"The Beginning" on Bridge St. Watsonville, CA

A black and white photograph of Hazel Bickel and Bob Mariano’s on their first date. They are standing in front of a car with Buddy the dog, Bobby Mariano’s Aunt’s dog. The dog was from Oklahoma like Hazel's family. The photograph was taken on Bridge Street in Watsonville.

Alice Wiggins

c.1942

Bobby Mariano

Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) is a community-driven public history initiative to preserve and uplift stories of Filipino migration and labor in the city of Watsonville and greater Pajaro Valley. Images were donated and digitally reproduced from private collections of individuals and families. Copyright remains with original owners. All images included herein are intended for personal or educational use only. Any reproduction, redistribution, publication, or other use, by any means, without prior written permission is prohibited. Please note that the images on this website are not included at their full resolution. For permission to publish or reproduce and for higher resolution files, please contact the project director at wiith@ucsc.edu . If you are the rightful copyright holder of this item and its use online constitutes an infringement of your copyright, please contact the project director to discuss its removal from the archive.

For more information on mixed-race relationships:

Winkelmann, Tessa. Dangerous Intercourse: Gender and Interracial Relations in the American Colonial Philippines, 1898–1946. Cornell University Press, 2022. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv2b07v9k.

Dawn Bohulano Mabalon. Little Manila Is in the Heart : The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California. Durham: Duke University Press (2013).

San Pablo Burns, Lucy Mae. “‘Splendid Dancing’: Filipino ‘Exceptionalism’ in Taxi Dancehalls.” Dance Research Journal 40, no. 2 (2008): 23–40.

Roces, Mina. “‘These Guys Came Out Looking Like Movie Actors’: Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States, 1920s–1930s.” Pacific Historical Review 85, no. 4 (2016): 532–76.

3.5x5

Still Image

MAR.2022.1

Photograph