Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Hawaii's Plantation Culture

HOST: At Hawaii’s Plantation Village on Oahu, there is a replica of a plantation village. Plantation workers lived in camps next to the sugar and pineapple fields. The plantations segregated them – there was Chinese camp, Filipino camp, Puerto Rican camp and so on. The Camps had a hierarchy—wealthy owners at the top, followed by the Lunas or Managers who were usually European. Then at the bottom…the workers—mostly from Asia. Conditions were often squalid until families took steps to improve their own lives.

“Plantation Culture” takes a look at what life was like growing up and living on the plantations. And how this life shaped the multicultural society that is now Hawaii… This piece was produced by Dmae Roberts.

RONALD TAKAKI: In Hawaii you had a diversity of workers from all over the world. China, then Japan, the Philippines, Korea. On other plantations you don’t have that kind of diversity. So that makes Hawaii unique…

ESPY GARCIA: (GIVING TOUR) So as we enter we have the first area, which is the Chinese. This is a Chinese kitchen, a cookhouse…

WILLIAM BOYLAN: The Chinese came, the Japanese came, the Filipinos came and the Koreans came. Because the Hawaiian population, like so many indigenous people, when they were introduced to foreign diseases, foreign microbes, they began dying off at a very rapid rate. Estimates differ between 250,000 to 800,000 Hawaiians were here. By1900 when Hawaii was annexed to the United States, it was down to 39,000. When you need an industrial labor force, that means you had to import labor.

ESPY GARCIA: Chinese who were the first immigrants were paid three dollars a month, five year contract. We had people who came from the South keep asking, did they come as slaves? We said no. They had to sign a contract.

MOSES PATAKI: We were surrounded by plantation camp: Portuguese camp, Puerto Rican camp, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino. And all of my friends were all plantation.

ESPY GARCIA: We’re now in the society building. They had a single man’s dormitory right up here. Now if someone came here and wanted to stay overnight but had no place to stay, that is what was afforded him.

WILLIAM BOYLAN: All plantation villages had barracks, because the guys came as bachelors. So the Filipino camp first camp I ever stayed in was at Papakeo camp and we stayed in the bachelor’s house, which was nothing but single rooms for bachelors, or rooms that they could share. But there were no, they didn’t have families. And so it was a barracks, basically.

ESPY GARCIA: The men came as single, the only women they could marry were the Hawaiians. And this was our greatest mixture of races in Hawaii. When you see someone looking Hawaiian but has a Chinese last name, he would automatically Hawaiian-Chinese. You see someone with a different feature with a differnet last name, that’s the blending that started. So we don’t have too many pure Hawaiians anymore.

MOSES PATAKI: We had Hawaiian camp also and all of my friends’ family lived in this Hawaiian camp.

RONALD TAKAKI: The plantation setup was like a pyramid. You had the plantation master’s home on the top of the mountain and then you had the Portuguese Lunas and their cabins, and then you had the Japanese workers and below the Japanese workers you had the Filipino camps. Hawaii’s diversity didn’t just happen. It was diversity by design. The planters wanted to bring in workers from all over the world in order to pit them against each other, especially workers from Asia.

ESPY GARCIA: When the Portuguese were hired from Portugal, Madeira, Azores Islands, they knew they were going to stay. Because they were fairer they had better jobs like the supervisory capacity and they could pick up English. And so they had supervisory jobs, they had better housing it seemed like, so they fit always on the top area of the immigrants who came in.

BARBARA KAWAKAMI: In those days the camps were segregated and we lived in Japanese Camp. They called Camp One Japanese Camp, next to the Filipino Camp and they had Okinawan Camp. Korean Camp, which had only about three Korean families living up on the hill – very segregated.

RONALD TAKAKI: The separation of the camps also reinforced this separation of workers from different nations. And the pitting of these workers against each other.

ESPY GARCIA: On Kauai we lived in a plantation camp of 11 houses.

RONALD TAKAKI: At first the camps were clusters of shabby buildings, shabby cabins, but then they began to give their homes a feeling of the old country. The Japanese for example would build furos and they would put bonsais aground their cabins. And they began to see Hawaii as their home, a permanent settlement.

ESPY GARCIA: So we’re coming now into the community furo and pipe in the hot water at five o’clock, so by the time they came at six then they would be able to take a bath…this is the women’s section. When we were little we would swim underneath and get a scolding by the men and the little boys would come this side and they get scolding by…(fades out)

SOUND OF WASHING CLOTHES

BARBARA KAWAKAMI: Many Japanese women and widows and even Japanese girls, as soon as they graduated eighth grade, they were sent to work at haole homes as a domestic. But for my mother in her pregnant condition the only thing she could think of was while taking care of her own children, she took in laundry from the Filipino bachelors who lived right on the corner. So of course the money was so you know cheap. For one person the laundry charging about 2.50 per month you know? To do all the dirty laundry.

ESPY GARCIA: The bundle that you see there is the clothes of the single men that have been finished. We children would take it to the respective single men because she took in laundry and everything was done. She would iron on that army blanket on the floor. That is almost a replica of my mama’s iron.

DOMINGO LOS BANOS [SINGS]: Honolulu pretty girl, stop. Too much good-looking, number one sweet. Naughty eyes make, oh oh, you bet I know… FADES UNDER

DOMINGO LOS BANOS: The Filipinos, the single men, were very, very frugal. They work hard, five days a week, but Saturday comes they put on their best silk shirt, they put on the pomade. And they will go to the dime-a-dance. And the dime-a-dance girls were blonds and brunettes, etc and I’d pay ten cents to dance with them.

DOMINGO LOS BANOS [SINGS]: Me number one a-good looking…

DOMINGO LOS BANOS: And the other thing that caused us to become multi-ethnic. Just imagine when a Japanese girl is washing the clothes of a Filipino man and they have to deliver the clothes. So you touch hands, you touch hearts and you fall in love and pretty soon you forget ethnicity. And this is part of the things that made Hawaii so unique and so united. We’re all mixed.

DOMINGO LOS BANOS [SINGS]: To much aloha, ha, ha, ha, ha, away.

ESPY GARCIA: The Filipinos during the Christmas season we make paro. It would denote the Star of David and this is why every house always had. And they’re multi-colored. Some are very ornate, some are very simple, but always with bamboo that’s glued to the paper and makes this beautiful star, paro. And this is usually hung outside the door during Christmas. Sometimes they would put lights inside of it…

RONALD TAKAKI: Because of the crisscrossing of paths of workers from all around the world, you find them living together, you also find the sharing of cultures. They shared their holidays, like Rizal day…

ESPY GARCIA: Jose Rizal was one of the martyrs of the Philippines.

RONALD TAKAKI: Chinese New Year, the Obon festival…

AMY SAKAI: The obon is a season where they honor the people who have passed on

RONALD TAKAKI: They even had a Christmas tree there with the German immigrants working in Hawaii and I think that made Hawaii a uniquely multicultural society.

FESTIVAL MUSIC UNDER

ESPY GARCIA: Every festival no matter which ethnicity, food is always the central focal point.

DOMINGO LOS BANOS: And Filipinos if you have a party you’re going to have food, you’re going to have music, so the food is laid out, you got roast pig. The Japanese will come and they’ll bring their sukiyaki…

AMY SAKAI: That’s why people here eat all of the different ethnic foods. You grow up with them.

ESPY GARCIA: Our bento or lunch can when you used to go to school. You open it, main dish.

SOUND OF WALKING THROUGH CANE FIELDS

BARBARA KAWAKAMI: My mother would prepare lunch, bento for my brother and we all hiked from Camp One. From there, barefooted, we didn’t even own shoes, all barefooted we walked up the pipeline, we followed the pipeline five miles up to Camp 19 all surrounded by sugarcane. And every Saturday we did that.

ESPY GARCIA: Bottom half was always rice. Top half was the main dish. And this is what they shared out in the fields while they worked together. And that is how we started to learn eating different ethnic groups’ food.

LOS BANOS BROTHERS [SINGING]: You come my house, you eat bagao, that’s the Filipino style. You come my house, you eat daikon, that’s the Japanese style. You come my house, you eat Kim Chee, that’s the Korean style. You come my house, you eat baccalau, that’s the Portuguese style. FADES UNDER

GAYLORD KUBOTA: And that’s where I think our plate lunch came from. With the wonderful tradition we have here of mixed plate, where you can have a Japanese and Chinese and Korean entrees together with macaroni and rice and tacua and kim chee. It’s a pretty amazing tradition we have here in Hawaii.

SOUND: CHILDREN TALKING

MOSESN PATAKI: We went to school together so we grew up together and I was always going to my friends’ house which was in a plantation camp.

SOUND OF IRRIGATION DITCH

ESPY GARCIA: We always had irrigation ditch where they had the water go to the different parts of the sugar fields. The ditches were our swimming pool. I mean it was right in our front yard from the time we were little. Here’s the sailboat, we’d put it in the ditch. He would be on one end, one bank, I would be on the other bank. My boat would go down, his boat would go down.

SOUND OF BALL GAME

DOMINGO LOS BANOS: Another thing that brought us together was sports. Waipauhu had Filipino ball teams, Japanese ball teams. But I was a good athlete. In the morning we would always play games Portuguese against the Japanese. So where do I go? They all want me. If I want to eat noodles, I go Japanese side. If I want to ride horse, I go Portuguese side. They had the horses. So that’s how we learned to adapt.

RONALD TAKAKI: In the camps these workers were reinventing themselves. Ethnicity is not something that is static. You’re not just Japanese or just Filipino. In the interaction with other Asian Americans you become Asian American. And I think that’s what was happening to Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Chinese workers on the plantations of Hawaii.

SOUND OF SLACK KEY GUITAR FADES UP

BARBARA KAWAKAMI: For us, because there were no TVs or radios during our growing up period. From 1929, 30s, every evening after we finish our chores and after dinner we would gather on the front veranda, plantations always had this spacious front veranda. And we would all sit around and the neighborhood kids would all gather at the front veranda and even in the dust we kept on talking stories. That was a favorite time. We would talk about the day’s happening. My brother got up and worked in the fields too so there were a lot of stories to talk about…

MUSIC FADES UP

HOST: Special thanks to the Hawaii’s Plantation Village for our look at plantation life.

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