The Alaskeros: How Filipinos Built the Pacific Northwest — and Paid for It in Blood They arrived in Seattle with nothing. They canned the salmon that fed a nation, picked the apples and hops of the Yakima Valley, wrote the defining novel of the immigrant experience, organized the first Filipino-led union in American history — and two of their leaders were assassinated in broad daylight on orders from a dictator 7,000 miles away. This is the story of Filipinos in the Pacific