Mike Chow
Growing up Asian in Sunnyvale

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Hi, my name is Mike Chow and I would like to tell you a little bit about my family and how difficult it was for my parents to immigrate into this country.

My father entered the United States at the age of 16 in 1926 as the son of a farm worker. This person who brought my father into this country was not really my grandfather. He was just somebody who was granted permission to enter the U.S. He claimed that my father was one of his sons. My father worked for this man for years as a farm laborer with very little pay. I suppose that there was some debt that was owed to this person for bringing him into this country. Back then it was very difficult for the Chinese to immigrate into this country. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, was still in effect, making it almost impossible for the Chinese to get into the U.S.

About 1934 the marriage of my mother and father was arranged through letters between relatives and acquaintances. The marriage ceremony was performed in China by proxy, because my father could not be there. A rooster stood in for my father during the ceremony. After they were married my mother was put on a ship bound for the U.S. to meet my father for the first time. The trip took about a month. When she arrived, my mother was sent to Angel Island for processing. 

The immigration authorities decided to detain my mother there until her paperwork was verified or straightened out. My mother was detained on Angel Island for 18 months before she was denied access and ultimately sent back to China. While she was being detained, my father would come up every week for the 18-month period she was there. When she arrived back in China she had to live with my father’s mother because she was recognized as my father’s wife. She could not go back to live with her own family. 

My mother lived with my grandmother for 15 years. Even though the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, it wasn’t until 1949 that my father tried again to bring her into the U.S. This time he was successful. Five of us kids were born after my mother arrived. All of us were born in the 1950’s. There were three boys and two girls in my family. We all grew-up on a farm that my father and mother purchased in 1954.

I want to tell you a little bit about what it was like to grow up in Sunnyvale on a farm from the early 1950's to the 1970’s. My family was involved in growing chrysanthemums for the commercial flower market.

In the early days my father would basically grow one crop a year. He would stagger the growth of the plants so they would not bloom all at once.

The flowers were started from cuttings we took from my mothers stock. As kids, I remember picking thousands of the cutting and stripping the leaves off with my brothers and sisters. These cuttings were placed in special propagation beds for two or three weeks to develop roots. 

After the cuttings were rooted they would be planted in cheesecloth greenhouses where the soil would be meticulously prepared by machinery operated by my father.

The flowers took 18 weeks to mature and bloom. While the flowers were growing they had to be watered, fertilized, sprayed for insects, and shaded from the sun before they were ready to bloom. When the flowers were ready they would be cut, graded for size and bunched in bundles of 25 stems by hand. After the flowers were cut, my father would get up in the morning at four AM and take the Chrysanthemums the San Francisco flower market to sell to retail florists. My father would be home by noon and he would spend the rest of the day cutting flowers for the next day.

From what I recalled most of the Asians in Santa Clara Valley at the time were involved in growing flowers for the floral industry. It was a business they could work in because it didn’t require them to speak English well or at all.

My father was one of these individuals who could not speak or read or write English, but he was still able to run our business through the small but tightly knit Chinese community that existed. My father started growing flowers in the early 1940’s in what is now called East Palo Alto. In 1954, my father moved to Sunnyvale. My family grew flowers there until 1972.

During this period there were numerous orchards throughout the area. I remember coming for from school and having to do our chores before we could play in the orchards and fields.

During this period in time there were very few Chinese families living in the Santa Clara Valley. I remember going to Bennett Elementary School, which no longer exists, and being the only Asian person in the classroom. There were probably three or four other Asian students in the whole school besides my brothers and sisters. I knew we were kind of different from the other kids. I remember being teased and made fun of by some of the other children, but most of them didn’t do that. Now the population of Santa Clara Valley is very integrated and culturally diverse.