A Ballot from Manila
/It didn’t stop me. Despite a couple of diversions, I got to DHL and waited an hour before I could get my document processed, sealed, and sent off.
My dad’s legacy was to give me American citizenship. He had moved from farm hand to finishing college at San Francisco State, when Pearl Harbor was attacked and war was declared on Japan. He enlisted in MacArthur’s special forces, was flown to Australia to train, and submarined to Davao in 1943. There, he sent radio reports on enemy activity to MacArthur’s Brisbane headquarters and was injured in an encounter he led. For his efforts, he got several medals and US citizenship. We, his children got it too, and he’d tell us to keep it since he nearly died for both countries: the United States and the Philippines.
Lt. Col. Saturnino Silva, US Army, 1946
Dad and me, Baguio 1952
When Martial Law was declared, I was in the States teaching. There was an arrest warrant out for me, because I spoke and wrote against the dictatorship, but my citizenship protected me and my right to protest.
I’ve been voting since I was old enough to vote as a registered Democrat, closer to my working class, environmentalist, pro-women and LGBTQ biases.
Yesterday’s lightning and thunder reminded me of the time I was stopped from voting when I lived on the lower east side in Manhattan. I went to a polling booth close to Chinatown and, while registering was told by a Republican lady watcher that my driver’s ID wasn’t enough, despite my having used that for past elections.
I walked nine long blocks home in wet and windy weather. I returned with my passport and she took one look at it and said that wasn’t sufficient. I put up a fuss, but she told me the only way I was going to vote was to go to City Hall and get a judge to certify me.
“I’m doing my share to make sure Trump is trounced. I now don’t recognize that country where I had lived, loved, and worked for 26 years.”
It was dark, snowing really hard and the pavement became slippery. At that moment I remembered Dad always reminding me to fight “prejudice,” a term older people used before “discrimination.” When he picked vegetables in the ‘30s in California, he and other Filipino workers would often flee their bunkhouses at night from lynch mobs. He was called a “monkey” in the Army and he’d be bloodied in fights. He couldn’t buy a house in America after the war because of prejudice. Dad was asked to go through the back door of the PX, or was stopped at the door of the Army Navy Club in the Philippines. He was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, but it was only his color that mattered to racism.
With no taxis or buses in sight, I walked, this time another ten long blocks south to City Hall where I found a judge who looked at me, wet and cold, and immediately signed a certificate for me to vote, saying that if I was that crazy to walk all that way, then I must be a citizen.
Luckily I hailed a cab, got back to the polling booth just before it closed, handed the certificate to my shocked nemesis, and got a ballot to fill out. I voted for McGovern, the antiwar candidate, but Nixon won by a landslide. Two years later, he’d resign over the Watergate scandal.
This election, I made sure my vote would get there. I sent it DHL three days ago. It got shipped to Hong Kong for the night and made it out to Los Angeles the next day. It was taken on another flight to San Francisco where, as I wrote this, it was ready for delivery north to Sonoma where I once lived. The tracking system is impressive.
I’m doing my share to make sure Trump is trounced. I now don’t recognize that country where I had lived, loved, and worked for 26 years, which Dad made me promise to honor and love as fervently as I do this country.
I hope to celebrate soon!
A version of this was posted by the author on his Facebook page.
John L. Silva
John L. Silva is executive director of the Ortigas Library, a research library in Manila.
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