearney Street below lit the dim world encased in that room

”Captain,” they greeted my dad, “How are you, sir? Have a seat, sir.” My father retired as a major but apparently, old habits died hard for these men. Both of us got our hair cut for a buck and a healthy tip.

They talked in Tagalog with my father. I was never sure how my father knew these men so far from my little world in suburbia. By the respect they showed him and because they addressed him by his military rank, I surmised that perhaps they used to serve together in the military.

After I got my haircut, my father took me to a restaurant downstairs on Kearney Street. To
my surprise, the owner greeted my father like an old friend. He ordered some Filiplno dishes that he knew I liked: dinaguan, adobo, kare-kare and pancit (translation: pork stew, chicken or pork in a savory sauce, braised ox-tail spiced up with shrimp paste, and a Filipino variation of chow mein.) My father grew more mysterious to me. The man I never knew. Why was he so well known there?

I didn’t know then what I know now. My father wanted to expose me to a world beyond Warren Way where we lived with other families of Filipino/American soldiers, airmen and sailors. He wanted to show me that not all Filipinos were as well off as we were on our blue-collar street. And I learned there was more to my father than I knew.

One night, my father came back from one of his innumerable meetings. He was excited. “We got the money!,” he exclaimed to my mother. It turns out he was part of a group trying to get funding to build retirement housing for farmworkers. He and his group were able to raise the money through grants from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to build Agbayani (Heroes) Village in Delano, where retired farmworkers, usually without family to take care of them, could spend their retirement. The magnitude of my father’s late night meetings took years to dawn on  e: That he knew Larry Itliong, one of the founding Filipino leaders of the United Farm Workers, was astonishing to me. As a veteran, my father went to the commissary at the Oakland Army Base to buy groceries to bring to the grape strikers. He lived part of the Asian American history.

Ironically, I found myself covering the eviction of the I-Hotel’s manongs as a reporter for the Philippine News. The lessons my father sought to teach me in that single visit came flooding back in an “ah-ha” moment as Manilatown’s last building fell to a wrecking ball.

After my father’s death, I found a faded snapshot of a young man, in white blousy shirt, dark pants, boots and — this is what stood out — a red sash around his waist. The man in the picture was dashing and handsome in a Rudy Valentino kind of way. His smoldering, dark eyes stared defiantly back at the camera. I couldn’t believe it was a photo of my dad in a heroic pose, feet firmly planted and fists on his hips , as he perhaps saw himself at that stage of his life.

It’s funny but we usually think of our fathers as old men. We forget that once they were young and facing life with youthful optimism with all the world at their doorsteps.

My dad suddenly died years ago, before we could have that father-son talk that both of us seemed to avoid. Just as I was realizing the value of what he taught me, he was gone. I like to imagine that if we had a that conversation, we would have had lots to talk about.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter or at his blog Views From the Edge.