Filipino veterans in America: The untold stories of war

I had just started working for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1993 when I began noticing the old men hanging out near the BART train station on Powell Street, right next to the famous Cable Car stop in downtown San Francisco.

I would see them chatting, playing chess or simply watching the action on the busy intersection. On days longtime San Francisco residents would consider warm, the old guys wore sweaters, sometimes even thick jackets. Occasionally, I would hear them laughing and joking in Tagalog as I walked by on the way to work. They seemed happy, these tambays who shared stories and sometimes lewd jokes.

Only later did I realize how much pain many of them endured.

They had started arriving after 1989 when thousands of Filipino World War II veterans who fought alongside US forces against the Japanese in the Philippines finally were granted the opportunity to become American citizens. That was the promise made to them when the war began. It took half a century for Washington to make good on that vow.

The passing of the law was understandably seen as a victory for the Filipino-American community. But it soon became clear that the law was not enough. Many of the veterans who moved to the United States had friends and relatives ready to welcome them here.

But others had no one.

For these men, coming to America was a bold, even scary, adventure. More often than not, for many of them, it was a final mission.

Leaving home to seek better opportunities and to provide for loved ones back home has been a central part of our story as a nation over the past century.

There were the manongs who worked as field hands and cannery workers on the US West Coast in the first half of the 20th century.

There were the men and women who found work as health care workers, domestic helpers and even entertainers in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, Hong Kong, Japan and Europe.

But the beteranos on Powell Street took on a much tougher task.

The manongs who worked the fields of California and Washington State, and the nurses and domestic helpers who sought to make their fortunes in the Middle East and Europe, ventured into those lands as young men and women.

The beteranos plunged into their new battle as old men. Many of them came to America battling an illness of some sort. They had no family with them in a foreign country. At a time when they should be enjoying life as retirees, spending it with their children and grandchildren, or just kicking back to appreciate their golden years, they came to America so they could earn dollars for their families or maybe even help them immigrate.

The veterans faced a tough bind.

Although their service during the war entitled them to citizenship, it did not give them all the regular benefits of an American military veteran. They received supplemental security income (also known as SSI), which in California meant roughly $600 a month. But they could get that amount only if they stay. They give that up if they decide to return home. So they had no choice if they wanted to send funds back to their families in the Philippines.

And then there’s this: To be able to send as much money as they can, they would have to survive on less than $600 a month. In San Francisco, that is virtually impossible to do.

But the Pinoy veterans have been doing that for more than a decade now, mainly by sticking together, sharing a room with five, sometimes ten, other people, eating at soup kitchens. Often, they endure hunger and the cold.

By the mid-90s, the plight of the veterans had attracted the attention of many Filipino Americans who joined and even led the fight for an Equity Bill – a law that would grant the beteranos the same benefits enjoyed by other U.S. military veterans.

The campaign drew prominent Filipino Americans. Ret. General Antonio Taguba gained fame for exposing the abuses at the Abu Graib prison in Iraq. The actor Lou Diamond Phillips has become one of the most outspoken advocates for the veterans.

 “This has been an egregious oversight,” he told me in an interview a couple of years ago for the San Francisco Chronicle Filipino-American podcast channel, Pinoy Pod.

 “It’s just wrong. The Philippines has been an ally of the United States. These men, in good faith and in good conscience, fought for the freedom of America. It’s really shameful for the American government not to recognize these people.”

In September, the fight bore fruit when the US House of Representatives approved a lump sum pension of up to $15,000. The US Senate also approved legislation that would give monthly pensions to the veterans, including a reduced amount to those living in the Philippines.

Neither bill was what many veterans and their supporters were looking for. But California Congressman Bob Filner, a staunch ally of the veterans, told the New York Times, “It was something we could get done.”

I started writing about the beteranos for the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after they began hanging out on Powell Street. I still remember the words of Sergio Quinial who summed up a common sentiment shared by the veterans: “We can solve our problems here in America, except loneliness.”

One of my stories focused on a dilemma many veterans were facing by the late 1990s. It was underscored by what happened to one of their comrades, Ciriaco Punla, a friendly and popular beterano who was an enthusiastic advocate of the Equity Bill.

But by the late 1990s, his health was failing in the cold, damp weather of San Francisco. When he died, his family was faced with a problem: They knew Ciriaco wanted to be buried in his homeland, but they weren’t sure they could raise the money to ship his body back. The only viable option, it seemed, was cremation.

That was what happened to other beteranos who died while waiting for the Equity Bill to pass. But eventually, the beteranos and their supporters managed to raise the money to send Ciriaco home so he can be buried in the Philippines. “Punla just couldn’t hang on, I guess,” Magdaleno Duenas told me, shaking his head as he remembered his friend and comrade. “He just couldn’t hang on.”

A thin man who walks with hunched shoulders, Duenas had been a daring guerrilla fighter during the war. He was considered a hero. “I don’t want to be burned, to be turned to ashes,’’ he said. “I want to be put in a concrete grave where my relatives can say prayers for me – just like the way it’s done in the Philippines.”

Fortunately, Duenas got his wish. He died a few years ago and was buried in at the Veterans cemetery in Los Baños.

A  Filipino-American documentary photographer, Rick Rocamora, and I thought of working on a non-fiction account of the beteranos. I began interviewing a group of veterans who lived in a beat up hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The project eventually fell through. But I never forgot the old men’s voices and their stories. I wrote a short story, “Waiting on Powell Street,” which I later tried to turn into a full-length novel.

But in English, the characters would not come alive in my imagination. In fact, they seemed to be rebelling telling me, “Bakit mo kami pinag-I-Ingles e mga Pinoy kami (Why are you making us speak English when we’re Pinoy).”

Shifting to Pilipino opened the door for me.

The stories of Fidel, Ruben, Badong, Major Amor and Ciriaco were based on the conversations I had with the former guerrillas who made San Francisco their home away from home.

I left the San Francisco Chronicle last year, but still work as a journalist in downtown San Francisco. Occasionally, I stop by the Cable Car station where I still see them, the guerrillas of Powell Street still hanging out, still telling one another about their latest misadventures in America. Still waiting.

Sometimes, a few of them just stand there on that busy corner of San Francisco, letting time pass, waiting for night to fall.

The author is a Filipino journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first novel “Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street” will be staged by the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Pilipino from Nov. 7 to 30. Visit www.tanghalangpilipino.com or call 832-3661 for performance schedule.