Filipino American History, 425 Years and Counting  Nurses from
the Philippines, working in Philadelphia, visit Washington, D.C.
in May of 1968. | Photo courtesy of: Loreta G. Trinidad  The
month of October is National Arts & Humanities Month. It's also
Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As well as Domestic Violence
Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, and Fair Trade Month.  But
for some 3.4 million Americans of Philippine ancestry, October
is Filipino American History Month. For it was 425 years ago on
this day -- October 18, 1587 -- that the first Filipinos, or
"Luzon Indios" as we were known back then, arrived in what is
now the United States on a Spanish galleon near Morro Bay, CA --
some 33 years before Pilgrims from England arrived at Plymouth
Rock.  For someone customarily weary after a 13-hour Boeing 747
ride from Manila, I couldn't even fathom what those 16th-century
early Filipinos were thinking about when they completed their
trans-Pacific voyage, much less arriving on a seemingly alien
shore. I'm quite