This is America: In reporting an untold Filipino-American story, I uncovered more about my grandfather's life
Phaedra Trethan, USA TODAY
Thu, November 18, 2021, 8:29 AM·5 min read
In this article:
Filipino-American author, poet, migrant laborer, and activist who left the Philippines for Seattle in 1930
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Irineo Carbonel, the author's grandfather and the inspiration behind her story on the manong and Carlos Bulosan, stands in the backyard of his Orange, New Jersey house with his daughters, Dolores (left) and Irene (center, the author's mother) and an unidentified niece.
As I interviewed Patrick Rosal about our shared roots for USA TODAY's Never Been Told project, the Filipino-American poet told me, “It became very easy for me to talk with these ghosts. The ghosts of the manong are with us. With you.”
The manong he speaks of are our ancestors – the young men in the first wave of Filipino migrants arriving between 1903 and 1934. Their ghosts whisper of a complicated relationship with a country that was both brutal and welcoming. My edition of Never Been Told profiles Carlos Bulosan, a Filipino author whose 1946 autobiographical novel “America Is in the Heart." His words paint a picture of this shared experience.
Hi, my name is Phaedra Trethan and I am a reporter with the Cherry Hill Courier Post, a part of the USA TODAY Network. While reporting for the project, which uncovers forgotten histories of people of color, I stumbled upon another story.
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Remembering the dead
I began writing this on All Souls Day, when Catholics — including most Filipinos — honor and remember their dead. Though I left the church many years ago, it’s a tradition that stuck with me.
And as I dove deeper into this project, Filipino ghosts swirled in my mind and in my soul:
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, a cofounder of Little Manila Rising and an author and historian specializing in Filipino-American history who died in 2018.
Amado Khaya, Robyn Rodriguez’s son, who died so young and tragically last year while helping indigenous people in the Philippines preserve their land and way of life.
Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, who led farm workers to fight for their dignity and for fair treatment.
Carlos Bulosan, about whom you’ve hopefully just read.
Irineo Carbonel.
You probably don’t know that last person, even if you’re one of the few who’s heard of the others.
But let me tell you about him.
Carbonel came to Hawaii in 1911 from Mangaldan, Pangasinan, Philippines, at the age of 19. He was the youngest of 13, had little formal education, and family lore said that he first left home at just 12, though it’s not clear where he went or what he did between that time and when he got to Hawaii.
He made his way to California and worked in the fields. Late in his life, he’d tell stories about how hard the work was, how stubborn the crops could be, how dust and dirt seemed to get everywhere.
By 1924 he’d left California behind for the East Coast, and married Loretta Gallagher at a time when it was often dangerous for a dark-skinned Asian man to even be seen with a white woman.
He and Loretta had eight children, losing a daughter, Lorraine, to illness when she was just 8. He worked as a laborer, cleaned offices on weekends, and when the family moved to South Jersey, he tended two gardens at his pre-fab rancher built by his son Robert: a rose garden filled with flowers and another sprawling garden for vegetables in the backyard. If his grandchildren helped, he’d give them pocket change to buy penny candy.
His youngest child, Irene, is my mother.
I knew many of the facts of my grandfather’s extraordinary life.
But it wasn’t until I began researching this story that I had an inkling just how much he’d overcome, how much he might have endured, before building a life and a family.
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon wrote in Little Manila Is In the Heart:
"Old timers rarely spoke openly of their early experiences, perhaps because the past was painful. … My peers and I, most of us in our teens when the old timers were in their twilight years, were unable to connect their memories to the larger history of the United States or to our own identities. When we finally knew the right questions to ask, many of our elders had already passed or their memories had grown too dim.
“…We have lost much of our community’s history because of the assumption that our past is not history, that it is not an American experience worthy of interpretation and analysis.”
When I read that, it felt like someone pulled a thread that unraveled my understanding of my grandfather’s life.
“I don’t really know much about him other than that he was my dad,” my uncle, Ralph Carbonel, wrote to me when I began asking questions about my grandfather.
“He loved to fish and crab. Also he was a great gardener. He learned to play guitar by ear. I remember him making homemade toys for us. He made me a wooden rifle and the stock was like a real rifle. He made nice doll houses …
“He spoke several dialects of Filipino. He was very strict with our older siblings, but after my sister Lorraine died, he wasn’t as stern with me, Dolores or your mom.
“He worked three jobs: one days during the week, at night cleaning offices, another on Saturday. He became a citizen in the 1940s during World War II because he got a job in the shipyard in Newark and had to be a citizen to work there.
“When the Depression hit, he worked odd jobs. Some of the money he made, he made gambling in Chinatown in Newark, where he was quite lucky. That helped feed a family with four kids.”
My mother recalled how my grandmother had to sign apartment leases because landlords often refused to rent to Filipinos. But she also remembers a vibrant Filipino-American community in North Jersey, with dances and large, extended family gatherings.
My grandfather returned to the Philippines in the early 1970s, staying for a month with a charter group and visiting his oldest half-brother, Jose, who looks like his twin in black and white family photos.
The dream and the spirit live on.
Irineo Carbomel was 96 when he died, physically active and mentally sharp well into his 90s. I can still see his easy smile, still hear his voice, still feel his rough, calloused hands, still smell his daily breakfast of toast, a banana and coffee.
His ghost is with me often. Or maybe I tell myself that because I wish he were still around, because I still love and admire him so much.
“We are the living dream of dead men,” Carlos Bulosan wrote. “We are the living spirit of free men.”
I am the living dream, the living spirit of a man who was proud of his adopted country, who raised an American flag in his front yard every day, even though this country did not always love him back. He gave me his love of nature, his baseline optimism, his easy smile, his work ethic.
Unlike him, though, I don’t work in the fields or in a shipyard; instead, I am privileged to tell the stories of extraordinary people like him every day.
This is the first time I’ve told his story. Thank you for reading it.
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