Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City

Chapter 2. Little Manila

I f you drive down California’s Skyline Highway a little too fast, you might miss Daly City altogether. Bordering San Francisco to its south, Daly City, like much of suburban America, stretches its boundaries into the next town, in a diffuse mass of tract housing—varying in age, cost, architecture, and prestige—that extends from the Sunset District in San Francisco all the way down south to Foster City and beyond. What were once acres of cabbage patches and pig ranches became, from the late 1940s through the 1970s, rows upon endless rows of suburban dwellings crisscrossing the Colma hills. Sheer numbers are only part of the reason that Daly City—or “Dah-lee City,” Filipinos say jokingly, in a parody of Filipino mispronunciation—is known as “Little Manila” or “Manilatown,” even though the appellations may not seem apt.1 More Filipinos live in Los Angeles County (almost 300,000), San Diego County (over 130,000) and Honolulu County (almost 1 A “real” Manilatown on Kearny Street in San Francisco, with barbershops, hotels, restaurants, and clubs—and, at its height, 10,000 Filipinos—did exist just south of Chinatown until 10 blocks’ worth was swallowed up by the Financial District in the late ’60s. One of the last structures to remain was the International Hotel, and the defense against the eviction of its tenants became a rallying cry for the Asian American civil rights movement in 1977. Today, the area south of Market Street—the part that has not been made into convention centers or hotels—still houses many Filipino residents. Described in 1979 as “perhaps the largest Filipino ghetto in the U.S.,” the Filipino tenement houses, “sandwiched in alleys,” are located next to warehouses and whorehouses (Luna 1979, S2). Many Filipino veterans—soldiers who fought with the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) during World War II and moved to the United States, in part, to claim veterans’ benefits—also make their home in hotels in the Tenderloin district. 2 LITTLE MANILA  24 CHAPTER 2 TABLE 2.1 DALY CITY IN COMPARISON WITH SELECTED AMERICAN CITIES City/County Total Population Filipino Population White Population Asian Population % Filipino Daly City 100,237 35,905 27,465 57,097 35.82 San Diego County 2,941,454 130,604 2,065,987 302,392 4.44 Chula Vista 211,253 21,073 128,465 27,222 9.97 Imperial Beach 26,992 1,418 16,805 1,767 5.25 National City 54,260 9,363 190,770 10,077 17.25 Poway 48,044 1,509 39,807 3,584 3.14 San Diego 1,261,251 72,604 819,464 192,482 5.76 Chicago 2,749,283 26,968 1,004,760 134,837 0.98 Jersey City 82,789 15,481 82,789 45,827 18.70 New York City 8,214,426 68,147 3,604,789 963,295 0.83 Virginia Beach 435,619 15,321 305,596 23,881 3.51 Seattle 562,106 13,190 393,431 73,067 2.35 Los Angeles County 9,948,081 295,888 4,660,343 1,288,643 2.97 Cerritos 51,488 6,046 13,851 30,091 11.74 Glendale 192,340 8,335 139,653 25,837 4.33 Long Beach 466,718 20,517 192,800 62,090 4.40 Los Angeles 3,773,846 111,939 1,776,822 391,705 2.97 West Covina 112,809 9,154 40,639 28,051 8.11 Honolulu County 909,863 128,827 201,795 402,365 14.16 Honolulu 364,522 44,212 76,476 203,707 12.13 Waipahu 33,108 16,668 1,566 21,774 50.34 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 2006. 130,000)—all areas with older, more historically established Filipino communities and, consequently, the focuses of recent scholarly research (see Bonus 2000, España-Maram 2006, and Espiritu 2003). Other less prominent California cities were Filipino agricultural migrant centers in the 1920s and ’30s. The population of Delano, for example, is 14.81 percent Filipino. Watsonville (1.30 percent of whose population is Filipino) was the site of major anti-Filipino riots, and Stockton (6.76 percent of whose population is Filipino ), with its vibrant Little Manila, was “the heart of Filipino America” prior to World War II (Mabalon et al. 2008, 8). But it is still Daly City, with the highest concentration of Filipinos (almost 36 percent) in...