Talking Hawai`i's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People

KONA IS THE BEST

SEVERO DINSON KONA IS THE BEST You get your own land, better. Because nobody boss you. If you go to work to somebody, you got to follow what he order to you. Pau pick coffee, then my boss, “Shigeru-san! Hoy. Ah, mo’ betta coffee häpai, no?” They no call me Severo. “Shigeru-san!” Japanese name. If you own land, you go hire somebody, you the one boss. Of Spanish and Filipino ancestry, Severo Dinson was born on the island of Cebu, Philippines in 1904. His parents were subsistence farmers. Dinson came to Hawai‘i in 1922 to work on Hawai‘i Island’s sugar plantations . In 1924–1925, Filipino workers conducted a territory-wide sugar plantation strike. On Hawai‘i Island, strike camps were set up in Hilo for strikers and their families. In January 1925, strikers marched towards ‘Öla‘a Plantation in a bid to recruit nonstrikers, but were turned away by police. Dinson, then single, was one of the strikers. In 1927, Dinson left the plantation to pick coffee for several farmers in Kona. He later boxed professionally on Hawai‘i Island and Maui. During World War II, Dinson and his wife, Candelaria Enanoria Dinson, lived on the Honoka‘a Plantation. After returning to Kona in 1948, the Dinsons leased coffee lands, ran a pool hall, and then purchased their own coffee land in Keälia. The Dinsons were parents of ten children. Warren Nishimoto interviewed Severo Dinson at Dinson’s South Kona home in 1980 for COH’s A Social History of Kona (1981). Dinson died in 1996. Unlike other communities, Kona is the largest single area to remain outside the sugar plantation system that so dominated the history of modern Hawai‘i. In the late nineteenth century, Kona gained a reputation as a haven 36 Talking Hawai‘i’s Story for immigrants who broke or ended their labor contracts with the plantations . Seeking a more independent lifestyle for themselves and their families , these immigrants came to grow, pick, or mill coffee in the area’s rocky farmlands. They, and others who joined them later, helped Kona acquire the distinction of being the only area in the United States to grow coffee commercially for over one hundred years. GOING TO HAWAI‘I I stay Cebu place. Carcar, Cebu. [In a] bamboo house. I work on my father’s land. Take care the plant. Ten acre, because we get the rice field. We clean the land. And planting, too. Corn. Get some banana. We no sell that one. Only for eat, you know. We near the ocean. No more one mile. We get boat—small boat. You got to go over there. The one they call Bohol. The other island, that one. And then, you go fishing in the middle. (Chuckles.) [The family had] five boys and two girls. You know, like me, as the youngest of my family, if I tell my father I no go school, they no push. My schoolteacher, he told me, “Severo, how come you no come school?” “I no like.” Me, number one kolohe I go (chuckles) anyplace. My father, he no lick me, nothing. That time I reach in Honolulu, I cry, because I remember, my house, I no work hard. I get cousin, he come [back] from Hawai‘i. He said, “Hawai‘i good.” He said, “If you going Hawai‘i, you go in the [sugar] cane field. You go cut cane, häpai.” If you go day work, they give you dollar a day. But if you make contract , how many pound [of cane], they count, eh? That’s why, sometimes, [based on the poundage] you make dollar, dollar half [$1.50], like that, one day. You get one dollar over here, you get [equivalent of] two pesos in the Philippines. I thought was good already, because double, huh? Before, plantation pay [your boat fare]—free. In fact, you got contract, you work three year in the plantation, you get free to go back in the Philippines . But now, I come, 1922. How many year now I stay Hawai‘i? (Chuckles .) Forget already, the Philippines. American boat is strong, you know. From Manila, to come Hawai‘i, one month. But Japan boat, ah, little more three month, two month. Lucky thing, the President Lincoln strong, fast. Time for kaukau, everybody, they give kaukau. Päkë cookman over there. You can eat any kind. But sometime, you vomit too much. You know, the boat, it go like this...