This Filipino American history timeline was created and compiled by Helen Toribio and Abe Ignacio.
1500s through World War II
1565
Spain sets up colonial rule in the Philippines and starts the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. Natives from the islands start crossing the Pacific to the American continent as crewmen.
1587
October 18, 1587, La Nuestra Senora de Esperanza drops anchor in Morro Bay, California, with Its crew including “indios” from the Philippine island of Luzon.
1763
Filipino galleon crewmen having jumped ship are reported settling in stilt villages as fishermen in Louisiana bayous.
1898
April 26, 1898, Spanish-American War begins. Commodore George Dewey defeats the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1. American troops await the arrival of thousands of reinforcements from the United States. Filipino revolutionaries who fought Spanish rule declare Philippine Independence on June 12 to preempt an American takeover. On January 23 the following year, Filipinos inaugurate the Philippine Republic, the first constitutional democracy in Asia.
November 19, 1898, U.S. Anti-Imperialist League meets in Boston to oppose the colonization of the Philippines by the United States. The Treaty of Paris is signed on December 10; Spain cedes the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. President William McKinley calls U.S. policy in the Philippines “benevolent assimilation.”
1899
February 4, 1899, Philippine-American War begins, called the “Philippine Insurrection” in most American history books. Thousands of U.S. volunteers ship out from the Presidio in San Francisco. The U.S. Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris on February 6, voting for the annexation of the Philippines by military force. The war will result in the death of approximately 600,000 Filipinos and 4,000 Americans.
1902
May 14, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt inaugurates the monument to Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay, in San Francisco’s Union Square. He declares the “Philippine Insurrection” officially over on July 4 the following year. The first group of U.S.-government sponsored Filipino students arrives on November 3, 1903 to attend American universities. Most will return to the Philippines to be civil servants.
1904
April 30, 1904, the St. Louis World’s Fair opens, displaying as live exhibits indigenous Filipino tribes carrying on daily life in reproductions of their villages.
1906
December 20, 1906, fifteen male Filipino laborers recruited by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association arrive in Oahu, marking the start of massive Filipino immigration to the United States.
1919
Pablo Manlapit forms the Filipino Labor Union. About 28,000 Filipinos are working in Hawaii’s sugar plantations. The overwhelming majority are young bachelors. Filipinos in Hawaii and the mainland will remain largely single males before World War II, the proportion of men to women by some estimates being 14 to 1.
1920
January 1920, the first major joint strike by Filipinos and Japanese starts in Oahu. It fails, but it launches the Higher Wage Movement.
1922
September 22, 1922, the Married Women’s Citizenship Act, also known as the Cable Act, reverses the 1907 law that made an American woman lose her U.S. citizenship when she married an alien and only regained it when he naturalized. But under the new Cable Act, she still loses her citizenship if she marries a man who is racially excluded from citizenship, namely, an Asian.
1924
September 9, 1924, sixteen strikers and four policemen are killed in Hanapepe, Kauai, as Manlapit leads Filipinos in another strike. Manlapit is jailed and deported. Many strikers are blacklisted, and many go to the U.S. mainland (by mid-1920s Dollar Steamship liners offer affordable third-class fares). Between 1920 and 1940, Filipinos organize 12 strikes against the sugar barons. Agitation for barring Filipinos intensifies in the U.S. mainland, led by organizations like the American Federation of Labor. The movement to exclude Filipinos from the U.S. starts calling for “Philippine independence.”
1927
November 8, 1927, vigilantes force all Filipinos out of Wapato and Toppenish, Washington. Filipinos flee the region again next year following anti-Filipino riots in Wenatchee.
1929
October 24, 1929, an anti-Filipino riot erupts on in Exeter, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, burning down the local Filipino labor camp.
1930
Some 45,208 Filipinos are living in the United States, according to the Census, with approximately 30,000 in California. Nearly 3,000 are working in Alaska canneries.
January 20, 1930, hundreds of whites raid a Watsonville, California dance hall where they suspect Filipinos are consorting with white women. Two days later 500 whites attack a Filipino bunkhouse, beat Filipinos and kill one. Nine days later, dynamite destroys a Filipino Federation clubhouse in Stockton. Dynamite is also thrown at the camp of 100 sleeping Filipinos near Reedley in August. Minor riots and clashes occur in Filipino communities in San Jose and San Francisco. Filipino presence is blamed for the decline of wages of fig, lettuce and asparagus harvesters.
January 26, 1930, an L.A. Superior Court judge rules that Filipino/white marriages performed since 1921 are not valid.
1931
March 3, 1931, the Cable Act is amended, allowing females to retain their citizenship even after marrying “aliens ineligible for U.S. citizenship” such as racially excluded men, namely, Asians. The Cable Act will be repealed on June 25, 1936.
1933
January 27, 1933, Court of Appeal sides with Salvador Roldan, a Filipino, who sued L.A. County for prohibiting marriages between whites and “Mongolians,” “Negroes” and “Indians.” Roldan argues that “Mongolian” does not include Filipinos, who are “Malay.” He wins. The California Assembly simply adds “Malay” to the Civil Code.
June 19, 1933, Cannery Workers’ and Farm Laborers’ Union is founded in Seattle, the precursor to Local 37 International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. Virgil Duyungan, the union’s founder and president, and Aurelio Simon, secretary, will be murdered three years later by a disgruntled labor contractor.
December 10, 1933, the Filipino Labor Union is founded in Salinas Valley, California,. There are now several Filipino workers’ groups in the state: The Filipino Labor Association of Stockton; the Philippine Labor Chamber of Salinas; the Filipino United Labor Economic Endeavor of Santa Maria Valley, Guadalupe, California; the Filipino United Labor Association of San Joaquin Valley, Delano; the Filipino Unity Labor Association of Dinuba; the Filipino Labor Association of Fresno.
1934
March 24, 1934, Tydings-McDuffie Act is passed, promising independence for the Philippines in 10 years and changing the status of Filipinos in the U.S. from “nationals” to “aliens.” Filipino immigration to the U. S. is limited to 50 per year.
August 27, 1934, the Filipino Labor Union launches the Salinas Lettuce Strike, which is broken; the union’s headquarters is burned down; 800 Filipinos are driven out of the county at gunpoint.
1935
July 10, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Filipino Repatriation Act. The U.S. government invites all Filipinos to take an all-expense paid ship travel back to the Philippines, but they can never return. Only about 2,100 take the offer.
1939
April 7, 1939, thousands Filipino asparagus workers, organized as the Filipino Agricultural Laborer’s Association (FALA), strike during the height of the asparagus season in Stockton, California, and win a wage increase in one day of stoppage.
1941
December 7, 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and invades the Philippines soon after.
December 20, 1941, Congress passes Public Law 360, allowing Filipinos in the U.S. to serve in the armed forces. By 1945 hundreds of Filipinos are in the segregated units of the First and Second Filipino Infantry Regiments in the U.S. Army to fight the Japanese; they are granted U.S. citizenship. Filipino troops in the Philippines fight as soldiers of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE).
1942
April 9, 1942, Bataan Death March begins, in which Japanese soldiers march thousands of captured Filipinos and Americans of the USAFFE to a POW camp hundreds of kilometers away. Thousands die.
1944
October 17, 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur “returns” to the Philippines with U.S. invasion forces to defeat the Japanese.
1945
June 30, 1945, Gen. MacArthur declares the Philippines liberated.
December 28, 1945, the War Brides Act allows Filipino American veterans of the First and Second Infantry Regiment to bring wives and children to the United States. Women immigrate in unprecedented numbers as war brides, and families increase, ending the decades-old bachelor character of the community.