Frank Barba

Interview with Meri Knaster
(1977)

Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the Regional History Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Frank Barba, a Filipino labor contractor working in California from the 1920s through the 1970s, discussed his life with Meri Knaster, an editor at the Regional History Project. The oral history was part of a series on local agricultural and ethnic history. Note that the Philippines were an American possession at the time Barba emigrated to the United States, as was Hawaii (which did not become a state until 1959). -smv



I

Knaster: Where were you born?

Barba: In San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte, in the northern part of the Philippines. . . . When I graduated [from high school] in 1924, . . . my aunt [who was by then in Hawaii] sent me some money for transportation. When I got the money I left and went to Hawaii. . . . During this time the transportation is very slow. . . . it took me about three weeks to get to Honolulu. . . . We stopped in China and Japan for a little bit. . . . I worked [in Hawaii] for a little over a month, and then I came to the United States in April or May 1924. . . . I came over and stayed with my relatives in San Francisco for a little over six months, because I got a job as a busboy and a waiter.

Knaster: Who were these relatives?

Barba: Oh, my cousin and second cousin. They̓ve been down here in the United States for a long, long time. . . . They were working. . . waitresses or busboy, dishwasher or cook.

Knaster: Had they come here as single people, or as a family?

Barba: Single people.

Knaster: Were they only men, or were there women too?

Barba: No, mostly men.

Knaster: Most of the time it seems that Filipino people came to the United States as single people, and mostly men, rather than families.

Barba: Right. Mostly men. Then after a while the man maybe go back and bring his wife.

            When I liked the place [San Francisco], I wrote to my aunt in Hawaii. So they came over and joined me here. They stayed for a while in San Francisco, but they didn̓t work. I stayed in San Francisco for a while.


II

            Then my aunt and my uncle moved to Watsonville. . . .They figure that there̓s lot̓s of work in agriculture . . . lettuce and whatnot. When they came here they rented a couple of big houses in town. Keeping of boys. There̓s a lot of boys wanting to work.

Knaster: Filipino boys?

Barba: Yeah, all Filipinos then. They had a camp, and about fifty-five boys, sending boys to work for everybody who needs some help. There was this one big company from Salinas. He has a camp at the foot of Warner Hill in Watsonville. [The company] told them if they want to move in, you stay in the camp and keep boys and board boys. One day when I came down from Stockton to visit them, they said, “You better come back here and keep this camp and we move to another.”

            I moved to Watsonville in 1927. I kept the crew down here in town for several years. All I did is look around and contact some farmers and big companies. Every afternoon we set course for some companies who need some boys. We did that all the time. I had the driver. I didn̓t have to drive the boys. They have a big truck to haul them. So we worked that way all the time. I worked there until [1937], when the manager of this company that owns this property now, the Birbeck Company, (we used to work for them now and then because whenever they needed boys they contacted me) told me, if you want to move to Aromas and stay there and keep boys down there and keep the camps [it would] be all right. That way I don̓t have to move around too much to look for some work for the boys.

            So in 1937 I gave up my camp in town and move in here. All my boys renting down in town move in with me. We have a big house here—how many rooms, about seven? Two-story building that can hold thirty-five boys.

            I was keeping boys and then the war broke out. I lost all of Filipinos.

Knaster: Your work crews, were they mostly Filipinos?

Barba: Yes, just during those early days. . . . Until after the war. Most of the Filipinos that I had went to the service. Only a few come back, so I had to get some other nationalities then. After the war there were not many Filipinos. Some of them immigrate to other places. Some of them stayed in the Islands, back home maybe. . . . Then in 1942 the United States and Mexico sign a contract giving them laborers to the United States. . . .


III

Knaster: Since you have worked with other nationalities, do you prefer one kind of worker over another? Who were your best workers?

Barba:            I like to take Filipinos better than Mexican. Mexicans are sometimes stubborn. You can̓t tell them something. And they don̓t work too good and most of the farmers squawk. Then it is my fault. . . .

Knaster: When you had these other workers, were they also single men or did they come with a family?

Barba: Single men, because they couldn̓t live in the camp if they are with their wives, unless somebody lives not too far with their family. They come and work but they don̓t live in the camp. . . .

IV

Knaster: A lot of people come to the United States are discriminated against. Did you have any problems like that?

Barba: Where I had my camp down in town there were a few American people that didn̓t like Filipino very much. But I got along with them. Only they don̓t like to employ a lot of Filipinos if they could help it. They don̓t like it very much, [but] after a while they said they would try the Filipino. [Then] they would rather have Filipinos than any other, because Filipinos are not very fast worker but they̓re steady worker. They don̓t fool around too much like this Mexican people. So most of the private farmers said, even an old Filipino I would like to keep him better than hiring a Mexican or a wetback. They̓re getting better to us. They don̓t despise us any more like they used to, long years before.

Knaster: Do you remember the anti-Filipino riots in the 1920s?

Barba: Yes, whenever I send boys to work they have to send somebody to guard them. They didn̓t want to give [work] to a Filipino. “You̓re hot-tempered,” they said. “Filipinos are hot-tempered.” Whenever I send some boys, it is accompanied by some security guard from the company.

Knaster: Do you remember that anybody got hurt? Anybody was shot or people burned a house down, things like that?

Barba: They used to throw rocks on the houses and break the windows. I heard a story that there was a dance hall where some boys got shot. [I] never attended those places because I didn̓t like it. There was one Filipino that got shot [in Watsonville]. He was laying there sleeping and somebody̓s shooting went through him, into the bed.

Knaster: Do you know why there were those riots?

Barba: I don̓t know. I was just wondering then why. All of a sudden there̓s trouble. Because American people and some other nationalities, they discriminate Filipinos a little bit? Maybe some of these brave Filipinos tried to start trouble. I̓m thinking that̓s one of the reasons. . . .

Knaster: I had heard that during that riot there was a dance hail out on Beach Road, that they had white girls there for the taxi-dance hail, and that the white men in town got very upset and so they went out there and started beating up Filipino men.

Barba: I don̓t know anything about that because I wasn̓t fond of things like those dancing halls. I never went down there. I know there is a lot of troubles, so I didn̓t want to. . . .

Knaster: Did you know that during those years there was a law that said Filipino men cannot marry white girls? . . . . I was wondering maybe if there were problems because of that.

Barba: No, only that riot. I know about this dancing, that the Americans didn̓t like the Filipinos fooling with American girls, and then they don̓t let the Americans go inside, and that̓s why they started trouble. . . . .


V

Knaster: Was it a custom for people who came here to send money back to the Philippines to their families?

Barba: Oh yes, we send them a little bit They ask you because they figure money is easy to get here. If I have it, I send them. That̓s before I got married. Even after, we used to help them a little bit.





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