This day in 1929 marked the beginning of one of the worst episodes of
anti-Asian American mob violence in our nation's history, the Watsonville
Riots. In this article, Richard Meynell explores the racist roots and
continuing relevance of these tragic events.
By Richard B. Meynell
Excerpted from "Little Brown Brothers, Little White Girls: The
Anti-Filipino Hysteria of 1930 and the Watsonville Riots"
Passports
Volume 22 (1998)
For more than one hundred years California has depended on cheap imported
labor to harvest its crops. The dilemma for agriculture and the state has been
how to mitigate a chronic labor shortage in the fields without raising ethnic
tension. Foreign workers who have wished to remain or assimilate periodically
have encountered a racist reaction from local nativists in the form of sporadic
violence, calls for limits on imported labor and, ultimately, expulsion. This
pattern, which we see echoed today in the passage of Proposition 187, has been
repeated in turn with the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos.
It was largely as a result of conflicts between locals and Filipinos that
ranged over the entire state during the 1930s that the decision was made to turn
away from the Asian labor pool after World War II and rely exclusively upon
Mexican braceros. The January rioting of 1930 in Watsonville, one of
California’s worst racial clashes, was pivotal to this history in two
respects. It precipitated the decline of Filipino immigration and it may have
marked the exact psychological moment when this state decided to throw in its
lot with the Mexican workers.
What were the causes of the anti-Filipino riots in cities and towns all over
California in 1930, precipitated by—or culminating in—the five days of
vigilante terror known as the Watsonville Riots? A variety of motives fed the
anger and cruelty of those mobs, yet it seems starkly clear in retrospect that,
of all the aroused emotions—fear, revulsion, indignation, jealousy, and rage—what
connected them and supplied the energy that burst the bonds of civility was an
explosive mixture of racism and sex.
The young Filipino lettuce pickers had few women among them. They admired
American girls and the feeling was reciprocated. In conservative rural areas,
however, racial mixing was not only frowned upon, it was shocking, and
miscegenation (interracial marriage) was illegal.1 Love and youthful
urges cannot easily be denied, however. In the years leading up to the January
riots of 1930, a series of short, violent rampages occurred in the agricultural
areas of California, triggered by the fraternization of the “little brown
brothers” with white girls. Bitter rivalry over labor added to the resentment
of white males who saw their supremacy under challenge.
The Tension Mounts
The first of these rampages blew up out of a pool hall “scrap” in
Stockton on New Year’s Eve in 1926, and sounded the first tocsin of “race
war.”2 Two years later, American Legion vigilantes went on patrols
in Dinuba after Filipinos tried to infiltrate the annual street dance. It was
reported that “the fruit pickers insist on their rights to attend dances and
escort white girls about the city.” 3 As a result of this
disturbance, U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson and Representative Richard Welch from
the San Jose-Watsonville area favored exclusion of Filipino farm labor,4
a policy endorsed by the California State Federation of Labor’s Paul
Scharrenberg.5
On 24 October 1929, the day of the Wall Street Crash, Filipinos were shot
with rubber bands as they escorted white girls at a street carnival in Exeter,
southeast of Fresno. A fight broke out, a white man was stabbed, and a riot
ensued in which vigilante whites, led by Chief of Police C. E. Joyner, beat and
stoned Filipinos in the fields. The Exeter Sun accused Filipinos of a “penchant
for violence,” while the Stockton Record deplored their “insistence.
. .that they be treated as equals by white girls.”6 Commenting on
this violence, the Salinas Index-Journal saw labor rivalry as the key
element. White men could not and would not do the work—stoop labor—which the
Filipino would do for less money. The “living standards,” even of a white
day laborer, were “more exacting than those of a Latin, Oriental, or African
laborer.” There was an ominous suggestion that the rioting would spread
elsewhere in the state.7
Three months later this prophecy was fulfilled in the Watsonville riots that
culminated in the murder of Fermin Tobera. Early on the morning of 2 December
1929, police raided the room of Perfecto Bandalan, 25, and found in the darkness
two scantily attired white girls, Bertha and Esther Schmick, ages ten and
sixteen. To a shocked public it was announced in court that the father of the
girls had wanted to sell Esther to Bandalan for $500.8 Subsequently
he charged that his wife had urged the deal so that she could “live on easy
street.”9 In the period prior to the riots this case was a constant
topic in the local papers.
 |
| Women at a 1920s taxi dance hall. Filipino men would line up to
dance with white women for ten cents a dance. |
With memories of the Exeter Riot fresh in everyone’s mind, a photo of
Perfecto embracing Esther was splashed on the front page of the Watsonville
Evening Pajaronian.10 Simultaneously, it was announced that a
taxi-dance hall would soon open in Palm Beach, seven miles southwest of
Watsonville. De Witt believes the conjuncture of these inflaming pieces of news
was the spark that set off the future conflagration,11 and while I do
not agree with that assessment, it certainly charged the atmosphere.
Between 8 December and 10 January, a series of Filipino run-ins with the law
were reported in the local press, including violent brawls over women, hit and
run driving, and sexual assault; in addition, the Schmick case continued to
attract attention. In themselves these articles were trivial, but taken
cumulatively they were added provocations.
The Pajaronian printed Judge Rohrbach’s resolution on 10 January
which included, in addition to those cited previously, the following remarks:
“... if the present state of affairs continues ... there will be 40,000
half-breeds in the State of California before ten years have passed.” ...
“We do not advocate violence but ... the United States should send those
unwelcome inhabitants from out shores ...” “I hope that we overcome this
menace to our general welfare ....”12
In another interview he stated: “The worst part of his being here is [the
Filipino’s] mixing with young white girls from thirteen to seventeen. He gives
them silk underwear and makes them pregnant and crowds whites out of jobs in the
bargain.”13
The next day, Saturday, the Palm Beach taxi-dance hall opened. White youths
who were turned away promptly cut off the power.14 During the ensuing
week, Senator Hiram Johnson offered a Filipino exclusion bill to the U.S.
Senate, again using the word “menace,”15 followed by
Representative Welch’s similar bill in the House,16 and Greenfield’s
Chamber of Commerce joined with Rohrbach in calling for a ban on Filipino labor.17
On Saturday the 18th, the Pajaronian headline read “STATE
ORGANIZATIONS WILL FIGHT FILIPINO INFLUX INTO COUNTRY.” In the psychology of a
riot, one must consider the element of moral legitimacy; in this case it seems
clear that the signals being sent by responsible persons to the public, whether
from judges, publishers, or state officials, pointed to the Filipino as a target
for justifiable action.
The same day, 10,000 copies of a circular called The Torch flooded the
streets of Watsonville. Printed in Salinas, and written by David P. De Tagle, a
Filipino editor from Stockton, The Torch was a bold, inflammatory reply
to Judge Rohrbach which justified Filipinos’ seduction of white girls as “the
Law of Nature,” contrasted thrifty Filipino workers with white beggars, and
complained that a judge “suffering from Filipinomania” like Rohrbach could
never be fair to a Filipino.18 The Pajaronian pointed out, “It
bristles with an aggressiveness that apparently says : ‘Well, what are you
going to do about it?’”19 Here was all the provocation needed to
hurl angry young men upon each other: The Torch provided the match that
touched off the Watsonville Riots.
Orgy of Rage
That same night, a Saturday, a mob of white youths seeking to break up the
taxi-dance was stopped by a chain and armed guards barring the road leading to
the Palm Beach dance hall. The next afternoon, the 19th, inflamed by an article
disclosing the presence of nine white girls living at the club, they returned
and again were repulsed; but in the evening a fight broke out between Filipinos
and Chinese at a gambling den, followed by fights and rock-throwing with whites
in downtown Watsonville.20
On Monday a Filipino mob gathered and confronted a white mob of equal size
near the Pajaro River bridge. The tension increased as a group of twenty-five
Mexicans appeared around a corner. After a period of indecision, as each side
wondered what the Mexicans would do, the new arrivals began to saunter over as individuals
and take up positions next to the whites, drawing out long knives and quietly,
yet pointedly, began to pare their fingernails.21 The Filipinos took
the point and dispersed. For the two remaining days of the riots, the Filipinos
offered no resistance.
Whites then formed “hunting parties” of twenty-five to one hundred men
after an “indignation meeting” at a local pool hall, but lacking leadership,
they were easily broken up by the police, who made an earnest effort throughout
the riots to keep control, although clearly outmanned. Early on the morning of
the 21st, shots were fired into a bunkhouse on the McGowan ranch occupied by six
Japanese who escaped unscathed. A car full of whites looking for Filipinos was
blamed.22
Tuesday a mob charged the dance hall, where a Filipino protest meeting had
been called, and was repulsed with buckshot by the Locke-Paddon brothers, San
Francisco owners of the taxi-dance hall, and by police using tear gas grenades.
Two of the attackers were wounded. Police escorted the Filipinos to their homes.
“Hundreds of spectators, including many women, crowded the highway at a safe
distance to watch the fray. Headlights flashed in every direction, and the
effect was dazzling.”23
On Wednesday, 22 January, the riot reached its peak with mobs of hundreds
dragging Filipinos out of their homes, whipping and beating them, and throwing
them off the Pajaro River bridge. The mobs ranged up the San Juan road,
attacking Fillipinos at the Storm and Detlefsen ranches; a Chinese apple-dryer
that employed Filipinos was demolished, and volleys of shots were reportedly
fired into a Filipino home on Ford Street. At Riberal’s labor camp, twenty-two
Filipinos were dragged out and beaten. This time the mob had leaders and
organization—it moved “military-like” and responded to orders to attack or
withdraw. The police in Watsonville, led by Sheriff Nick Sinnott, rounded up as
many Filipinos as they could rescue and guarded them in the City Council’s
chamber.24 Monterey County Sheriff Carl Abbott tried to hold the
Pajaro side of the river.
Early the next morning (the 23rd) bullets were fired into a bunkhouse on the
Murphy ranch on the San Juan Road. Eleven Filipinos huddled in a closet to
escape the fusillade. At dawn they discovered that a twelfth, Fermin Tobera, had
been shot through the heart.
As Tobera was laid out at Mehl Undertakers, D.W. Rohrbach deplored the
murder, but maintained his stand that the Filipinos were “only ten years
removed from savagery and should be kept out of the valley.” Sheriff Sinnott
arrested seven whites for the murder, one of whom had left his shoe at the scene
of the crime. They were not unemployed “roughs” or “lettuce tramps”;
several were the sons of respected members of the community. All charges were
eventually dropped; the fact that the presiding judge, Rohrbach, had received a
threat, or that prominent Filipino leaders, anxious to placate the white
community, pleaded for leniency may or may not have influenced the court’s
decision.
The American Legion was deputized and went out on patrol, but the fact that
someone had been killed shocked people back to their senses. The Watsonville
Riots were all about violence, but of a sort that was meant to be nonlethal.
Stabbings and slashings and fistfights were often in the news, but murder was
relatively rare. The one fatality appeared to have come from a random shot.
Aftermath
The violence spread to San Jose and San Francisco, where Filipinos were
beaten on the street. A Filipino club was blown up in Stockton, and the blast
was promptly blamed on the Filipinos themselves. In Gilroy, masked men warned a
Japanese farmer to discharge his Filipinos, and fifty unemployed whites and
Filipinos were hustled out of town by police to preempt possible fighting.
There were protests from the Philippines; the Resident Commissioner spoke
before Congress. The body of Fermin Tobera, now a martyr, was sent back to
Manila, where it lay in state in the capitol. He had become a symbol for the
independence movement of his country.
Many Filipinos fled the country, but most remained and responded to the
challenge in a characteristically tough, resilient manner. Seven months later,
they conducted a successful strike in the Salinas lettuce fields.25
While many whites also hardened their stance, young white girls still fell in
love with their ardent “little brown brothers,” causing the occasional
scandal: Dorcia Wilson (15) eloped on 21 March, and Velma Espinosa (15), “a
mere slip of a child with golden brown curls falling to her shoulders, and blue
eyes filled with tears,” was dragged into Salinas court on 1 July for marrying
Rufo Canete.26
For a time during the riots, “pretty Carrie Victorini” (15) was rumored
to be held by Filipinos, but she had merely run away from home.27
Conclusion
The five days of the Watsonville riots, throwing two counties into turmoil
and spreading fear and hatred throughout the state, had a profound impact on
California’s attitude toward imported Asian labor. As a result, Filipino
immigration plummeted, and while they remained a significant part of the labor
in the fields, they began to be replaced by Mexicans.
We may never know what impact the Mexicans’ dramatic action at the 20
January bridge confrontation may have had. Only the Santa Cruz News
reported the incident, though it may be assumed that such an event would have
been given wide notoriety in agricultural areas. Nevertheless, if there ever was
a moment when attitudes and allegiances appeared to shift, even symbolically,
that was such a moment. We live today with the consequences of those events. The
Filipino experience in the Thirties should give us a perspective on current
issues surrounding Proposition 187. It would seem that in replacing the
Filipinos in the fields, the Mexican migrant workers have also inherited the
role of economic and social scapegoat whenever times are bad. It also teaches us
something about the fragility of “civilization” and the roots of the
maddening prejudice that continues to haunt the American nation.
Notes
1 Salinas Index-Journal, 1 July 1930, 1; by the staff,
researched by Henry Empero, “Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the Filipino,” Letters
in Exile, an Introductory Reader on the History of the Filipinos in America
(Los Angeles, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976), 65.
2 Stockton Record, 1 January 1926, 13.
3 San Francisco Chronicle, 18 August 1928, 12.
4 Dinuba Sentinel, 16 August 1928; in Howard A. DeWitt, Violence
in the Fields: California Filipino Farm Labor Unionization During the Great
Depression (Saratoga, CA: Century Twenty-One Publishing, 1980), 33-34.
5 Paul Scharrenberg, “Exclude the Filipinos,” Organized Labor
29 (September 1928): 57-59.
6 Ibid., 35-36.
7 Salinas Index-Journal, 25 October 1929.
8 Ibid., 2 December 1929.
9 Ibid., 6 December 1929.
10 Watsonville Evening Pajaronian, 5 December 1929.
11 De Witt, Anti-Filipino Movements, 37.
12 Watsonville Evening Pajaronian, 10 January 1930, 1.
13 De Witt, Anti-Filipino Movements, 23.
14 Santa Cruz News, 20 January 1930, 7.
15 San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 1930.
16 San Jose Mercury Herald, 17 January 1930.
17 Salinas Index-Journal, 16 January 1930.
18 The Torch, No. 2, January 1930.
19 Watsonville Evening Pajaronian, 19 January 1930.
20 Santa Cruz News, 20 January 1930.
21 Santa Cruz Morning Sentinel, 22 January 1930, 5.
22 Ibid.
23 Santa Cruz News, 22 January 1930.
24 Santa Cruz Sentinel, 23 January 1930.
25 Salinas Index-Journal, 11 August-24 September 1930.
26 Ibid.
27 San Jose Mercury Herald, 1 February 1930, 2.
Meynell wrote this article while a history student at San Jose State
University.
