Filipino American Lives

Chapter 2: "I Was Used to the American Way of Life"

Chapter 2 "I Was Used to the American Way of Life" Ruth Abad "My Father Was an American" I was born in Piat, Cagayan, on September 23, 1911 . My father was an American born in Lexington, Kentucky. He was a captain in the Cavalry during the Spanish American War. This was in the 1900s [sic] when the Americans sent the Spaniards away and occupied the Philippines. When we were born, my father registered all of his children as American citizens. My father met my mother in Cagayan. My mother couldn't speak English ; all she knew was Spanish and our dialects-Itawas and Ibanag. My father could not speak the dialects, so he learned Spanish. After my father got out of the Cavalry, he practiced law. That was another reason why he had to learn Spanish. The court cases were all in Spanish, and most of the judges were Spanish-speaking. So at home we spoke English with my father and Spanish with my mother. But then, we spoke with the townspeople in our own dialects. I never learned Tagalog. I find it a hard language to speak. My grandparents were landowners. My grandfather on my mother's side was agobernadorcillo, like a mayor. They were prominent people in our town. At first, none of my mother's family wanted my father to marry my mother because he was an American. During the Spanish time, the Spaniards took Filipina women as concubines. They seldom married them. So my grandparents thought the Americans would do the same thing, taking Filipinas as their mistresses. But my father was serious about marrying my mother. Because my mother was the only child still alive, my grandmother made my father promise not to take her away from the family. He lived with that promise. He never went back to the States. So we never met his side of the family. My parents got married in 1903. It was the first civil marriage in our town, Copyrighted Material 53 54 • Ruth Abad because my father was a Methodist and my mother was a Catholic, and the church did not allow mixed marriages in those days. They were eight children in our family, four boys and four girls. Because my father was an American, we were raised partly the American way. My father never learned to eat Filipino food. So we had two kinds of food. My father ate potatoes and bread and my mother wanted her rice and pinakbet [a vegetable dish] or adobo [a stew-like dish]. My father sent my oldest brother here [to the United States] to study. He came back home after he finished eighth grade. My father also wanted to send two other boys, Clifford and Henry, but my grandmother said to my mother, "Your husband is taking your children away from you little by littie ." They still didn't trust him. So the rest of us didn't go to the United States to study. All of us graduated from high school in Cagayan. My brothers went to college in Manila, which is about three hundred miles from Cagayan. They went to Santo Tomas, the University of the Philippines , and Mapua Engineering School. One took law. Another brother, Clifford, took dentistry, but he joined the army afterward. Henry took business administration. He was the one managing the estate of my mother. The youngest was Sam, who studied engineering. And the girls became teachers. That was the only job that women could have then. Before the Americans came, women were expected to just get married and raise a family. During the Spanish time, only the rich could go to school, because you had to pay to go to school. The Spanish purpose was to spread Christianity, but the Americans wanted to establish democratic government. So the Americans introduced free education, and everybody wanted to go to school. The women became ambitious and wanted to become teachers. Coming to the United States as a Repatriate I came to the United States after World War II in 1945. I was already thirtythree years old. The U.S. government was repatriating all the dependents of U.S. citizens who had lived in the Philippines prior to the war. Because my father was an American, I was considered a repatriate. So I said, "This is my chance to go to the United States." The government paid for our passage through the Red Cross. My parents never made use of that trip. They never even came...