No longer invisible

By Gerard A. Finin

King David Kalakaua's historic visit to Japan in 1881 was instrumental in attracting to Hawai'i a large number of Japanese laborers, many of whom settled permanently after their contracts expired.

Above: Flags of three nations fly from a Japanese kindergarten building in Baguio, Philippines, as parents, teachers and pupils gather to celebrate its opening in 1937. In the Philippines, as in Hawai'i, early Japanese workers helped build a city and an economy. Photos courtesy of Patricia Okubo Afable

Yet Hawai'i is by no means the only place where Japanese emigrants sought new opportunities and made lasting contributions. Shortly after the Philippines became a U.S. colony in 1898, Japanese workers were recruited to participate in transforming the Cordillera highlands of northern Luzon.

More than 1,000 Japanese craftsmen and laborers helped to build Baguio City, the only planned urban center besides Washington, D.C., ever constructed from the ground up by the U.S. government. Designed by famed urban planner Daniel Burnham, the temperate climate of Baguio's 5,000-foot altitude inspired Americans to establish the "City of Pines" as the Philippines' colonial summer capital.

As in Hawai'i, many Japanese workers married locally. Today, these Filipinos of Japanese ancestry, with names such as Okubo, Hamada and Yamashita, continue to play an influential role in Philippine society.

Smithsonian anthropologist Patricia Afable's impressive new volume, "Japanese Pioneers in the Northern Philippine Highlands," is a centennial tribute to the workers and their descendants whose stories are chronicled for the first time.

In publishing this 330-page book, the Filipino-Japanese Foundation of Northern Luzon has in 13 detailed chapters, with hundreds of rare photographs, illuminated how in the early decades of the 1900s, Japanese workers joined with Americans who had been discharged after serving in the Philippine-American War, as well as Igorots, Ilokanos, Tagalogs and Chinese, among others, to make the rugged Cordillera an integral part of the new U.S. colony.

Two Filipinas of Japanese ancestry attired in Igorot costume were photographed in Baguio, their hometown.

Workers representing some 46 nationalities, including North American Indians, Hawaiians, Mexicans, Japanese, Germans, Irish and French, were part of the monumental undertaking that at one point cost the equivalent of a quarter of the annual colonial budget.

In the face of Meiji-era tax measures that impoverished many farming families in Japan, Japanese men made their way to the Philippines in search of higher wages. Sadakichi Sawachi, for example, left Kanagawa-ken about 1904 to help build the dangerous Benguet Road, after which he settled near Baguio to pursue farming and carpentry. His wages were sufficient not only to start a Japanese-Filipino family, but also to send money back to his first family in Japan.

In a rather condescending reflection upon the completed $2 million roadway that Sawachi had worked on, the supervising engineer, U.S. Army Maj. Lyman Kennon, observed, "The Japanese were superior workmen. They were intelligent and worked well when watched. They were fearless and active on cliff work."

During the following decades, housing construction in Baguio by wealthy Americans and Manila-based Filipinos provided employment for hundreds of talented Japanese carpenters, gardeners and masons. Still other Japanese immigrants acquired plots of land on which to grow temperate-climate vegetables such as cabbage and carrots that were highly valued in tropical Manila.

Unlike the large Japanese plantations on the southern island of Mindanao, where some 20,000 Japanese nationals nearly re-created their home communities, the smaller number of workers in northern Luzon assimilated rapidly, with more marriages to Filipinos and to a small number of Americans.

For example, the marriage of Army veteran Joe Rice to Kotoe Koga, who was active in Baguio's Buddhist Women's Association, facilitated the transport and sale of Japanese farmers' vegetables to American businessmen in the lowlands.

The Japanese community's prize-winning Rizal Day float is shown in a Baguio City parade during the 1930s. In the Philippines, Japanese immigrants immersed themselves in their host culture.

Skilled craftsmen ventured into rural highland communities where they introduced new methods of carpentry, masonry and sawmill work. The fascinating oral histories collected by the Yale-educated Afable, herself a "Baguio girl" of Japanese, Igorot and Tagalog ancestry, underscore the extent to which the Philippines provided greener pastures for those referred to locally as Hapon.

Yet it is equally clear from these accounts that the highlands were as transformative as the Hawaiian Islands in acculturating subsequent generations. Although scores of eager students attended Baguio's Japanese School, even larger numbers of mestizo (hapa) Japanese children attended the city's public and Christian schools.

Children of these mixed marriages rarely spoke much Japanese at home; their parents ordinarily used an admixture of local vernacular languages along with some English.

Unlike in Hawai'i, however, the Second World War saw Japanese military occupation of the Philippines. Baguio's Camp John Hay was attacked at almost the same time as Pearl Harbor, and by Dec. 24, 1941, the Japanese 9th Regiment occupied the city.

Under these exceptionally difficult circumstances, Filipinos of Japanese ancestry were subject to accusations of disloyalty by both sides. In 1945, the "full-blooded" Japanese men and women who survived the war years were sent back to Japan by the American government. Many of the Filipinos of Japanese ancestry who stayed in the Philippines found it necessary to highlight their Filipino roots by taking Hispanic surnames and saying little about their Japanese parentage.

But not everyone chose this course. For instance, Sinai (Yoshinai) Hamada, whose father hailed from Kagoshima and whose mother was a native of Baguio, had attended public schools before the war and subsequently studied law at the prestigious University of the Philippines in Manila. In 1947, he became the founding editor of the Baguio Midland Courier newspaper.

Although in conversations with this author in the late 1980s Hamada mentioned experiences with discrimination by Filipinos in Manila, he never considered changing his surname or leaving the Philippines. He was equally proud of his Japanese and Igorot heritage.

Today it is interesting to observe a reverse flow, with Filipinos flocking in increasing numbers to greener pastures in Japan. In the 1980s, Baguio was a prominent site for Japanese recruiters to search for Filipina "picture brides" who were willing to marry Japanese farmers and live in remote communities where declining numbers of Japanese women wished to live.

During the 1990s, trafficking in women destined to work in the so-called entertainment industry became more prominent. And as Japan's aging population requires greater numbers of caregivers for the elderly, young Filipinos are drawn to all parts of the country.

Within the Philippines, Filipinos of Japanese ancestry, though proportionately small in number, continue to be found in many prominent walks of life. The Filipino-Japanese Foundation, comprised of Philippine-based and Japan-based members who have family connections to northern Luzon, counts a membership of some 1,800 and supports a wide range of philanthropic activities.

Afable's volume, through painstaking scholarship, brings to light a resplendent history of Filipinos of Japanese ancestry that is of lasting value to all.

Gerard A. Finin is a senior fellow at the East-West Center. He wrote this article for The Advertiser.