When I attended Konowaena High School 20 years ago, a summer trip to Honolulu to work in the pineapple canneries was a great adventure to students.
Every summer I worked in the garage department of Hawaiian Pineapple Co., Ltd., where a mechanic gave me a start. Without this job I could not have completed high school, for my secondary education depended on my summer earnings. My eldest sister and brother-in-law gave me free board and lodging and I was thus able to take home to Kona practically all my pay.
At the garage I used to observe Manuel Palmer, the superintendent, who frequently worked at the drawing board or went out in the yard to supervise the surveying of the land. I became interested in civil engineering and about that time I picked that as my life's occupation.
But at 17, when I came out of high school, my family was deep in debt to a coffee company and to friends. College education was beyond our means. My elder brother, mother and I discussed my future and we came to agreement that once our debts were paid, I could attend university. This took six years.
I was fortunate in having a childhood friend then who was a student in Honolulu. He sent me books and encouraged and inspired me to read widely. Through his efforts I acquired the reading habit which deepened my curiosity about our country and our people.
Reading opened new vistas for me. I read late into the night by lamplight after toiling all day in the coffee field. I read, for instance, the two volumes of The American Tragedy three times. At first it was incomprehensible to me that such poverty, as described by Theodore Dreiser, could be possible among white families. In Kona, the white families were big ranchers and landlords and their children went to a private school. We never had contact with them.
The biography of Lincoln was inspiring, of Grant, informative, and of Harding, amusing and disgusting because of graft and corruption in his administration.
My friend must have read all the books he sent me. The impression they made upon him undoubtedly was different from that made upon me, for he was a son of wealth in our community. His father was a former manager of the coffee company. Our world outlook was different, even at so young an age.
The Kona public library was three miles from my home. I went there occasionally and borrowed books at random. There was no one to give me direction and no one to discuss what I read. In looking back, I find that the shelves of the one-room library contained mostly light fiction by writers like Zane Grey.
The Impact of Depression
Made a Deep Impression On Me
During the summer of 1931, the year of my graduation, I returned to the cannery in spite of the opposition of my family. They said I would be jobless in the city and would be dependent on my sister and brother-in-law. The depression had hit the pineapple industry and at the cannery we heard that mature pineapples were being destroyed or left unharvested. It seemed inconceivable to me that such a huge fruit factory could be stilled by outside conditions. I soon became unemployed and learned what depression was like.
At that time I wanted to be on my own, therefore I lived in an. Aala district hotel with a friend. Every morning I dressed neatly and visited store after store and office after office in looking for a job. In the afternoon, I wore soiled clothing and applied for yard work in upper class residential areas. Sometimes I found a few hours of work. My friend did no better than I. Naturally, there were times when we ate only once a day.
Depression Brought Fear For My Security
On many occasions I became afraid that the depression might crush me both physically and mentally. To idle my time away when I was not looking for a job, I visited pool halls. Life in the slum district was pretty rough and rugged. Because of my background, particularly the strong influence of mother, I did not become assimilated into that life, although I lived in the midst of it. If it were not for this I could have become an anti-social character. My reaction to the conditions was not bitterness and strong protest, but trying to find a way out of the plight by discussion and reasoning.
Depression was our deepest concern. I wanted to know when and how it would end. My friend, who was older than I, had been in California. He had worked in produce markets and on farms as a migratory laborer. Jobs are limited in Hawaii, he said, and as we walked the streets for jobs fruitlessly, he decided to leave for the West Coast.
He told me of the numerous opportunities in California. Japanese alien farmers there cannot own land, therefore, they would want to go into partnership, even in name only, with Nisei. They would list the farm under the citizens' names, get around the discriminatory law and reward the Nisei partners.
Some laws are made for certain people. That is why the rich spend money on lawmakers, he explained.
My Ancestry Barred Me From Government Job
Because I was in no condition to go along with him to California, my friend urged me to apply for Federal government positions. One day I applied for a Pearl Harbor apprentice job which was posted in the post office building. A lady asked me whether I was a Chinese and I replied: "American." Then she asked, what was my ancestry. I answered: "Japanese." She said she was sorry: I insisted I was a citizen but that made no difference.
When I reported back to my friend, he said indignantly: "You mean to tell me we don't have a white man's chance, even with the government?"
He then explained to me about discrimination against Orientals in California and of the Hearst "Yellow Peril" propaganda. He blamed the anti-Oriental attitude on the West Coast for the treatment I had just received. But he still wanted to go to California. I could not understand why he should go there.
"I'd rather starve than get kicked around," I said to him.
"We're not the only ones. The Mexicans, Jews and others get kicked around, too," he said.
This experience brought home sharply to me the cruel lesson of discrimination. When I discussed this matter with older people, some of them said the strained U. S.-Japanese relationship was responsible. My friend did not agree and at the hotel I listened to arguments. He said that Negroes, Jews, Mexicans and Filipinos did not have an ancestral country that had strained relations with the U. S., but they were discriminated against.
That year in Honolulu was packed full of practical experiences for me. After my friend left for the Mainland, a Singer machine salesman took me into his home and gave me board and lodging.
I Was Ignorant of Trade Unionism
I was licked by unemployment and I said so in a letter to mother. Then I went to live with my sister and brother-in-law. Shortly after, I learned that Honolulu Dairymen's was employing extras in the ice cream plant. I went there early every morning. Persistence finally won out and I was employed.
Pay day a few weeks later, however, was a great disappointment for my wage rate was far less than what I understood it was going to be. I had put in overtime till 11 p.m. on many days and expected a sizeable pay envelope. Another new employe felt just as I did. We talked to the timekeeper who gave us his figures.
At that time, Dairymen's was not organized. It was years later that the workers formed a union. As for myself, I had no knowledge of trade unions. The only manner of protest we two could think of was to quit our jobs. We did this after 4 p. m. when the foreman and the executives had gone home for the day. Because we did not work that night there was a shortage of popsicles and milk nickels the following day.
When we went for the balance of our pay the following morning, the manager told us emphatically: "Don't ever show your faces around here again!"
The ice cream plant workers and delivery truck drivers seemed afraid to talk to us that morning. Such was the fear of the bosses in those days. I felt that even if it were a depression year, the big company should pay better and provide better working conditions.
New Deal Was Yet To Come
All of us were not familiar with the strength of organized labor. The New Deal was yet to come and with it the struggle, of labor to bring about the atmosphere conducive to unionization programs.
From Honolulu I went to Pahoa, Puna, to work in a general merchandise store owned by one of my sisters and her husband. Pahoa is part of the Olaa Plantation Co. Early in the morning, long before sunrise, I saw men go to work, some of them leading mules that woke up the whole village by the racket they made.
Plantation Slum Was Like Aala District
In Pahoa, I first saw the depressing plantation housing conditions. I remember delivering groceries to dark, bare and dilapidated shacks, particularly in the Filipino camps. I remember Filipino laborers buying more eggs and energy-giving food during the harvesting season. During hoe-hana season, they economized on food. The pay then was very small.
The housing and sanitation I observed was no better than the slum conditions of the Aala district. This was my first introduction to the plantation slums which I was to campaign against years later through the Honolulu RECORD.
Because my brother-in-law played politics, I was able to get WPA employment on road construction for about five hours a day. My brother-in-law was a Democrat and it took courage then to organize a precinct in a place like Pahoa. I remember that his Democratic Party activities irritated the Pahoa manager of the sugar company.
Politics Meant Bread and Butter To Me
When there was no WPA money for projects in the Pahoa area, I worked on the road as county maintenance man. Solomon Hauanio was our foreman and he did the employing. I believe he was a Democrat, too, and for that reason he gave me a job in deference to my brother-in-law.
Politics was entirely a new thing to me. Because it meant bread and butter to me, I became interested in them.