From Manila, to Chicago: Part 1

Jap. 

Chink.

I was 9 years old and newly arrived in Chicago. Jap. Chink. Racial slurs for Japanese and Chinese, that’s what some kids at school called me. Something to do with my squinty eyes.

My new Philippine passport (1968)

America was virtually a Shangri La for a Filipino boy – the “Land of Milk and Honey.”  America was flowing white and brown.  I also understood the figurative meaning of the phrase.  So I set about to list all the toys and clothes I wanted, because in America I could have whatever I wanted to have.  Heady stuff, for a little boy.  I tried to get my sisters (6 and 4 years old) and brother (5 years old) to create their own list, but they noted only a handful of things.  “You can have more, you can have more,” I urged them. 

By most accounts, we had a good life in the Philippines.  Both professionals – Mechanical Engineer and Pharmacist – my parents had a house built in Parañaque, southwest of Manila.  So we lived a middle class suburban life, and accordingly I went to the well-to-do, Catholic all-boys school of St. John Don Bosco nearby.  What’s more, we had two housemaids living us and taking care of us. 

My parents, though, had a sense of a future not looking so bright at all.  The 1960s was the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, and economically and politically they felt that trouble was afoot.  I never knew how or when they began to plan our departure from the Philippines, but in 1968 my father’s two sisters and their families left from America in May.  We followed suit in September.  In 1972, President Marcos declared martial law.  Foresighted, my parents?  Surely.

*

I was a shy but playful boy on the westside of Chicago, where there were many more Latinos than Filipinos.  Autumn cool was already in the air, and there seemed to be more cloudy days than I remembered seeing in the Philippines.  It was ideal weather, regardless, for recess in the playground. What goes on in the playground was a microcosm of what was to come for us children.  All that made living delightful was there – the running, the climbing, the jumping.  Play was an entire language for us.  No need for words, really.  The groan from exerting on the monkey bars.  The screaming laughter from some sort of chase.  The soft thud of falling down.

Jap.  Chink.  In the playground, I soon learned to retort, “I’m gonna kick your ass!”  My older cousins taught me that, as they, too, were subjected to such slurs.  “I’m gonna kick your ass!”  I kept saying it, until it stopped feeling awkward and stupid to say. 

*

Life in Chicago was a far cry from our spacious home in Parañaque.  For the first few months, we were amongst three families living in a three-bedroom flat.  The three sets of parents – mine, my two aunts and their husbands – each staked out a bedroom.  We children – a total of 14 in the household, with a wide range in age – mostly slept on the living and dining room floor. 

It was fun for a while, but the cramped quarters led a couple of us cousins to fight amongst ourselves.  Never mind the other kids at school. 

“I’m gonna kick your ass!”  Remarkably it must’ve worked.  Soon thereafter I heard Jap and Chink very little.  Shy or not, I saw clearly that there was value in being tough. 

*

But better than being tough, I found that the real ticket into social circles and approval was my academics.  I was a smart boy.  I came to learn that Philippine curriculum was more advanced than that of America.  There, children go from elementary school to high school – that is, from 6th grade to high school.  In America, there were 7th and 8th grades to navigate, before high school.  So, instead of 18 years old, many Filipinos are in the university at 16 years old.  So the curriculum, from early on, was geared along such a timeline.

Cool, totally cool.