Hardships of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in the United States

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The 3rd wave of Filipino immigrants (1945-1965) who migrated to the U.S. were referred to as the “Military men”. They were Filipino natives and Filipinos in the U.S. who joined the U.S. Navy and Army in the 1940’s to fight in the war against the Japanese in WWII. Most Filipinos worked as stewards and storekeepers in the U.S. Navy. As members of the U.S. Armed Forces, they were allowed to become citizens and many of them brought over their wives to America after WWII under the War Brides Act. In 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 prohibiting racial discrimination in employment and demonstrating American democracy to people of different color. In 1946, the Congress also passed the “Luce-Cellar Bill” which extended the citizenship to Filipino immigrants and permitted Filipino immigration to the U.S. by 100 people a year, according to Cordova. After the war, due to America’s colonization of the Philippines, English had been the language of instruction in schools and a reflection of high degree of assimilation of Filipinos in the U.S. Also, most Filipino immigrants who speak Tagalog, or any other dialects, could also speak and understand English very well. In the book Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity (1997), Maria Root says that “Filipinos possess a colonial mentality after being colonized by Spain for over 300 years and the United States for 50 years. As a result, they perceive themselves as inferior to their colonizers, the Anglo Americans and the Spaniards” (p. 201). The second generation of Filipino Americans began to emerge by 1946 and more than half of the children of Filipino immigrants were offspring of biracial unions. The second generation Filipinos grew up in a world of prejudice. They were ...

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...ipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans. Kendall/Hunt Publications: Dubuque,
Iowa, 1963. Print.
Lapid, Jacquilin Magat. Personal Interview. 03 April 2014.
Min, Pyong Gap. Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issuses. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Pine Forge, 2006. Print.
Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1989. Print.
Root, Maria P. Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1997. Print.
Secondary Resources:
Claudio-Perez, Marina. “Filipino Americans”. CA State, 1998. Web. http://www.library.ca.gov/services/docs/filipino.pdf. Orpilla, Mel. “Filipino American History”. Filipino American National Historical Society. 2012.
Web. http://www.fanhs-national.org/history.html.
“Sakadas”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 2010. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakadas.

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