Jose De Asis, An Ilonngo Migrant's Story
After walking through the front door into the living room and through the kitchen, I met face to face with a man of a hunched posture, seated on a tall wooden chair wearing 2 centimeter thick bifocals and a natural frown. “Hello, Mr. De Asis!”, I exclaimed. I did not think that my exclamation would startle the man so deep into his thoughts. “Ay nako!” (OMG!), he replied as he jolted his body up from his seat. I sat directly across him and exchanged customary small talk and bashful apologies while his son, Michael spread out banana chips and cups of coffee.
“Alright let’s kick things off. Where are you from?”
What you are about to read is a narrative written by me, Juan San Nicolas. The words written below are not those of Jose De Asis.
I was born in 1940 in Visayas region in the Philippines outside of Iloilo. My childhood was spent under the Japanese occupation, and I do not remember most of the horror that the rest of my family experienced. My mother told me stories about the war when I was growing up, of the countless bodies infested with maggots piled in stacks. “You have to show respect to the Japanese”. “Do not talk back to the Japanese”. After the war, thousands of bodies were buried in mass graves, most could not be recognized. My mom and dad lost family members during the war. It was a bloody war for all of us, and I never wanted to experience anything like that again. I was five years old when it all ended. There were Americans in the Philippines before the war, but they lost control when the Japanese invaded. Before the Iloilo people feared the Americans, but when they came back to liberate us, they were now the greatest men on the planet. We will always be grateful to the United States for freeing us from the Japanese.
When the war was over the country was destroyed, the world was destroyed. It was like we all had to start from the beginning. It was a blank piece of paper. My father worked in construction after the war, but he passed away shortly after in 1948. My mother worked in a clinic but we were very poor. We had a little farm for our own use so I spent my childhood working on it. I raised chickens and pigs and grew crops like rice and tobacco. My grandmother liked tobacco, so I would bring her some and roll it for her. By the time I was 16, I started working in construction shoveling gravel into buckets, mixing concrete for hours a day. It took years to rebuild the country. I did everything they told me to do for very little money. When I was 26, my mother passed away and I was devastated. I was married already to my wife Gloria and we had our eldest son, Joseph at the time.
"When the war was over the country was destroyed, the world was destroyed"
I wanted to provide more for my family and I knew that the U.S. Navy has been recruiting men from Visayas for years since the war ended. I applied to be shipped off to construct their bases destroyed by the war. My first and only assignment was in Guam. I got to Guam in 1967, when I was 27 years old. I signed a three year contract with the Navy. They payed for my travel on their ship, they provided food, and they gave me a place to live in Camp Roxas which was outside Naval Base in Agat. Everyone on the camp was from Visayas, it was like I never left the country. We had a basketball court that we played on every night. There was a church for Sunday Mass and we had a beach that we went to for special celebrations.
It was a great community, but the work that the Navy made us do was tough. I worked at the new Naval Hospital site in Agana Heights which still needed to grow since it was taking wounded soldiers from Vietnam. I also worked on finishing Marine Corp Drive to connect Anderson with the Naval Base. I did the manual labor: lifting, shoveling, layering concrete. My contract expired in 1970, but the Navy offered to extend my workers visa because the island was recovering from heavy typhoons and America was still in Vietnam. I never went back to the Philippines when I was on Guam, but I sent letters and money back to my family. I was overjoyed when the Navy agreed to bring my family to the island because my contract extended. At one time, the camp had women and children walking around the premises. The camp, however was shut down in 1972 and after that those of us who remained on the island found places to live around the island. The majority of us found spaces to live in Agat near the old camp. Our old shacks were bulldozed to make room for military operations, but our church was preserved for a while.
My eldest son was able to go to school at Oceanview but he did not speak English well so he had to learn from the teachers. He was only 5 years old when he came to Guam, but he learned fast. By the time he was six, he spoke better English than me, so he helped me learn as he grew up. My son was bullied in school a lot by the local Chamorro kids. A lot of Chamorros did not like that the military was employing Filipinos and not them. There were some instances where groups of Filipinos would get jumped by Chamorro teens.
My wife found work as a yaya (nanny) with one of the rich families on the island, the Bordallos. She did everything for them. She cooked, cleaned, and took the kids to school. They loved her so much that she stayed there for over twenty years, even raising their kids’ kids.
By the mid seventies some us were able to stay on the island permanently. In 1975 the military started building temporary housing to accommodate the thousands of Vietnamese refugees that entered Guam before they were sent to the mainland. I worked with the Seabees to build the infrastructure of the “Tent City”. The naval hospital that I worked on was also full of injured Vietnamese refugees. Waiting rooms and hallways were turned into infermeries.
In the late 70's I became a permanent resident of the island, and I was offered more permanent work positions. I was also getting old so I knew that I could not work in construction in the future. I took up an apprenticeship to be a master electrician. The navy sponsored these programs for the locals and since I was a permanent resident I was allowed. After my training, I worked for the Naval hospital full time. I got my citizenship in 1983. At that point in my life I was happy I had three children: Joseph, Sylvia, and Michael.
Eventually all my children decided to leave the island. Joseph joined the air force in the 80s and never came back to the island. He said he always wanted to leave and to move to the states. My daughter Sylvia went to school in Manoa to study life science and my son Michael went to San Diego to study engineering. For a long time it was just me and my wife. My children visited sometimes, but they had their own lives in the states. Back then a phone call to Guam cost 10 dollars for five minutes which was a lot of money. My wife had to work longer and harder to pay their tuition. By that time I got a job in the warehouse at the Navy exchange working the forklifts. My wife did catering and made bread at the Pop’s bakery in Agat.
My wife passed away in 2000, and my son Michael moved back to the island to live with me. My son Joseph bought a home in Peoria and decided to settle there after he retired from the Air Force. Sylvia was working at the VA in Washington D.C. by that time, so the two did not want to move back. Michael, my youngest, found work here so he supported me. It was not until 2009 that Sylvia moved to Phoenix and asked Michael and I to move out there together. I did not want to leave the island because it was a big part of my life and my wife is buried here. I only moved to Arizona because of my children and grandchildren.
When I thought of Arizona, I immediately thought of the Grand Canyon. My wife and I always wanted to go there, but she never made it. One of the first things I did when I got her was to go to the Grand Canyon. I now live with my son Michael in Peoria. He bought the house in 2012 and we have lived here since.
I do not do much here. Back in Guam I had a big garden with lots of fruit and vegetables. I had mango, avocado, and abas trees. I also grew my own mint leaves, and had a lot of flowers growing from when my wife was alive. Our hobby was farming. Here, they have rules for how your yard should look. All we have in the back is one lemon tree, and the climate here is not good for growing plants. Most of the time I am inside watching cowboy movies. I cook dinner a lot. Things like sinegang and humba. Sometimes the Asian markets have cassava so I make some of that occasionally, but it is not as good as my wife’s. For lunch I just eat my Vienna Sausage and Hawaiian bread rolls. I do not like to go grocery shopping, Michael does all of that. I cannot drive here, it is too busy. I fear for my life on the road.
Guam is more my home than Phoenix even more so than Iloilo in Visayas. I would love to go back to Guam to visit at least. All the best moments of my life happened on the island. My wife and I found a life and raised a family. We had security in life that we could never have found back home. My journey to America was out of pure luck. I was only supposed to be in Guam for three years, but I was given the opportunity to be a permanent resident. I worked hard as an immigrant, and my life was not easy. Even though I love Guam, my home is where my family is, and it is because of that that I choose to stay. But my children better pay the money to bury me next to my wife back in Guam at Talofofo cemetery.
