AH QUON McELRATH

Historian, Dr. Franklin Odo tells of Hideo “Major” Okada and how baseball helped advance union organizing.

Olaa Plantation’s Yasu Arakaki shared his story in a 1995 interview about “what’s in a name, baseball and union organizing”. Yasu was a brilliant organizer and headed up the Hawaii Island baseball league and the ILWU effort to organize the island!

Ben Achetta recalls being recruited on the boat on his way to Hawaiʻi.

Alfredo Villanueva remembers picketing during the strike and the recruitment of Filipino workers.

The Union scored an important victory when their supporters in the Seamen's union succeeded while en route to Hawaiʻi, in signing up Filipino workers in the ILWU. They marched off the ship with union cards in hand!

Hawaiʻi’s plantation system used racial manipulation to divide workers and maintain control. Workers were segregated into racial camps and a divide and conquer strategy was employed to keep them from working together to improve their lives. The ILWU had to overcome these divisions as labor organizers sought the creation of one big industrial union, with worker democracy and equality as guiding principles. Sugar worker, Tony Bise explains how immigrant groups were segregated by plantation owners.

Former plantation store worker and union activist, Mitsue “Butch” Thompson, explains how racial unity was a key to ILWU organizing that led to a major victory in the 1946 sugar strike. This 79 day strike marked the beginning of the end of “Big 5” hegemony and the oligarchy’s dominance of Hawaiʻi’s working class!

Mamoru Yamasaki on the 1949 Dock Strike fight for wage parity for Hawaii Longshoremen who were paid less than their counterparts on the West Coast

Hawaiʻi plantation workers were subject to despotic rule by plantation owners and bosses. Yasu Arakaki recalls how the plantation manager attempted to pressure him to break off his engagement to marry.

Plantation workers were often subjected to a system of bribery in order to win concessions from bosses. Yasu Arakaki tells a story of a particularly painful episode for his family.

ILWU social worker Ah Quon McElrath was instrumental in helping to organize and preparing workers for a strike. Her friend Claire Shimabukro reccounts how AQ taught her the craft of labor organizing.

Olaa Plantation worker, Yasu Arakaki, possessed organizational skills, and helped design the structure for the 1946 Sugar Strike. He also became involved in organizing the political campaign that was necessary to compliment union economic bargaining.

Seiko “Shirley” Shiroma’s parents moved to Kahuku when he was 7 years old. He grew up on the plantation and as a kid began working in the fields. He experienced harsh and uncaring treatment by the bosses and became a leader in the ILWU movement to organize workers.

International Longshore & Warehouse Union, Local 142 (ILWU) stevedores went on strike in 1949 to win wage parity with mainland dock workers. Stevedore Enoka Kaohi was from the island of Kauaʻi and explains how longshore workers were able to feed their families during the six month strike.

On September 1, 1946 26,000 Hawaiʻi sugar workers and their families (76,000 in all) began a 79 day strike. The strike soup kitchen played an important role in maintaining unity.

Eighty-two years ago, more than 200 men and women, representing 7 unions, marched to Pier 2 on the Hilo, Hawai’i waterfront to demonstrate solidarity with members of the Inland Boatman’s Union and Metal Trades Council workers who were on strike. They assembled to protest the docking of the scab ship Waialeale that was arriving from Honolulu. Although they assembled peacefully, they were met with tear gas, bayonets and gunfire!

Former ILWU President, Eddie Lapa, recalls his introduction to the labor movement when he was a worker on the Waialua Sugar Plantation in 1945. If caught organizing for the union, workers would be fired! Eddie devised a unique method for reaching out to fellow workers, one that insured privacy!

Yasu Arakaki recalls conditions at the Olaa Plantation on Hawaiʻi Island when he started work in the 1930’s. Later he would become one of the principle organizers of the ILWU’s historic 1946 sugar plantation strike.

Early attempts at union organizing in Hawai’i were based on racial or ethnic union membership, so that employers were able to pit groups against each other. The predominant unions were Japanese and Filipino. In the 1930s, the ILWU began organizing all workers, regardless of race, ethnicity, or other divisive categories, into one big industrial union! The slogan, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All” became a successful rallying cry. World War II and the draconian occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese Army, posed a challenge to the unity between Japanese and Filipino workers in Hawaiʻi. Alfredo Villanueva told us about his role in defusing this potential conflict at the time of the 1946 Sugar Strike.

Joe Kahee was a longshoreman in Hilo in the 1930s. He told us that being known as a friend of the labor movement or an organizer, could get you arrested, with no recourse, before the protection of modern labor laws.

Seiko “Shirley” Shiroma’s joined the ILWU at the Kahuku Sugar Plantation partly because of the humiliation he and others suffered during the martial law period in Hawaiʻi. Martial law was declared in the Territory on December 7, 1941, within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Arrests and incarceration of Japanese Americans swiftly followed. In February of 1942, pursuant to Executive order 9066, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in the continental U.S. were arrested, removed from their homes and businesses, and incarcerated. In Hawaiʻi, by the end of martial law in 1944, over 2,000 people had been incarcerated. The POW and Internment Camp, Honouliuli, held about 400 Japanese Americans, but also thousands of POWS, from the Pacific, Italy and elsewhere. Martial law in Hawaiʻi meant curtailment of rights and liberties for all residents, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship. The right of Habeas Corpus was suspended, and Military tribunals replaced the court system. Freedom of assembly and the right to organize was curtailed. Failure to show up for employment was a criminal offense. Some Hawaiʻi historians claim that martial law was supported by the majority of Hawaiʻi residents, but for over 60,000 plantation laborers and their families, it meant a new low in indentured servitude.