Document 15: Selection from America is in the Heart: A Personal History
Bulosan, Carlos. America is in the Heart: A Personal History (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1943,1946), 99-103.
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We arrived in Seattle on a June day. My first sight of the approaching land was an exhilarating experience. Everything seemed native and promising to me. It was like coming home after a long voyage, although as yet I had no home in this city. Everything seemed familiar and kind-the white faces of the buildings melting in the soft afternoon sun, the gray contours of the surrounding valleys that seemed to vanish in the last periphery of light. With a sudden surge of joy, I knew that I must find a home in this new land.
I had only twenty cents left, not even enough to take me to Chinatown where, I had been informed, a Filipino hotel and two restaurants were located. Fortunately two old-timers put me in a car with four others, and took us to a hotel on King Street, the heart of Filipino life in Seattle. Marcelo, who was also in the car, had a cousin named Elias who came to our room with another oldtimer. Elias and his unknown friend persuaded my companions to play a strange kind of card game. In a little while, Elias got up and touched his friend suggestively; then they disappeared and we never saw them again. It was only when our two countrymen had left that my companions realized what happened. They had taken all their money. Marcelo asked me if I had any money. I gave him my twenty cents. After collecting a few more cents form the other, he went downstairs and when he came back he told us that he had telegraphed for money to his brother in California.
All night we waited for the money to come, hungry and afraid to go out in the street. Outside we could hear shouting and singing, then a woman screamed lustily in one of the rooms down the hall. Across from our hotel a jazz band was playing noisily; it went on until dawn. But in the morning a telegram came to Marcelo which said:
YOUR BROTHER DIED AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT LAST WEEK
Marcelo looked at us and began to cry. His anguish stirred an aching fear in me. I knelt on the floor looking for my suitcase under the bed. I knew that I had to go out now-alone. I put the suitcase on my shoulder and walked toward the door, stopping for a moment to look back at my friends who were still standing silent around Marcelo. Suddenly a man came into the room and announced that he was the proprietor.
"Well, boys," he said, looking at our suitcases, "where is the rent?"
"We have no money, sir," I said, trying to impress him with my politeness.
"That is too bad," he said quickly, glancing furtively at our suitcases again. "That is just too bad." He walked outside and went down the the hall. He came back with a short, fat Filipino, who looked at us stupidly with his dull, small eyes, and spat his cigar out of the window.
"There they are, Jake," said the proprietor.
Jake looked disappointed. "They are too young," he said.
"You can break them in, Jake," said the proprietor.
"They will be sending babies next," Jake said.
"You can break them in, can't you, Jake?" the proprietor pleaded. "This is not the first time you have broken babies in. You have done it in the sugar plantations in Hawaii, Jake!"
"Hell!" Jake said, striding across the room to the proprietor. He pulled a fat roll of bills from his pocket and gave twenty-five dollars to the proprietor. Then he turned to us and said. All right, Pinoys, you are working for me now. Get your hats and follow me,"
We were too frightened to hesitate. When we lifted our suitcases the proprietor ordered us not to touch them.
"I'll take good care of them until you come back from Alaska," he said. "Good fishing, boys!"
In this way we were sold for five dollars each to work in the fish canneries in Alaska, by a Visayan from the island of Leyte to an Ilocano from the province of La Union. Both were old-timers; both were tough. They exploited young immigrants until one of them, the hotel proprietor, was shot dead by an unknown assailant.
We were forced to sign a paper which stated that each of us owed the contractor twenty dollars for bedding and another twenty for luxuries. What the luxuries were, I have never found out. The contractor turned out to be a tall, heavy-set, dark Filipino, who came to the small hold of the boat barking at us like a dog. He was drunk and saliva was running down his shirt.
"And get this, you devils!" he shouted at us. "You will never come back alive if you don't do what I say!"
It was the beginning of my life in America, the beginning of a long fight that carried me down the years, fighting desperately to find some peace in my life.