Remembering Our Manongs Documentary

I began the month after Filipino American History Month with a strong reminder that October is not the only month that one can teach and learn about Filipino American history. I attended the premier of the documentary Remembering Our Manongs, a documentary on early Filipino immigrants to California. The documentary was produced by The Filipino American National Historicl Society of Sonoma County with funding from the California Council for the Humanities.

It was an hourlong documentary film that told the stories of the earliest pioneer Filipino immigrants in Sonoma County. Filipino American immigrant history is vastly underrepresented in our educational curriculum and historical archives. It is essential that recent Filipino immigrants recognize the important path that was cleared for them by their predecessors.

The film featured interviews with manongs (Filipino community elders) and other key figures and explored the rich history of Filipino immigrants in Sonoma County in the first half of the twentieth century.

Most of the Filipinos who came to California in the early 1900s were farmworkers, including those who came as wards of the state when the United States took possession of the Philippines following the Philippine-American War. By the 1920s, about 100 of the early pioneers, most of them men, stayed because of Sonoma County’s abundance of year-round farm work. It was not an easy life.

Early pioneers were denied citizenship and the right to own property or set up businesses. They lived in labor camps on the various ranches and in rooming houses. Anti-miscegenation laws and the shortage of Filipino women caused many of the early manongs to stay single their entire lives.

Even after serving their country in World War I and World War II, they were never rewarded with citizenship. The few surviving Filipino Americans who served in those wars still await veterans’ benefits for their service.

With all these hardships, Sonoma’s Filipinos thrived, yet their history and contributions are largely forgotten.

This must-see documentary will be shown at two more events this month:

1. Saturday, November 8, 2008 - 1 to 4 p.m. - Sonoma County Office of Education, 5340 Skylane Boulevard, Santa Rosa, CA 95403.
2. Saturday, November 15, 2008 - 1 to 4 p.m. - Finley Community Center, 2060 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.