CHICAGO — In a small room in a museum downtown, a medium-size leather suitcase sits on the floor.

It’s empty now, but nearly 50 years ago — as it crossed the Pacific Ocean from the Philippines to Chicago — it held textbooks, clothes, a prayer book and hopes for the future as a nurse in Illinois.

“Whenever I look at that, it comes back to me very clearly, what happened to me when I left the Philippines and came over here,” said Brenda Vins, the owner of the suitcase, and a retired nurse who now lives in La Grange. “It’s just that everything was in there for me — the reason I came.”

The suitcase is one of dozens of items on display at the International Museum of Surgical Science in the Gold Coast neighborhood, as part of an exhibit called “Unheard Voices of Care: Filipino Nurses in America.”

Filipino nurses have long had a sizable presence in American healthcare but the reasons behind that and their experiences have not often been discussed. The exhibit, which runs through Aug. 2, aims to tell their story, including their contributions in the Chicago area.

“We want to tell the narrative of what could be considered the story of a Filipino nurse,” said Angel Abcede, a freelance writer who co-coordinated the exhibit after writing a book about his mother and her two sisters who came from the Philippines to work as nurses in the U.S. Even some Filipino nurses might not think much about “what brought them here and why so many in their families are nurses,” Abcede said.

The exhibit grew partly out of that book, thanks to the backing and coordination of the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago.

“Our mission has always been to … show the history and culture of Filipinos in the Chicago area,” said Ruben Salazar, president of the society. “The story of the nurses is a big part of the history of Filipinos in Chicago.”

Filipino immigrant nurses make up an estimated 4% of all nurses in the U.S., according to an American Immigration Council analysis of data from the 2024 American Community Survey. More nurses came from the Philippines to the U.S. than from any other country, according to the analysis — more than four times as many nurses as the next leading nation.

Many other nurses of Filipino descent are second- and third-generation Americans who followed in their mothers’ and grandmothers’ footsteps.

“What happens is that U.S.-born, young Filipino Americans realize in their community that nursing is a profession that offers socioeconomic mobility, that offers steady work and income,” said Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Choy herself grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York surrounded by family friends and neighbors who were nurses. She saw that they were respected as professionals and immigrants.

Though Choy didn’t become a nurse, she decided to study the history of Filipino nurses in the U.S., writing her dissertation on the topic and later a book about it titled “Empire of Care.”

In her research, Choy found that reasons behind the migration of Filipino nurses to the U.S. could be traced all the way back to as early as 1898, when the U.S. won the Spanish-American War. Shortly after the war, Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. and it became an American colony.

At the time, the U.S. had a policy of “benevolent assimilation,” Choy said, meaning it sought to impose the English language and American values in the Philippines. That included setting up an American-style education system and eventually nursing schools, as that was seen, at the time, as one of the few acceptable professions for women.

Small numbers of nurses then began coming to the U.S. in the early 1900s through a “pensionado” program that allowed them to advance their education in the U.S. and then return to the Philippines.

More Filipino nurses arrived in the late 1950s and early 1960s, through a Cold War-era exchange program in which people could come to the U.S. on visas for two years and then return to their home countries. The intent of the program was to spread positive feelings about the U.S. throughout the world, but it ended up having a dual purpose: Many Filipino nurses ended up serving in inner cities, including in Chicago, and rural areas where it could otherwise be difficult to find nurses, Choy said.

The greatest influx of Filipino nurses, however, began more than 50 years ago with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That law ended previous quotas that had heavily restricted immigration from Asian and African countries. It also gave preference to immigrants who had needed skills — such as nurses.

“The Philippines came to dominate that particular stream in large part because of this foundation already of Americanized nursing education in the Philippines,” Choy said. “They were trained under Americans. They were proficient in English.”

At the time, Filipino nurses could earn about seven times as much money working in the U.S. as they could in the Philippines, Choy said.

Also, a number of Filipino nurses had already worked in the U.S. for two years and then returned home under the exchange program — making them especially desirable for U.S. hospitals.

One advertisement, which ran in a magazine in the Philippines in 1969, exclaimed, “There’s a job waiting for you at Michael Reese Hospital Chicago, Illinois, if” a Filipino nurse had already worked in the U.S. as part of the exchange program. The ad, which Choy found during her research, featured the smiling faces of nurses and described pay starting at $660 a month.

It was during that era that Vins — whose suitcase is now part of the Chicago museum exhibit — arrived in the U.S. She was inspired to become a nurse by several of her relatives and a close friend who were nurses.

She saw working in the U.S. as an adventure and thought she’d stay for a year or two. But she enjoyed the job, met her husband in the U.S. and ended up staying. She worked at a rehabilitation hospital and at Michael Reese.

Merle Salazar also didn’t plan to stay in the U.S. long after she arrived in 1978. Really, she didn’t even want to move to the U.S. But Salazar’s father passed away two years after she graduated from nursing school. She moved to the U.S. to make better money, to help support her mother and siblings.

Like Vins, she met her husband in the U.S., and she realized she could better support her family from the U.S. Her temporary stay soon turned into a permanent one.

She also contributed items to the exhibit, including her own suitcase and several of the objects that were in it, such as prayer books, a silver rosary, a slim, blue address book and colorful blankets from her mom and dad.

“Things that give me comfort when I see them or touch them,” said Merle Salazar, who is a co-coordinator of the exhibit.

She also contributed a magazine, from the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago’s collection, with an article recounting a dark chapter in the history of Filipino nurses in Chicago — the 1966 murder of eight young nurses by Richard Speck in a townhome on the South Side. Two of the murdered nurses were Filipino, as was a nurse who survived.

“People need to know about this, especially the young nurses, what happened during that time,” Merle Salazar said.

Most of the other items in the exhibit focus on the nurses’ accomplishments and day-to-day lives.

Mannequins wear white and blue dresses that were the nurses’ uniforms. Black-and-white photos of Filipino nurses dressed in their professional attire hang from the walls.

In a corner, a mannequin wears a bright blue dress and another wears a green-and-orange one, showing what the young women wore out in the evenings as they socialized in the U.S.

Part of their lives in the U.S. included “going out on the town,” Abcede said. “Once they came here, they started to really adapt to the culture.”

Nurse Dean Baron said the exhibit makes him feel nostalgic, and shows the pride Filipino nurses take in their work. Baron arrived in the U.S. in 1994, and is now a dialysis nurse at Loyola University Medical Center.

“We’ve been around here in the U.S. in the nursing landscape, but sometimes you don’t hear a lot about us,” said Baron, who’s the outgoing president of the Philippine Nurses Association of Illinois. Filipino nurses pride themselves on providing excellent, compassionate care to patients, he said.

Stacy Arriola, who is a clinical assistant professor of nursing at the University of Illinois Chicago and a nurse practitioner, said it’s important to recognize the work of Filipino nurses now and in the past. Arriola followed her mother and grandmother, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines, into nursing.

Their dedication inspired her, said Arriola, who is also vice president of the Philippine Nurses Association of Illinois.

“It’s important to remember and honor the legacy of our past nurses who came before us and celebrate how their dedication leaves a lasting impact not only on their patients but also inspiring the next generation of nurses to lead with their hearts,” Arriola said.

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