Defeat and Victory: Lanai Pineapple Workers 1947-51

The Dispatcher, June 1995
Edited by HARVEY SCHWARTZ

KENJI ‘SLEEPY’ OMURA

‘Building the strike machinery’

I had experience building the strike machinery for the 1946 sugar strike on the Big Island so I was sent to Lanai to help coordinate the pineapple strike in 1947. Lanai became a special deal because it was like a company “owning” that community, and we had to lick the problem and make sure democracy came to the island. I think these guys became so militant because of the closeness of the community on Lanai. They lived socially as one close-knit group, not only at work, but in every way else. Other plantations were close, but not like that; maybe this was because other plantations were more scattered into different camps.

At first Lanai’s secondary leaders could not accept that the industry-wide ’47 strike was lost. They said, “Lanai, we’re gonna stay out, we’re gonna beat those punks.” We explained that it was nothing to be ashamed about that a strike is lost. “We lost,” I argued, “not because of you guys on Lanai, but because certain parts of our pineapple union were weak.” We said it was better to consolidate and fight another day. And that day was 1951.

MOLAKI OSHIRO

‘Making the union stronger’’

Guys like Hashimoto and Shiro Hokama started organizing Lanai from the very beginning, just after the war. They went house to house and signed up people. Hashimoto had a lot of guts; you didn’t just go out and try to organize a union on these islands, where everything was controlled by the company. Pedro de la Cruz was in charge of a section of field. For a Filipino being a field boss was all right. But he started working with the guys on the union and became the leader. There was another guy, an organizer from outside named Kealoha. He was the one who talked to me.

The first strike—1947—we lost. But we won something, if not in wages, then in getting the guys together and making the union much stronger. There was one big incident that made us feel unified. We heard a barge was coming in to pick up the pineapple stored at the harbor in Lanai. We set up a picket line. The harbor foreman, who’d been a crane operator before, was on the crane. There were two haole boys, young supervisors, hooking up the pineapples .The whole union gang ran there and started throwing punches. The company men all jumped into the water and swam out to the boat. The pineapple didn’t get moved.

There was an anti-union guy there taking pictures with a movie camera. I was in the film. They charged the guy who were in action; I got charged. They just took our names and released us because the union guys were there to get us out.

During the 1951 strike I was in charge of the soup kitchen. There were a lot of families on the border line. They wanted the union but they were scared. That kind of family we’d try to convince by giving them a little more food. The strike went on for half a year, so we felt that if we help them now, when we go back to work these guys are going to be strong union guys. I was right, because when we came back they became good union members.

During the ’51 strike my wife was a nurse. She had a continuous job at the hospital. She contributed half her pay to the union. I was lucky; she understood what I was doing.

GEORGE OHASHI

‘Lucky under Pedro’

I started with Dole in 1945. I was a field picker for four years, then went to loading pineapple boxes. I was lucky because I came under Peter de la Cruz’s field section. When he was the field boss he’d give you a better price than the other sections. Maybe another field boss would pay a dollar a ton. Pedro de la Cruz would give you $1.25 a ton. You were assigned to sections; you could not control who your field boss was.

Pedro was a kindhearted guy. He’d look at people as people, not as dogs. The other bosses would hide on the cliffs and spy on you. But de la Cruz would come right along around you, not hide on a hill and look down on you.

The people were working hard and not earning enough. That got de la Cruz mad. He wanted to raise the price; the company didn’t. That’s why he quit the company when the union came. Then the company wanted to hire him back to stop him from getting into the union. They would pay him better wages, but he didn’t accept. He was really a good man who was with the working people.

SHIRO HOKAMA

‘This union is all of us’

The beautiful thing I’ll always remember about the ‘47 strike is this: We had some guys involved in beating up two scab truck drivers; if we weren’t able to raise $7000 bail money these guys would be shipped to Maui for the courts. We got the local to send us a check for $7000.The bank was closed; they wouldn’t open to cash the check. The cops wouldn’t accept checks unless its cashier checks. So, Pete de la Cruz had to call a session, pass the hat to try to raise the money, but he couldn’t raise enough. There was one Japanese old man; he never believed in banks! He had $4000 cash in his house. He came up with the four grand we needed.

Pete de la Cruz made the membership know that this old Japanese man brought up this money. That did a lot to make the Filipinos realize that this union is all of us. This started getting a closer working relationship between the Filipinos and the Japanese. “We” were part of “them” now.

In 1947 we knew we got smashed. Still, okay, the union is our only means. And the management knew we were willing to take them on if we had to.

In ’51 there was company by company negotiations. That is one of the reasons Lanai struck. I was the finance chairman; before the strike international officers Lou Goldblatt and Bob Robertson and Hawaii leader Jack Hall talked to me. They said, “You guys can’t take them on. If you strike you are going to need over $20,000 a month. You guys can’t afford that.” So at the membership meeting I’m the only one telling the guys, “Hey, we’re in no position to go on strike.” I’m defending the international and the local. When the vote came up a bare majority decided to strike.

Pete de la Cruz was for the ’51 strike; he had a better understanding of what his people wanted, or what he thought was needed for this island. When the vote was taken I’d lost. So, okay, we go on strike. I said “God damn it, we gotta win this strike now.” Before the decision is made, you say your piece; but once a decision is made, you do whatever you can to make it work. Otherwise we’d all end up dead.

BILL ALBORO

‘Go for broke’

When the ’51 strike came, I was working in the fields, picking. I was a steward. After one month I was made circulation manager, putting out leaflets and mailing cards asking for help. I had guys writing, typing, stenciling, and mimeographing—I was just the manager. There were committees for hunting, fishing, and bumming. Everybody had something to do. De la Cruz organized all this. Everybody had his share of jobs; if people didn’t do a job, they lost their food allowance for the weekend.

In 1951 we felt we were going to gain or going to lose everything. People said, “Go for broke.” It was also only us on strike, while all the rest of Hawaii’s pineapple employees were working. I felt kind of bad about that, but I figured if we could gain something out of this it would be better for everybody.

PEDRO CASTILLO

‘We got what we wanted’

After the 1947 strike we stopped calling the field boss sir or mister but the relations between the company and the working people were still bad. You’d tell the bosses something, they didn’t respect you. If you had a problem, they didn’t listen. Before the ’51 strike I was driving a tractor and breathing all this dust. They gave us a respirator that was worse than without one, because it was not tight; but if you complained, they didn’t listen. If you told them a better way to work, they wouldn’t recognize what you were telling them. They didn’t recognize you as a human being. This was a main issue for the 1951 strike.

During the ’51 strike, we set up a bumming committee to go to the different islands, to the different units of the union to ask for food and money. We had no strike fund in 1951, but we never starved, because the other units gave us support.

After the 1951 strike, because we got what we wanted, we were happy. The bosses treated us better. They started to mingle with us at social affairs. They sett1ed some grievances. They began to treat us more as equals. They saw that doing things their way didn’t work. They learned that they had to listen to us.

The Lanai ’51strike is really the history of the state of Hawaii because the other pineapple companies were working and only Lanai was on strike. When we got the Lanai settlement the other islands benefited. Whatever we negotiated they also got.