Filipino American historian and former Alaskero recalls comradery in Alaska canneries

Canneries are a giant a part of Alaska’s historical past. All through the twentieth century, waves of immigrants – primarily from the Philippines –  got here to work alongside Alaska Native folks within the canneries.

The Mug Up exhibit on the Alaska State Museum in Juneau highlighted this historical past for the final six months. 

The exhibit options a lot of historic movies and images. There are black and white posed images from the flip of the twentieth century, and extra candid images taken by mates from the Sixties, 70s and 80s. Some panels discover the histories of the totally different labor actions that swept via Alaska’s canneries. 

There’s even a recreation of a bunkhouse, with a door coated in names of the employees who slept there from the Eighties to 2009. 

Subsequent to it, a large number corridor, with a hand-painted desk, and a handwritten weekend menu. The backdrop is a photograph of younger girls in hairnets smiling round a desk, a couple of holding cigarettes. 

Jackie Manning is the exhibit’s curator. Her favourite factor is a bit cart used to serve espresso to staff throughout what was known as Mug Up time. That’s the place the exhibit will get its title. 

“Once I went as much as Bristol Bay, and I noticed that little Cushman cart – is what it’s known as – and heard the tales about how numerous the canary crew was, and the way necessary that mug up time was for camaraderie and all people assembly and taking their breaks. And simply all of the totally different languages you’d hear on the docks,” she stated.

Oscar Peñaranda moved from the Philippines to Canada and ultimately to California earlier than coming to Alaska to work in a Bristol Bay cannery within the Sixties. And he saved coming again. He labored 15 summer season seasons in Alaska, earlier than deciding to remain in San Francisco full-time. 

Now, he’s a historian. He based the San Francisco chapter of the Filipino American Nationwide Historic Society and wrote about his experiences as an Alaskero – the time period for Filipinos who labored in Alaska’s canneries.

For Filipino American Historical past Month, Peñaranda was in Juneau final week for the closing of the exhibit. He acknowledged some names and faces within the exhibit, just like the Filipino union leaders who shaped the Alaska Cannery Employees Affiliation. They had been murdered in 1981, and he stated that’s when he stopped going to work in Alaska. 

Peñaranda labored on the cannery for 14 years, even after he began educating at San Francisco State College and James Logan Excessive Faculty in California. 

He stated he saved going again for the comradery.

“However the factor was, we didn’t really feel like we needed to get in contact between seasons,” he stated. “As a result of we had been gonna go the subsequent season and catch up. That’s a part of the rationale why we saved going.”

Peñaranda’s language expertise helped him to prosper on the cannery. He speaks 4 Filipino languages, in addition to English, Spanish and a few Italian. 

“Language is the way you see the world. You recognize two languages, you get two methods of seeing the world,” he stated. 

It allowed him to work as a kind of peacekeeper between totally different teams on the cannery. 

The labor actions taking place within the canneries paralleled his life in San Francisco within the winters. In 1968, he participated in strikes at San Francisco State College that led to the forming of the varsity’s School of Ethnic Research.

Peñaranda went on to show literature and Filipino language in excessive faculties and faculties. 

He’s now 78, and he’s considering of returning to Bristol Bay subsequent summer season to work with an outdated buddy. It will be the primary time he can have labored at a cannery since he stopped over 40 years in the past. 

His buddy can also be in his late 70s and he operates the palletizer – the machine that places all of the cans into pallets to ship out. 

Another excuse Peñaranda stated he saved going again to cannery work was the possibility to be a brand new model of himself.

“If you go work within the canneries and go to Alaska, you’ll be able to reinvent your self – you’ll be a totally totally different you. You don’t like the way in which you might be in San Francisco? Come to Alaska. Make your individual popularity.”

So, a distinct Oscar Peñaranda could return subsequent summer season.