Imagine this: you work at a huge factory that smells of fish, your hands are constantly wet and cold, and outside the window a beautiful river flows—yet there are almost no fish left in it. That’s what life looked like for Filipino workers in salmon canneries in the U.S. state of Oregon in 1933. And when they decided to stop and say “no,” they didn’t just save themselves—they helped save the river.
Who were Filipino workers, and why did they come so far?
In the early 20th century, thousands of young men from the Philippine Islands traveled to America in search of work. Many of them ended up in canneries along the Columbia River and on the Pacific coast—in the states of Oregon and Washington. There, they did grueling work: cleaning, cutting, and packing salmon into tin cans from morning until night.
These workers were paid far less than white Americans doing the same job. They lived in cramped barracks right next to the factories—wooden buildings where a single room held ten to fifteen people. Often, they had to cook their own food, and for the “right” to live in those barracks, the owners also deducted money from their already small wages. Unfair? Absolutely.
But there was another problem the workers noticed every day, looking out at the river.
What happened to the river and the fish?
The Columbia River was once one of the richest salmon rivers in the world. Each year, millions of fish swam upriver to spawn—that is called spawning. Local Indigenous peoples had lived beside this river for thousands of years and knew better than anyone: you can’t take more than the river can provide.
But the canneries thought differently. They caught as much salmon as they could—using huge nets, day and night. And anything that didn’t end up in cans—fish entrails, bones, blood, and chemical preservatives—was dumped straight into the river. The water near the factories turned muddy and foul-smelling. There were fewer and fewer fish.
Many Filipino workers, many of whom had grown up near the sea and understood from childhood how important it is to protect fish stocks, saw this with their own eyes. One of the workers’ leaders, Kantor Manuel, later recalled that older fishermen from his village in the Philippines would never have allowed such treatment of the river—it would have been considered disrespectful to nature and to future generations.
The 1933 strike: when “no” changes everything
In the summer of 1933, Filipino workers went on strike—that is, they simply refused to report for work. They demanded fair pay, decent housing, and respect. The cannery owners were furious: the salmon season was short, and every day of downtime meant lost money.
The strike lasted several weeks. What’s interesting is this: while the factories were shut down, the river got a brief rest. Nets weren’t hauling in fish by the ton. Filth wasn’t pouring into the water. It was like someone had finally turned off a faucet that had been running too long—and the land began absorbing moisture again.
In the end, the workers won some improvements: slightly higher pay and better living conditions. But without knowing it, they also did something else—they showed that you can stop a machine that seems impossible to stop.
“We weren’t asking for much. We were asking for justice,” the workers told their organizers in 1933.
Why this story matters today
Almost a hundred years have passed. The salmon population in the Columbia River is still recovering, and scientists and ecologists are still working on it. Indigenous peoples in the region continue to fight for the right to a clean river and healthy fish. And the story of Filipino workers remained largely forgotten for a long time—it wasn’t written into textbooks, and films weren’t made about it.
But today researchers and activists are bringing this story back to people. Because it teaches something important: sometimes the most environmentally friendly act is simply to stop and say, “Enough.” And sometimes it’s exactly those who live closest to nature—and depend on it—who understand best how to protect it.
These workers didn’t call themselves environmentalists. They simply wanted justice. But justice for people and justice for nature turned out to be the same thing.
