Excerpts from RONALD TAKAKI, Strangers from a Different Shore, 132-136, (1989 Little Brown)

Paralleling the migration of Chinese to California was the movement of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino laborers to Hawaii, an American economic colony that became a territory of the United States in 1900. Over 300,000 Asians entered the islands between 1850 and 1920. Brought here as "cheap labor," they filled the requisitions itemizing the needs of the plantations. Their labor enabled the planters to transform sugar production into Hawaii's leading industry. "It is apparent," declared the Hawaiian Gazette excitedly in 1877, "that Sugar is destined most emphatically to be "King.'" But to be "King" the sugar industry required the constant importation of workers whose increasing numbers led to the ethnic diversification of society in the islands. For example, in 1853, Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians represented 97 percent of the population of 73,137 inhabitants, while Caucasians constituted only 2 percent and Chinese only half a percent. Seventy years later, Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians made up only 16.3 percent of the population, while Caucasians represented 7.7 percent, Chinese 9.2 percent, Japanese 42.7 percent, Portuguese 10.6 percent, Puerto Ricans 2.2 percent, Koreans 1.9 percent, and Filipinos 8.2 percent.

Hawaii was ethnically very different from the mainland. In 1920, Asians totaled 62 percent of the island population, compared to only 3.5 percent of the California population and only 0.17 percent of the continental population. Constituting a majority of the population in Hawaii, Asians were able to choose a different course than their mainland brethren. Powered by "necessity" yet buoyed by "extravagance," they responded in their own unique ways to the world of plantation Hawaii. . . .

Asian immigrants were not prepared for their experiences as plantation workers in Hawaii. They had come from societies where they labored to provide for their families within a context of traditions and established rules and obligations. They had greater control over their time and activities, working with family members and people they knew. "In Japan," a plantation laborer said, "we could say, 'It's okay to take the day off today,' since it was our own work. We were free to do what we wanted. We didn't have that freedom on the plantation. We had to work ten hours every day." The Filipino tao, or peasant farmer, followed the rhythm of the day, the weather, and the seasons in the Philippines. He worked in the fields with his wife and children, driving the carabao before him and urging his family workers to keep pace with him. Hana-hana-working on the plantation in Hawaii-was profoundly different.

Though laborers still awoke early as they did in the old country, they were now aroused by the loud screams of a plantation siren at five in the morning. . . .

After the 5 :00 A.M. plantation whistle had blown, the lunas (foremen) and company policemen strode through the camps. "Get up, get up," they shouted as they knocked on the doors of the cottages and the barracks. "Hana-hana, hana hana, work, work." A Korean remembered the morning her mother failed to hear the work whistle and overslept: "We were all asleep-my brother and his wife, my older sister, and myself. Suddenly the door swung open, and a big burly luna burst in, screaming and cursing, "Get up, get to work." The luna ran around the room, ripping off the covers, not caring whether my family was dressed or not." . . .

"All the workers on a plantation in all their tongues and kindreds, 'rolled out' sometime in the early morn, before the break of day," reported a visitor. One by one and two by two, laborers appeared from "the shadows, like a brigade of ghosts." From an outlying camp, they came on a train, "car after car of silent figures," their cigarettes glowing in the darkness. In front of the mill they lined up, shouldering their hoes. As the sun rose, its rays striking the tall mill stack, "quietly the word was passed from somewhere in the dimness. Suddenly and silently the gang started for its work, dividing themselves with one accord to the four quarters of the compass, each heading toward his daily task." The workers were grouped by the foremen into gangs of twenty to thirty workers and were marched or transported by wagons and trains to the fields. Each gang was watched by a luna, who was "almost always a white man." The ethnicity of the gangs varied. Some of them were composed of one nationality, while others were mixed. One luna said he had workers of all races in his gang, including Hawaiians, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Koreans.

There were gangs of women workers, too, for women were part of the plantation work force-about 7 percent of all workers in 1894 and 14 percent in 1920. Most of the women workers-over 80 percent of them-were Japanese. Women were concentrated in field operations, such as hoeing, stripping leaves, and harvesting. My grandmother Katsu Okawa was a cane cutter on the Hana Plantation, and my aunt Yukino Takaki was an hapaiko worker, or cane loader, on the Puunene Plantation. Though women were given many of the same work assignments as men, they were paid less than their male counterparts. Japanese-female fields hands, for example, received an average wage of only fifty-five cents per day in 1"9'15, compared to the seventy-eight cents. Japanese-male field hands received.

Women also worked in the camps: they washed laundry, cooked, and sewed clothes. "I made custom shirts with hand-bound button holes for 25 cents," recalled a Korean woman. "My mother and sister-in-law took in laundry. They scrubbed, ironed and mended shirts for a nickel a piece. It was pitiful! Their knuckles became swollen and raw from using the harsh yellow soap." On the Hawi Plantation, my grandmother Katsu Okawa operated a boarding house where she fed her husband and eight children as well as fifteen men every day. . . .

The most regimented work was in the fields. "We worked like machines," a laborer complained. "For 200 of us workers, there were seven or eight lunas and above them was a field boss on a horse. We were watched constantly." A Japanese woman, interviewed years later at the age of ninety-one, said: "We had to work in the canefields, cutting cane, being afraid, not knowing the language. When any haole [white] or Portuguese luna came, we got frightened and thought we had to work harder or get fired." . . .

One of the most tedious and backbreaking tasks was hoeing weeds. Laborers had to "hoe hoe hoe. . . for four hours in a straight line and non talking," said a worker. "Hoe every weed along the way to your three rows. Hoe-chop chop chop, one chop for one small weed, two for all big ones." They had to keep their bodies bent over. They wanted to stand up and stretch, unknotting twisted bodies and feeling the freedom of arched backs. The laborers cursed the lunas, “talking stink” about the driving pace of the work: “It burns us up to have an ignorant luna stand around and holler and swear. . .He knows and we know he couldn’t work for ten minutes at that pace.” . .

As they worked, laborers wore bangos hanging on chains around their necks---small brass disks with their identification numbers stamped on them. In the old country, they had names, and their names told them who they were, connecting them to family and community; in Hawaii, they were given numbers. The workers resented this new impersonal identity. . . “Every worker was called by number, never by name.”

Planters claimed they treated their workers with “consideration and humanity,” seeking “in every way possible to advance their comfort…” But their purpose was not entirely humanitarian. Planters understood clearly that it was “good business” to have their laborers “properly fed”: it “paid” to have a contented lot of laborers,” for they would then be able to extract a “good day’s work” from them.

Plantation paternalism also served to maintain a racial and class hierarchy. White plantation managers and foremn supervised Asians, constituting 70 to 85 % of the work force. They saw their role as “parental” and described Koreans as “childlike” and Filipinos as “more or less like children” “by nature.”. . Planters explained . . they had spread “Caucasian civilization” to Hawaii, where they as members of “a stronger race” had to supervise and care for Asian and Hawaiian laborers. “Where there is a drop of the Anglo-Saxon blood, it is sure to rule.”