Field of Dreams: Women of Lanai Pineapple Plantations Organize 1947-51

The Dispatcher, March 1995
Edited by Harvey Schwartz

In observance of Women’s History Month, this issue will focus on three women who were pineapple workers on the Island of Lanai during the union’s early days in Hawaii. Organized just after World War II, Lanai’s workers suffered through a short industry-wide strike in 1947 that was lost, but they rose to courageously challenge and defeat Dole Company after a seven-month strike in 1951. The Lanai victory brought industry-wide gains for all of Hawaii’s pineapple workers. The interviews excerpted here reveal much about the Lanai women’s common life experiences and sense of community. They also suggest the range of contributions—as strike supporters, as volunteer organizers, as stewards—that Hawaii’s resourceful working women made to the ILWU’s success in the Islands.

LEONORA AGLIAM

‘We felt good because we got somebody to back us up.’

I was born in Lahaina, Maui, in 1926. My father picked pineapples. He and my mother were from the Philippines. When I came to Lanai I had just started school, so I grew up here. When I was going to school we did seasonal work; they’d send us home at 2 o’clock. We’d put on our work clothes, go to the labor yard and go out to the field and pick. We used to trim the top of the plant. It was so cheap; they paid 50 cents a day. But it was the only way we could get some extra money. This was about 1938. I was 12.

After the 11th grade I quit school because my father and mother were separated. I was the oldest still at home. My father was the only one working. He told me to quit school; I did not want to—I only had one more year to go. But I had to go to work out in the fields.

I got married in 1943 and stayed home; I couldn’t go to work because I was having my children. But I began to work in the fields in 1950. Then came the 1951 strike and I still couldn’t work.

The ’51strike was hard at the beginning. Then we got used to it. We couldn’t buy anything we liked. I explained to my children that we just had to eat what we get.

During the strike we had meetings night and day. You got to listen to what people had to say. To me it was good; I enjoyed it. The women helped with whatever needed help. We stayed the whole day. We took turns on phone calls, and we had some ladies in the strikers’ kitchen helping cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. While waiting for meal time they had volley ball. My children thought it was a party.

After the 1951strike I began to work in the field regularly. The union needed a steward. I didn’t want to, but because my husband [long-term Lanai activist Catalino “Pete” Agliam] was a good friend of Pedro de la Cruz, our BA and the ’51 strike leader, pushed me into it. As steward we’d go to leadership meetings; they always stressed safety. We’d go back to the gang and tell them they were supposed to keep covered, especially with goggles. And as a steward I asked all the members of my gang to come to union meetings; a lot of them talked dialect but I told them to come anyway to understand better instead of just hearing about things from other people.

Picking, there a lot of bending. If you’re not used to it, your back hurts. When the pineapple plant is low, your back is sore. There is a right way to bend, and every so often you’d stand and stretch. You have to get used to doing it like us. We had no time for exercises to help our backs; when you’re working out in the fields, that your exercise.

For years I stuck to picking. To me it was fun. Our gang was all women. We were mostly Filipino—we had a few Japanese and Hawaiians. The ladies would talk and laugh and joke. We’d laugh the whole day so we don’t get too tired. Sometimes we’d talk about our husbands, our children and about what goes on around Lanai.

I changed jobs in 1981. I got this job as irrigation assistant from my seniority. They posted it, I signed up, and I got picked. I didn’t miss being on a gang. I think I had enough of picking pineapples all my years.

I still remember when the union got organized. We felt good because we got somebody to back us up. When we got problems out in the fields we cannot trust the bosses, we just gotta do what they say. So when the union was organized everybody felt better.

JOAQUINA OHASHI

‘Every girl the union recruited represented a nationality.’

I got my last name when I married George Ohashi, a unionist who was Japanese-Portuguese. But my people were from the Philippines. I came to Lanai from Maui in 1941, when my mother left my father. I was 11 years old. My step­father came to Lanai in 1945; he was a pineapple field laborer. After he got paralyzed—he had a stroke right after the 1951 strike—my mother started to work in the pineapple fields herself.

I was 12 when I started to work in the fields. You belong to a gang; the gang is under a foreman. You joke, you play around, you rib each other. You’re yelling at each other, you’re laughing. You’re not by your own self. You’re competing with somebody; that’s what makes it. There was always something to keep you busy.

I liked high school in Lanai. It was small; we only had 41 in the class. The big shots—field bosses—sent their kids out to school; they had money. And some of the managers and other people who lived on Snob Hill sent their kids out too. We had separate crowds. We didn’t mingle with the kids from Snob Hill. The supervisors’ kids went around by themselves.

When I was 16 I helped the union reorganize after they lost the 1947 strike. I was a contest queen; I was popular. I was with this Filipino group. They said, “Hey, Joaquina, come on, help us, get some folks to join the union.” Every girl the union recruited represented a nationality; I represented Filipinos, and there was a girl who represented the Japanese. We went house to house and asked people if they wanted to sign up to become union members. I didn’t know anything about unions; I just did it because I wanted to help. And my mother told me, “You gotta go!”

I graduated from high school in 1950. There were some poor kids who had to quit school. They had to go to work. I was one of the fortunate ones that graduated. I then wanted to become a licensed practical nurse, but 1had to stay back. I couldn’t afford school and my mother couldn’t put me to school anymore because of the ’51 strike. I had to work. During the seven months of the strike I worked in a restaurant in Honolulu, got big tips, and sent home money to pay for house rent and food. I had brothers and sisters still going to school. It was real hard. After the strike I returned to Lanai to work as a theater usher and in the pineapple fields.

ELIZABETH POKIPULA

‘It was like one big happy family. We worked and we helped each other.’

I was born in 1922. My father was Hawaiian. He worked as a mule man in the fields, cultivating with a mule. After they no longer used mules be picked in the fields. My husband was also Hawaiian; he was a stevedore and then he operated a high lift.

When we went to school, they never had that child labor act. Kids worked pineapple during vacation. When I was 12 I went out there to work. The men took off the crowns. We’d count and stack it up. They used that for planting. They had slips; we’d stack up the slips. By the time I got through with my pile the others were all gone they were so used to the work. I was too slow. So I only did it for two days.  Inever worked in the fields again as a child.

I never liked the work out in the fields. But then times come when you get too many children and you need money so you have to go out there and work. I had five children. I started working after the 1951 strike because of the kids.

In 1951 they needed more workers because for seven months no one had worked, so grass was covering the pineapple. I laid all the grass down, hoeing it they called it, but there was too much grass to hoe. Sometimes we made only two lines a day. We crawled on our knees and laid the plants down. After we cleaned up, the fruits started coming up. Then we started picking. Eventually I became the steward for the harvesting department.

My gang was all women in the early 1950s. Later they mixed it up men and women. In our gang, everyone would get together; it was just like one big happy family. In those day we used to push the old ladies; we worked and we helped each other. We’d pick theirs if we were stronger than them. She’d pick hers, but we’d help her pick.