Little is remembered today about the anti-immigrant “deportations” of Filipino workers from the fields of Washington’s Yakima Valley in 1927, but the story is more relevant than it has ever been. The men of the mob believed that since the Filipinos were brown-skinned and Asian, they should not be permitted to approach white women or compete with white men for jobs. The economic and sexual fears of the men were clear and openly expressed.
How did these 1927 deportations, now familiar to only a handful of researchers, end up erased from our history? Certainly the memory of these incidents is inconvenient and shameful, particularly the memory of the violence against the future comrades in arms of American soldiers at Corregidor and Bataan. Importantly, the racism underlying this shameful period of mass deportations is still with us—has never really left us.
The deportations began outside the farm town of Toppenish, when a mob of 30 white men stormed the house of Ellis Peregrino, a local Filipino man married to a white woman. The mob demanded that farmworkers staying at the couple’s home leave the valley by midnight. Other mobs raided Filipino boardinghouses the same night, smashing furniture and beating young men, with the goal of “deporting” all Filipino farmworkers from the valley.
The Filipinos were in fact United States “nationals” able to work legally throughout the country. But the white men saw them as “imported labor.” When Congress passed the Oriental Exclusion Act in 1924, residents of the Philippines were not included in the ban on Asian immigration. As a result, hundreds of young Filipino men were soon traveling to Eastern Washington to fill the increasing need for farm labor. And the men of the mob were not happy.
The following night, as clouds blanketed the valley and a light rain fell, 150 white men outside Toppenish piled into more than 30 automobiles and set off for town. They rounded up small groups of Filipinos and ordered them out of the valley under the threat of death. Some were forced onto trains. Others fled on foot, as mob leaders announced they were ready to “go to any length” to rid the valley of “Orientals.”
By the next afternoon, only a few farmworkers remained, at their peril. Sheriff’s deputies described the mobs as armed and determined to kill every Filipino they found. Those in Toppenish were told that if they were found in the valley after dark, they would be hung. Over a dozen Filipino workers were taken to the county jail for protection. This had all begun on a Tuesday, and by Saturday morning, order had finally been restored. Ultimately, hundreds of Filipino immigrants were reportedly expelled. And the incident, unfortunately, was followed by other mob deportations in the nearby Wenatchee Valley in 1928 and 1929.