Southern California has several Filipino enclaves, including West Covina, Carson, Cerritos, and Eagle Rock, but it’s the district just west of Downtown where the Filipino-American community first settled here a century ago. Cal State Northridge Asian American Studies Professor Allan Aquino breaks it down: “Though Filipinos first set foot in California as subjects of the Spanish empire in the late 1500s, the first major immigration wave to California arrived in the 1920s, establishing homes, businesses, and cultural centers near Little Tokyo and Echo Park in the area now known as Historic Filipinotown. This Los Angeles neighborhood, also regarded as “HiFi” or “P-Town,” was so named in 2002 because of its role as an historic gateway for Filipino Americans settling in the United States.”
https://metropolismag.com/viewpoints/neighborhoods-los-angeles-first-street-corridor/
Metropolis Magazine