Background

​​In the 1850s, only four years after discovering gold, Chinese immigrants became the largest minority group in California, making up nine percent of the state’s population. Those that immigrated to the West traveled from their home in the southern region of China. They came from villages such as Kwangtung province in search of the Gum San dream, Gold Mountain. A large number of Chinese immigrants mostly included men of working age, making their presence an important part of the labor force in California. By the 1870s Chinese men were contributing to the development of the Bay Area in manufacturing and agriculture. In downtown San Jose, a Chinatown developed where it was the center for cultural activities, business, recreation, employment, and temporary shelter for the larger Chinese community in the region.  

In 1910, population numbers started to change in the Chinese population due to old age, immigration legislation, and anti-Chinese violence, and with this decline in the population, the Valley started to see more Japanese (Issei) immigration to America in the West. The Japanese immigrant’s American dream was to own a piece of land, farm it and settle with a family. In the early 20th century, more than half of the population was either farm owners or farm workers, an agricultural change that worried the white farmer.  

As you read these stories, you will see two terms used to identify two generations of Japanese farmers. The first is Issei, the Japanese language term used to identify the first generation to immigrate to America, and the second is Nikkei, the Japanese language term used to identify American born with Japanese ancestry. While the Japanese developed two terms to identify the generations in America, the migrant Filipino would become known as Ilokano, named after the Ilocano provinces in northern Luzon in the Philippines. The Ilocano provinces were home to struggling farmers in densely populated areas where it was difficult to carve land tenancy. Between 1907 and 1929, over sixty thousand Filipinos emigrated to the Hawaiian Islands, and during this time, the mainland would also start to become a new home to Filipino migrants. Thousands of Filipino migrants would arrive in the Santa Clara Valley to work in agriculture during the late 1920s and 1930s, providing labor needed once the Chinese and Japanese workers had been excluded. 

Packing Shed

The Valley’s booming agriculture growth brought on new physical changes for laborers. The California Fruit News predicted the Valley would be responsible for the state’s canned fruits and vegetables in 1919. By 1922, the Santa Clara Valley became the world leader, home to forty canneries and thirty packing houses. By 1930 the Valley had processed thirty percent of California’s annual pack of fruits and vegetables. 

Courtesy of History San Jose. 

Due to such strong growth in the canning industry, Mountain View Japanese based farming partners Yasutaro Oku and newlyweds Masa and Naosuke Tsunmura, known as T.M.O., built their own canning company. Still in a lease with the James Center ranch, where they continued to farm raspberries, strawberries, and tomatoes, T.W.O. operated their Mountain View Canning Company from 1919 to 1921. They canned tomatoes and berries purchased from Japanese farmers based in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. The lease would expire on November 1, 1921, with no legal option for renewal.

When you travel to the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay in the area known as Alviso, you might find remnants of the once Bayside Cannery of Alviso founded by early Chinese businessman Yen Chew. The business would later be taken over by his son Thomas Foon Chew, in the late 1890s. Bayside Cannery was known for packing tomatoes and later other fruits and vegetables, such as asparagus, as well as pioneering many innovative factory methods. During the depression years, Chinese workers lined up outside of packing houses and canneries for work. During these hard times, people could only find work in the packing sheds and farms. 

Gerrye Kee Wong is a fourth-generation Californian who attended Santa Clara Valley schools t, including Lowell, Olinder, and Roosevelt Schools. Here she shares her time working with a friend in the apricot sheds after they were picked from the trees. 

“I was about ten years old. A friend took me. She showed me how the system went. We stood in an outdoor shed. I had never cooked before or held a knife. I cut myself a lot of times. ...That money was very attractive. It was the first time I ever earned money. Growing up in the times of the depression we didn’t have an allowance or money. The apricots were wonderful. After a while, you got to know a really good one. One that was a nice deep orange. After I’d cut it, I’d eat it because that was a precious one. No, I never got sick of them. I love apricots still. I didn’t like the work. It was very hot. I had an apron because it was very messy. I don’t remember talking to anybody there. It was a very lonely thing. Most of the people were older. In those days you were happy to earn money. I never thought any work was demeaning even though it was dirty and there were flies.” 

Family

Topping sugar beets in the Coyote area. The tractor was used to unearth the sugar beets, the workers followed behind and removed the tops with knives, and the beets were placed in the horse-drawn cart.

While the Exclusion Law (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) was in effect and the first generation felt alienated, longing for news of China, the children of Heinlenville, a small town/neighborhood once located near present-day San Jose Japantown, regarded America as their home. Those growing up in the segregated town speak of a happy childhood, free from want and fear, filled with festivities and joyous times. Children were precious to the Chinese community, which was largely comprised of unmarried laborers. The Exclusion Law allowed merchants to send for their wives, and some Chinese were able to change their status from laborers to merchants by establishing ownership of a store in Chinatown. The children of San Jose’s Chinatown felt they were Americans, despite growing up in a walled city. They were taught just like all the other boys and girls in their city. Yet there was always an underlying feeling that things were not equal and recognition of attitudes outside Heinlenville were hostile.

Unlike the Chinese farmers before them, the Japanese immigrants in the Valley were likely to start families or begin the process supported by the 1910s arrival of picture brides. Between 1910 and 1920, Santa Clara County would see a thirty percent increase in population, with women and children accounting for most of the growth. By 1920, Japanese farming families started farming berries and vegetables and would shift to more profitable agricultural opportunities. The women held a vital role as major contributors to their households. They were instrumental in supporting the family through their agricultural and wage labor, but some of the women did not adapt to this role in a rural family farm unit. Japanese-American born children also played a role in labor on the family farm by picking strawberries or beans in the fields before school.

Though many of the Filipino farm laborers were male and had no families upon their arrival to the Valley, over time, this changed. First-generation Filipino American Robert Vidal Ragsac recalls growing up during the depression in the 1930s in his self-published book, A First Generation Fil-Am Looks Back. Born on North 4TH street by midwife Mrs. Iwo Kawamura, wife of Dr. Kawamura, grew up in what was once Chinatown near present-day Japantown north of downtown San Jose. His family found support from the Salvation Army which often provided food for what he describes as simple dinners. Robert Ragsac recollects dinner at the table where he would see a fried or a large boiled fish on a black wood burning stove that would feed all six family members. His father would eat the head of the fish while his mother and siblings would eat the remainder of the fish with tomatoes and always with rice and shoyu. Some nights dinner consisted of many vegetables and little meat, known as “dinengdéng.” 

Warren Hayashi, the son of an orchard farmer (Tom) in Santa Clara, remembers gathering vegetables for family meals: 

"After the rainy season in the early spring, we’d see all these mustard greens all over the Valley. That became a project for us kids. My mom (Fumiko) used to have us go out and pick the mustard greens. She would make Tsukemono (Japanese pickled vegetables) with them. She would tell us what part of the plant to pick and not to pick. It became kind of a routine for us as kids when the time was right before the orchard got disked.”

Joyce Oyama, a San Jose native, remembers growing up on a family farm which they own to this day:

“My father had a stroke and couldn’t work on the farm anymore. His 3 brothers ran the farm, and my aunt and mother also helped. And we kids did the little things around the house and in the fields, not some of the back-breaking things that they did. I remember in the summertime, my mother would have us go to the neighbors and we would cut apricots and pick prunes. We earned very little, but we did it. 

In the summer time we were busy canning tomatoes, and we even used to make ketchup. We used to place it in hot water and peel the skin off, cut it up, smash it, and then put it through the sift. All kinds of stuff to get it to be ketchup.”

Robert Ragsac, raised in San Jose, remembers youthful memories of working on a farm:

“After World War II, in order to support the family my dad (Sergio), my brother (Rubin), and I went to work on a farm. In those days my parents didn’t ask; dad just told us. As an Ilocano family my mom (Mária) knew there would be no protesting; we did what we were told. In the morning dad had breakfast ready and prepared lunch. This would be around 4:30a.m. We would work from 6 to 6 with an hour off for lunch. We worked on local farms, vegetable row crops mostly. Dad got the pay, we didn’t. It went to support the family. Summer vacation from junior high, wasn’t happy for us, but gave us a hard, life changing lesson: ‘Get an education boy.’ That we did. Almost 20 years from that distant bunk house to San Jose State College: my brother became a CPA and successful business manager, and I, a rocket and aerospace engineer.”

Chinese Farmworkers

It was common to see Chinese immigrants work in the Santa Clara Valley in the early 1870s. In the 1877 congressional hearings on Chinese immigration, the president of Woolen Mills was asked, “Are Chinese employed by other parties in your neighborhood in San José?” Robert Peckham replied, “Yes sir; they are very generally employed, particularly in fruit-raising and hop-raising...In the business of raising fruits, strawberries, blackberries, currants, and everything of that kind they are very generally employed, and I think perform most of the labor.”

Two Chinese farm workers are pictured in their living quarters on the Heron Ranch, Hostetter Road, San Jose. Circa 1890s. Courtesy of Connie Young Yu

The Chinese farmworkers worked in every aspect of agriculture in the Valley. They learned about the California soil, native varieties of plants, the use of implements and new methods of irrigation from Americans.  Chinese immigrants arrived in the Bay Area in the 1860s and the earliest crop farmed was the strawberry.  As sharecroppers and farm laborers, the Chinese worked on vegetable crops for large landowners who were interested in the financial profit. However, in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress prohibiting Chinese immigration through 1892, when it was extended an additional ten years. In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill denying further Chinese immigration with few exceptions. Only American-born Chinese were allowed to own land.  Yet, Chinese farmers contributed to the agricultural success of Santa Clara Valley.  In addition to growing strawberries, the Chinese farmer grew a variety of berries and vegetables and would be tenant farmers, expected to work and live in one place. After all the anti-Chinese rhetoric, Chinese farm workers succeeded in the Valley’s strawberry crops through the sharecropping system.” The fact that white farmers understood was that only Asians would ’stoop to labor’ in the fields to grow exacting strawberry.”  According to the census data from 1870, 17 percent of the Chinese residents in Santa Clara County were strawberry growers, yet it is understood that a larger number of Chinese were involved in the cultivation of berry farming not listed by census takers. They also grew blackberries, raspberries, and loganberries. 

Though the Chinese mastered the cultivation of strawberry crops, they would later master the post-World War II flower industry, where the Chrysanthemum would become the single biggest crop in Santa Clara County. By 1924 the Chinese Flower Growers Association was formed with 26 growers, many of which started in the San Mateo hillsides until the 1950s when Chinese growers started nurseries in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Just like other crops, flower growing was labor intensive but had financial rewards. The growth of the industry continued into 1956 with the establishment of the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association, which grew to 140 members in the late 1970s.

Gordon Chan and Paul Fong were among the Chinese flower growers prominent in the Valley. Grandson to the “Potato King,” Gordon Chan grew up on the Peninsula where his father grew asters in the 1940s. Growing up in Sunnyvale in the 1960s, Paul Fong watched his father and grandfather, who were both flower growers. Paul Fong would eventually own his own flower business in the Valley. He recounts helping in his family’s flower nursery where they grew Chrysanthemum: 

“It was a pretty difficult job. You would have to wake up early in the morning to open the black cloth, the windows, and the vents. Then at night, you have to shut the black cloth and windows to deprive the flowers of sunlight. There was a regular route every morning and every night, and in between we had a lot of chores to maintain the flowers. It’s very time-consuming to maintain. It’s hard work. It’s farming. I can still remember every detail.”

The Flower Cottage, a flower shop in Sunnyvale, is owned and operated by Paul Fong and his family. Courtesy of Paul Fong.

Japanese Farmworkers

Given their familiarity with labor-intensive styles working in agriculture in Japan, the Issei were able to adapt and even excel in this type of farm work. Issei laborers primarily worked with crops like sugar beets, vegetables, grapes, deciduous fruits, and hops and were welcomed into strawberry farming as wage laborers. Some of the crops they excelled in were beets, celery, berries, and grapes, the success unveiled in the agricultural economy. Between 1909 and 1919, the total value of crops produced by Japanese farm workers increased from $6 million in 1910 to $67 million in 1919. Yet, even after such success, the Alien Land Law of 1913 prevented Japanese farmers from acquiring land and leasing it for more than three years. Though they mostly worked seasonal menial labor, Issei used sharecropping and the rental of farmland to create opportunities to farm in the Valley prior to the 1913 California Alien land law.

A group of Issei, first-generation Japanese immigrants, working in the fields of the Santa Clara Valley. Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

However, the Issei did not let this stop them and acquired land in the names of their American-born (Nikkei) children. Records have shown that between 1900 to 1912, Japanese farmers and white landowners filed a total of 75 lease agreements that covered over 3,000 acres of agricultural land. The total acreage of land operated by Japanese prior to 1913 was approximately 5,000 to 6,000 acres. From 1900 to 1910, Japanese immigrants created a path in the Valley to farm for themselves and not working only as day laborers.  Japanese laborers had to get creative with their presence in the agricultural valley. They thought of various strategies to do household labor, ways to use land through farming and crop selection and rotation, and constructed farm corporations that would prevent land ownership due to the alien land law. The Japanese farmers experimented with new crops such as celery and modified or invented farm equipment.

A young man riding his bicycle through an orchard. Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

Two farm workers with a shovel through a row of orchards. Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

Research describes that the Chinese immigrants had a stable hold in berry farming during the late nineteenth century, and the Japanese immigrants would establish themselves as leaders as strawberry growers at the beginning of the twentieth century. The young Issei who worked in agricultural settings often replaced the Chinese who had preceded them. Most often, Issei workers were hired by white landowners to work the already-growing strawberry acreage under a contract or a sharecropping arrangement. 

Mr. R. Nishimura on horseback. Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

The land Japanese laborers worked on in the Valley underwent a considerable amount of attention involving fertilization methods, the number of crops planted in a field per year, and output. Also strategically achieved was the method of multiple cropping, the use of one field to support more than a single harvest, and intercropping, sowing alternate rows of different crops at the same time, taking advantage of the limited supply of farmland and the Mediterranean climate.

Shin Mune and his family were one of the many Japanese farmers in East San Jose. Growing up his family grew tomatoes. Reflecting on his upbringing, he shares a glimpse into life on the farm: “We had to work after school at the farm. There were times I wanted to move and do something else, but also times where I wanted to come back to the farm. We were torn from growing up on the farm and knowing how poor we were. You come out of the camps and you have hardly any money, so you knew as a family you all chipped in. There’s a feeling of comradery, all working together. My father would say ‘Issho ni iku.’ It meant working hard and working together. We all did that because we all knew how poor we were.”

Filipino Farmworkers

All the success of the fertile land did not keep the depression away from disrupting the economy and the decline of Chinese laborers due to age and returning to China. Farmers would rely on the Japanese laborers, and by the 1930s would see an influx of Filipino immigrants arrive looking for work.  Filipino immigrants were led by Filipino contractors who would negotiate terms for the workers that followed the crops for harvest throughout California, leading many to the Santa Clara Valley, where they would pick orchard fruits and vegetables. By 1930, over 30,000 Filipinos would reside in California, and an estimated 857 Filipinos would live in Santa Clara County. According to the 1930 federal census, 97 percent were male, and 78 percent were between the age of eighteen and thirty, younger than the Chinese and Japanese men in the County at the time.

Courtesy of Betty Supnet.

Courtesy of Esteban Catolico.

Filipino workers kept quiet and to themselves. The white growers did not have ill feelings towards Filipino laborers because of their willingness to work long days and not respond to their poor board and terrible lodging facilities. Filipinos were viewed as courteous and polite when they did not have their heads down and were quiet. The Filipino contractors did not typically charge fees to farm owners and instead would take fees by charging laborers for room and board and transportation. Filipino laborers found work not only with white farmers but with Japanese farmers as well. Japanese farmers that created established operations would connect with Filipino contractors who would gather hired help for the labor-intensive berry and vegetable crops. Employing the Filipino laborer would help the Japanese farmer during the depression years when crops were considered less desired than the orchard farms. 

This photograph was taken at the Forth and Bayshore Farms, leased by Florentino Magno. Pictured from left to right are John Quilindrino, Helen Ragsac, Dolores Escalante, Adeline Quibela, and Dorothy Quibela. Photo courtesy of Robert Ragsac.

Three women working on the Fourth and Bayshore Farm, leased by Florentino Magno, with string bean plants behind them. From left to right are Diaga Quibelan, Mercedes Raras, and María (Mary) Ragsac. Courtesy of Robert Ragsac.

Jacinto Siquig was born in the Philippines in 1905 and traveled to America to study agriculture and planned to return back to the Philippines to teach college. However, he did not get to realize his dream but became an important man in the local community. He helped found the Northside Community Center and worked to better the lives of Filipino immigrants. Here Jacinto recalls his arrival in Santa Clara Valley. 

“I was about twenty-six years old when I first came here. I was first living in Mountain View. We picked some prunes in the Santa Clara Valley. At that time, there were no other workers except Filipinos. There were, occasionally, other groups like the Mexicans, but there were not very many of them. For a single person, picking prunes was not a very lucrative work, as far as money is concerned. Picking prunes is meant for a family or a group of families. Their earnings are put together in one hand. They make quite a few dollars for a group of families. If you are by yourself at $1.50 or $2.00 a ton, you can barely make out a dollar a day. To pick a ton of prunes for two dollars was rather hard. But, at the same time, you had to get some kind of work to keep you going. I went and lived in the hayloft of a barn in Sunnyvale. There were some other Filipinos there that I happened to know. When I arrived here by Greyhound Bus in the San Jose station, my uncle met me. He just happened to go to the bus station. He took me to where he was living in that hayloft barn in Sunnyvale. They cooked downstairs over three big stones. We stayed there for the whole summer.” 

Leo Ragsac and another man standing in the middle of a field circa 1932. Photo courtesy of Eufemia Ragsac. 

Courtesy of Dorothy Quibelan.

Chinese, Japanese, & Filipino Farmworkers

Interior glass house with carnations, Yonemoto Family, 1940.

The Valley sprouted yearly, creating waves of work. July brought apricots, followed by peaches and pears in August, then prunes in September, ending the harvest with tomatoes in September and October. The Chinese and Japanese workers overlapped in agricultural labor. Chinese contractors employed Japanese laborers during the early 1900s, starting new labor relations between the two ethnic groups. However, starting in 1910, white farmers began to favor hiring Japanese farm labor over the aging and physically declining Chinese farm laborers. Chinese immigrants, predominantly men, labored the California farms to support immediate and extended families who remained in rural villages in Southern China. While Chinese laborers kept far away family in mind, Japanese immigrants focused on settling in California and having a family, therefore, establishing the American dream to succeed as a farmer and support a wife and children while signifying his status in his community. Different from the Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Filipino migrant workers faced a different farm life. The majority of the men were paid poorly through the seasons and during the Great Depression that continued through the decades. This poor treatment led to the work the Filipino men found in forming multiracial coalitions in the farm labor movement.

In Robert Ragsac’s A First Generation Fil-Am Looks Back, he writes in chapter Six to Six, But Not On Sunday’s, about the summers of the 1940s when he and his brother worked with the celery crop. They would use the now outlawed tool, the short hoe to create a small hole to lay the celery stalks into the ground. They did this work with no complaining. Along with the celery, they worked picking string beans, tomatoes, squash, bell peppers, onions, cucumbers, peaches, apricots, and strawberries, and gathering prunes from the ground. Most of Ragsac’s generation worked in the fields, packing houses, and canneries. They were the workers of the post-War generation, and that included the girls at the time. The jobs they worked were hard and often thankless, with a bleak future, “one that reached only to next season’s crops and kampo.” 

The Valley’s agricultural economy changed as the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino immigrants became a part of the labor force. Change also evolved in white residents’ ideas about race, gender and what it meant to be an American family farmer.

Chinese Orchardists

Between the 1870s and 1880s, the role of the Chinese laborer changed when the farmer started to plant an extensive number of orchards due to less labor demand than grain or livestock. Instead of one or two farmhands working the orchards, crews of laborers were brought to cultivate and harvest the orchards. As early as 1857, the County’s orchard population was high. It included 35,000 apples, 25,000 peaches, 6,000 pears, 1,300 cherries, and 5,600 fruit trees for other varieties. By 1874, San Jose would see the development of a drying company, Alden Fruit and Vegetable Preserving Company. In addition to the drying shed development due to the rapid growth of orchards and crops, dozens of canneries were created throughout the 1870s in the Valley.

Connie Young Yu is a writer and historian, whose father John C. Young was born in Heinlenville Chinatown, describes the experiences of Chinese farm workers in the Valley: “Many farmworkers were called ‘prune pickers’ as prunes were a major crop in the Valley. The Chinese tended the orchards, harvested the crops, and packed them for sale. Chinese laborers were absolutely essential in developing the Valley of Heart's Delight.“

Photograph of one adult and three children picking prunes off the ground and putting them into metal buckets. Prunes were harvested by shaking the tree and gathering the fallen fruit. Children often earned extra money by participating in the prune harvest. Courtesy of San Jose Public Library California Room.

American orchardist would learn that Chinese laborers, who once worked and lived in farming villages, had a strong understanding of growing things from the ground. This understanding came after directing Chinese laborers in pruning and grafting. Many a California variety of plum or peach was developed with the help of the skilled hands of an anonymous Chinese farm worker.  However, there is a Chinese name that became known amongst the cherry development. A historical example of agricultural partnership is the story of Ah Bing, hired as a cook and assistant nurseryman, and Seth Lewelling, an Oregon horticulturist in 1875. During this time, Ah Bing helped Lewelling develop a large and sweet cherry, and to honor Bing’s assistance in the development, Lewelling named the new fruit the Bing Cherry. He would introduce it to California, where it became the most popular cherry. 

The Orchard Heritage of Santa Clara Valley

San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley became home to orchards starting as early as the 1850s. Pears could be found in the northern area of the Valley (Alviso) where flooding would happen and not damage the roots. Present day Willow Glen neighborhood was once called “The Cherries” as it was the first commercial cherry orchard location in California in 1868 by W.C. Geiger. The Eastern Hills (present-day East San Jose, Evergreen, and Milpitas Road) of the Santa Clara Valley in the 1880s would start to look, for many, a place ideal for orchards and vineyards. Apricots and prunes also laid a stake in the ground as prime orchards to own in the Gilroy area of the Valley. And, after much of the Valley was obtained by agricultural growth, Los Altos Hills would be one of the last areas to be converted into orchards. The orchards of Los Altos Hills would become known to grow the Blenheim and Royal apricots. 

View of two men admiring the Santa Clara Valley fruit trees in bloom. Courtesy of San Jose Public Library California Room.