The Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike of 1924–1925

7. The Strike on Hawaii

50 7 The Strike on Hawaii HILO APPARENTLY was the only place besides Honolulu where there was a Movement headquarters before the strike. Whatever the reasons, organizational or psychological, Hawaii turned out to be the only island where the strike turned out to be truly largescale , prolonged, and relatively well led. That Hawaii was considered a crucial island is clear from Ligot’s activities. On June 8, 1924, after ten days’ preparation, he held a convention at Hilo attended by over 80 delegates from East Hawaii plantations. It passed resolutions supporting Ligot and requesting the $l.25 daily minimum and the other points of his November 1923 convention.1 Three days later Manlapit also came to Hilo, but the following night he was arrested on orders from Honolulu and on the 15th was shipped back to be arraigned on two charges of conspiracy.2 Thereupon, unexpectedly, almost the entire Filipino work force of North Kohala struck on June 19 and 20. The number of strikers was variously reported as 1,540, 1,900, and 2,075.3 According to the Hilo Tribune-Herald, the Ilocanos, who had previously turned a deaf ear to strike talk, were incensed at Manlapit ’s arrest, which they saw as a blow to the entire Filipino nationality in Hawaii.4 Hugo Ritaga from the Hilo office assumed direction of the strike. All mills in Kohala were closed down for a few days. Forty or fifty special deputies were enlisted. On the 22nd a parade of 1,500 strikers was reported at Kapaau, their headquarters, but the same day large-scale evacuation of strikers and their families began by truck to Kona district. There they established camps near Holualoa and elsewhere and some sought The Strike on Hawaii 51 work on the coffee farms.5 By the 29th some strikers had begun moving to Hilo, the beginning of the great influx to that city.6 Others returned to work in Kohala, but as late as March 1925 a considerable number remained in Kona, some of them living on the beach in miserable straits.7 The Kohala strike, so sudden and complete, gave the High Wages Movement a shot in the arm. Manlapit asserted that on the 22nd a decision was made to extend the strike to Kauai and Maui.8 The same day, a spontaneous rally of Hilo Filipinos cheered the news from Kohala.9 On the 25th Manlapit was in Hilo again, promising a strike of all the Big Island plantations.10 Besides visiting the strikers in Kohala and Kona, he toured most of the island’s plantations. Sheriff Sam Pua rushed a large number of special policemen to the Hamakua plantations.11 The strike in East Hawaii began on July 1 at Honomu, where eventually all but two Filipinos went out, and on the 7th at sprawling Olaa Sugar Company, where it was not very effective. By the end of July the strike had been extended with varying degrees of success to all plantations but Paauhau, Hakalau, Hilo Sugar Company, and Waiakea Mill. A large majority of the Filipinos at Waiakea struck on August 19 and a small minority at Hakalau on the 28th. All these strikers, it appears, promptly moved into Hilo.12 Action at the two Ka’u plantations, Pahala and Naalehu, was delayed until October 20, when some 600 men, about half the Filipino work force, also moved into Hilo.13 Thereupon the situation on Hawaii was pretty much stabilized for three months, except for some drift back to work and replacement of strikers with labor imported from the Philippines.14 The Hilo Strike Camps By mid-July there were over 1,000 strikers in Hilo. The number reached a peak some time in August, when a Board of Health estimate showed the city to be involuntary host to some 2,815 men, many with families, housed in 50 camps. By the end of January 1925 the number had dropped to 1,356 men, 318 women, and 379 children.15 Such a crowd caused a great material and psychological strain upon a town with a population of only 11,230.16 That Hilo pulled through without a major distur- 52 THE FILIPINO PIECEMEAL SUGAR STRIKE bance except for the Wainaku ‘riot’ and the march toward Olaa on January 20–21 was a credit to the coolheadedness of the Hilo police force and citizenry and no less to the good...