The Gang of Four. Bob Santos
and alien alike, from the West Coast. The Japanese community was devastated -- their possessions, homes and businesses were sold for a fraction of their worth. They could only keep the possessions they were able to carry into the internment camps.
Bobby witnessed his Japanese American friends and their families leave the neighborhood, put on buses which would take them to “relocation centers” for the duration of the war. The Maryknoll School was closed. Bob understood that America was at war with Japan. But America was also at war with Germany and Italy. And yet, Bobby wondered then, why weren’t the German and Italian families forced to evacuate as well?
After the Maryknoll School closed, Bobby entered the second grade at the Immaculate Conception School in the fall of 1942. Even though all of the Japanese American families had been evacuated and removed from the neighborhood, strong feelings of anti-Japanese sentiment remained.
At the age of eight, young Bobby had his first real personal experience with racism and prejudice.
During one lunch period, a boy grabbed Bobby and yelled, “Are you a Jap, huh, are you a Jap?” Crying, Bobby answered, “No, honest, I’m a Filipino.” These kinds of incidents were common and not too long after, Asian American kids in Bobby’s neighborhood wore badges printed “I AM FILIPINO” or “I AM CHINESE.”
Most Saturday nights, Bobby and his friends could be found at Filipino community dances held at the Washington Hall at 14th Avenue South and Fir Street or at Finnish Hall on Washington Street. The dances brought out all the single Filipino guys who always outnumbered the Filipino women and girls. Bobby and his friends always knew the latest and popular dance styles--the jitterbug, swing, and the offbeat.
As a teen, Bobby worked at waiting tables at the Navy Officers’ Club, washing dishes at the G.O. Guy Drugs, or cleaning clam nectar pots at the original Ivar’s Acres of Clams restaurant on the waterfront.
Getting a ticket to the canneries in Alaska was a valuable commodity, an opportunity to make a lot of money in a short period of time. Cannery workers were guaranteed $1,200 plus overtime for the season. As a seventeen year old, Bobby had no seniority. But he was the son of Sammy Santos, which carried some weight and favor with Gene Navarro, the union dispatcher. Bobby went to the canneries as Gene’s protégé.
Bobby spent two summers in the canneries. He was assigned to place tops on the cans of fish, then load the cans into boxes for shipment, eight hours a day, during the six-week season from the beginning of June to mid-August. It was hard work.
In the second summer, he was assigned the job of “slimer.” A “slimer” was a job that nobody wanted. As the fish went down the conveyor belts, butchers lopped off the heads and split the fish lengthwise. Slimers stood at workstations with faucets, cleaned out the guts, and placed the cut fish into cans. Slimers worked until the fishing boats were empty.
Bobby got another first-hand experience with racism. The white workers--fishermen and mechanics--lived in a series of single house duplexes while the Filipino workers were crammed into bunkhouses, eight to a room. The whites enjoyed a menu of steak, pork chops, BLTs, waffles, eggs, bacon, and turkey while the Filipinos were fed fish and rice daily, with chicken only on Sundays.
Bobby was not to realize until later how these experiences shaped his political consciousness.
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A “slimer” was a job that nobody wanted.
CHAPTER 3: Early Pursuit of the American Dream
In 1952, after graduating from high school, Bob
(no longer “Bobby”) joined the Marine Corps for a
three-year hitch while the Korean War was still in
progress. He went through basic training, learning
to be an aircraft mechanic. But shortly before he
completed basic training, the armistice was signed
and the Korean War was over. Still eager to fight,
Bob joined the boxing team. He won a few fights
but his experiences didn’t encourage him to go
professional.
In October of 1955, Bob was discharged from the
Marine Corps and came home to Seattle. It didn’t
take him long to find a job and he was hired by the
Boeing Company. Bob was assigned to the
hammer shop at Boeing’s Renton plant as a
hammer operator’s assistant. Fortunately for Bob,
his shop foreman was an old boxing fan who
remembered Sammy Santos from his boxing days,
more than 25 years earlier. The foreman took Bob
under his wing and gave him an opportunity for
advancement, once again, benefiting from being
Sammy’s son.
In 1957, he had been promoted at the hammer shop to hammer operator. He had met and fallen in love with Anita Agbalog, a recent graduate of Franklin High School who had been working the summers at one of Bob’s favorite hangouts, the Manila Cafe in Chinatown. She too had found a job at Boeing’s as a graphic designer. It was a whirlwind romance. After less than a year of courtship, Bob proposed marriage to Anita. She agreed and the young couple started married life together in a small apartment at 14th Avenue and Spring Street in the Central Area.
But Bob, still working at the Boeing Company, started having problems at work. He had been involved in an ongoing conflict with a white union steward, a forklift operator, who was jealous of Bob’s close relationship with the shop foreman. The forklift operator deliberately rammed into Bob. In response, Bob went after the union steward, knocking him into a pile of discarded metal. Bob was arrested and charged with assault and battery. When Bob went to trial, others in the shop provided testimony that it was the forklift operator who had provoked the incident. Bob was acquitted but he knew his days at the Boeing Company were numbered.
So Bob decided to invest in a barbecue restaurant with childhood friends Ben and Eddie Laigo, called “The Rib Pit.” They had ambitious plans. With thousands of tourists coming to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Bob and the Laigo brothers believed that they could make a lot of money. They decided to sponsor a three-night jazz concert featuring the Dave Brubeck group at the Green Lake Aqua Theater. They brought in local talent such as the Joni Metcalf Trio and Teddy Ross, who years later, won a Tony Award for his role as the Cowardly Lion in “The Wiz” on Broadway. But nobody came. Bob and the Laigo brothers took a big hit financially, closed their restaurant, and declared bankruptcy.
As the decade of the sixties went on and took on a turbulent tone, Bob’s career path was about to take a dramatic turn. He was about to discover his true identity and calling: Uncle Bob--Community Activist.
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Postcard from Seattle World’s Fair 1962. Image courtesy Century 21
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He was about to
discover his true identity and
calling:
Uncle Bob--