On December 25, 1904, Philip Villamin Vera Cruz was born to Andriano Sanchez Vera Cruz and Maria Villamin Vera Cruz, a hardworking farming family in the town of Saoang, in the province of Ilocos Sur, Philippines. Philip was the eldest of three children, and when his father became very sick when Philip was just a boy, he had to help his family by working in the fields with the other men of the village. Although Philip Vera Cruz dreamed of going to America to study to become a lawyer, his father urged him to remember to support his siblings, both of whom were sixteen years younger than him. He would never forget that promise.

At the age of twenty-one, Philip Vera Cruz departed from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, on April 25, 1926. Accompanied by his uncle Pedro de la Cruz and two friends, they traveled aboard the ship Empress of Asia along with about three hundred other passengers, mostly men. They arrived first after a twenty-two day voyage to Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, and then continued on by ferry boat to the United States for Seattle, Washington.

Like other Filipino immigrants who discovered the hardships of resettling in the United States, Philip Vera Cruz had to work a variety of seasonal jobs, including at restaurants, country clubs, canneries, and farms in Washington, Alaska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, and in the Central Valley of California. He attended school while working to pursue his dream of a formal education, while at the same time financially supporting his family back in the Philippines.

By 1942, Vera Cruz was drafted into the US Army. He went to basic training in San Luis Obispo, California, and was assigned to the Second Filipino Infantry Regiment. Discharged due to his age, he was assigned to work the fields of the San Joaquin Valley as part of the war effort. During the 1940s, he worked a nine- to ten-hour day, for 70 to 80 cents an hour. He worked in Delano during the grape season and also picked lettuce and asparagus, thinned plums, and cut raisin grapes throughout the Central Valley. The work in the hot fields was more physically demanding than previous jobs he held in hotels and restaurants.