California Story Fund
Remembering Our Manongs
The Filipino American National Historical Society of Sonoma County
Santa Rosa
Project Director: Leny Strobel
A documentary on early Filipino immigrants to California
This hourlong documentary film will tell the stories of the earliest pioneer Filipino immigrants in Sonoma County.
According to Project Director Leny Strobel, “Filipino American immigrant history is vastly underrepresented in our educational curriculum and historical archives. It’s essential that recent Filipino immigrants recognize the important path that was cleared for them by their predecessors.”
The film will feature interviews with manongs (Filipino community elders) and other key figures and explore the rich history of Filipino immigrants in Sonoma County in the first half of the last century.
Strobel noted that 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 U.S. 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.
Strobel said that over the next few months they will be “identifying and reaching out to surviving families, friends and acquaintances to record their oral histories. We’ll also interview members of the ranching families.” They will also collect and feature relevant historic photographs and documents in the film to help bring the story of Sonoma’s manongs alive.
The film is scheduled for completion in March 2008. A series of screenings and community discussions is scheduled for November 2008.