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Known for its historical site to Filipinos, Stockton was chosen as the future site for the Filipino American National Historical Museum by the FANHS Board of Trustees at the 1994 Conference held in San Francisco. This museum houses the many items of historical memorabilia that has been gathered by each chapter as well as other items donated from private citizens.
“The national society approved Stockton as a museum site because of its historic role as the center of Filipino American family and community life and labor activities,” said FANHS archivist Fred Cordova. Once the largest population center of Filipinos outside the Philippines, Stockton’s “Little Manila” attracted thousands of immigrants who found work and support systems here.
“Much of the birth of Filipino American history was ensconced in Stockton, and it’s part of our national society’s effort to preserve and promote what that history is all about,” Cordova said.
This museum reflects the many contributions that Filipino Americans have made throughout the United States.
Long road to creation of Filipino museum nearly over
Letty Perez of Stockton has spearheaded the effort to bring a Filipino museum to Stockton. CLIFFORD OTO/The Record
By Roger Phillips
Record Staff Writer
Posted Sep. 15, 2014 @ 8:00 pm
Original article @ Recordnet.com
STOCKTON — For 20 years, Leatrice Bantillo “Letty” Perez has been part of a group that has been dreaming and working and raising funds and dreaming some more.
The vision through two decades has been the establishment of a museum honoring and chronicling the struggles and successes of Stockton’s Filipino community. Exhibits for the museum are hidden for the moment in two storage units in north Stockton.
Now, after all those years, the Filipino-American National Historical Society’s first museum is close to becoming a reality in downtown Stockton.
If all goes according to plan, the small museum will open several months from now in the under-renovation Newberry Building, one of several planned new storefronts at the site at the northwest corner of Weber Avenue and Sutter Street.
“I said after my stroke (10 years ago), ‘I hope I will live until this day comes,’” Perez, the 85-year-old president of the historical society’s local chapter, said Monday morning as she sat in her south Stockton home. “We’ve been working at this so long. It’s time we had a place.”
By the time the museum opens, the Newberry Building is expected to be bustling.
A new daycare facility is scheduled to open at the site by the end of 2014, said David Garcia of the Cort Group development company. Additionally, Papa Urb’s Grill is slated by year’s end to open a Stockton branch of its popular Tracy-based Filipino-fusion restaurant in the Newberry Building.
“These are the exact kinds of businesses we want downtown,” Garcia said. “They’re local, and anytime you have a local entity coming in, they’re much more invested. Also, it’s great because they bring more people downtown, and they feed off each other.
“The more people you get here for any reason on the street, it makes the public feel safer. That’s the kind of vibrancy we want.”
According to the book “Filipinos in Stockton” by Dawn Mabalon and Rico Reyes, the first settlers from the Philippines arrived in Stockton near the end of the 19th century. Perez’s parents, Anastasio Bantillo and Virgilia Marella, moved to Stockton in the early 1900s.
Through most of the 20th century, Stockton was home to the largest community of Filipinos outside the Philippines. Perez says many of the migrants “had degrees and were capable lawyers, architects, engineers and teachers.”
“They wouldn’t hire you because you were Filipino,” she added. “If they hired you, it was for menial jobs.”
Stockton’s Little Manila neighborhood developed just south of where the Crosstown Freeway arose nearly a half-century ago. “Filipinos in Stockton” cites the construction of the Crosstown Freeway as pivotal in the uprooting of Little Manila.
Now, though, just a few blocks north of the old neighborhood, the new museum will provide a venue for telling the story of Stockton’s Filipinos in a 1,000-square-foot space.
“At some point we’d love to move into a larger space,” said Mel Lagasca, who, like Perez, has been working for 20 years to establish the museum. “We’ve reached our goal of getting a physical address. Hopefully now, it will take off like a rocket.”
Perez said the museum’s currently stored holdings are more than the Newberry Building site will be able to accommodate, so exhibits will rotate. She said she envisions an initial exhibit recreating the interior of a Delta islands bunkhouse like the ones Filipino farm-workers lived in nearly a century ago, with cots and mosquito netting and giant kettles for cooking.
“This is the start,” Perez said. “No matter how small a place, we need to have someplace to start displaying our Filipino-American museum. Without our past, how can we show where we are today?”
Contact reporter Roger Phillips at (209) 546-8299 or rphillips@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/phillipsblog and on Twitter @rphillipsblog.
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Background
Originally published Sunday, April 11, 1999
Efforts to create a Filipino National Historical Museum in Stockton will receive fresh impetus from the current exhibition at The Haggin Museum, say members of the local chapter of the 20-unit-strong Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS).
“I’m sure it will help,” said Virginia Zamba Melear, chapter secretary-treasurer, who created the idea for the museum along with Frank Acoba and the late Cecil Bonzo. “I think we’ll move one step closer because The Haggin will give publicity to our endeavors. Most of all, it will make the greater community aware of what the history is that we’re trying to preserve. Much of it is not documented in books.”
The national society approved Stockton as a museum site because of its historic role as the center of Filipino American family and community life and labor activities, said FANHS archivist Fred Cordova. Once the largest population center of Filipinos outside the Philippines, Stockton’s “Little Manila” attracted thousands of immigrants who found work and support systems here.
“Much of the birth of Filipino American history was ensconced in Stockton, and it’s part of our national society’s effort to preserve and promote what that history is all about,” Cordova said.
The Stockton museum would become one of three key preservation sites in the United States, joining Seattle’s National Pinoy Archive and an embryonic national library in New York City.
The search is now under way to find a site to showcase the various historical artifacts, writings and photos, some of which are housed in boxes in the homes and garages of various FANHS members. Melear said they’ve been used for limited exhibitions at local libraries, banks and festivals.
Seeing a major display of their collections at the museum will be a heartening and emotional experience for many
FANHS members and other Filipino Americans, Melear said.
“I know when I go to see the exhibition at The Haggin Museum, I will cry because this project is so close to our hearts,” she said. “The museum would be just about like The Haggin exhibition, but more detailed. We’re still working at it, and we know what we want to put there.”
Chapter vice president Mel La Gasca of Tracy said the group might start with a small storefront and establish “a process for categorizing all the material that we’ve got, and assign responsibility for the artifacts.”
La Gasca sees the museum playing a much-needed outreach role in the community, with volunteers visiting classrooms and cultural events with displays and giving talks.
“There’s a multitude of things we can do, but we need to think about the process and how we can secure some funding. Small fund-raisers could keep us afloat.”
La Gasca agrees that the current Haggin show will do much to advance the cause of a Filipino American history museum in Stockton, especially as it provides FANHS members an opportunity to network with those interested in helping it become a reality.
“I think it will really open some eyes and spark some interest,” he said.
Melear said she dreams of someday taking her grandchildren to the museum.
“Some of them have dark hair and dark eyes, and some of them have green eyes and fair skin. They are like flowers in a garden. But I would like to be able to take them to such a museum and show them who their great-grandfather was and what he did. I don’t want them to be like a lot of young people who wait until it’s too late and then have to explore someone else’s version of history.”