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| Hundreds of Filipino workers were arrested after the Hanapepe Massacre. |
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was originally published on the 95th anniversary of the Hanapepe Massacre. It has been updated with new findings.
One hundred years ago on Sept. 9, 1924 in Hawaii, the bloodiest labor confrontation known as the Hanapepe Massacre claimed the lives of 20 people, 16 of whom were Filipino striking farm workers.
You wouldn't know it now. The Hanapepe River still slowly flows through the sleepy little town on its way to the ocean. If you blink you might miss the turnoff to Hanapepe on the island of Kauai. Most tourists zip past Hanapepe Town, the site of a labor riot 95 years ago when 16 striking Filipino sugar workers and four lawmen were killed.
No one is left alive who survived the deadly events e of Sept. 9, 1924 that became known as the Hanapepe Massacre.
The sugar workers were on strike for better working conditions and an increase in pay, from $1 a day to $2 a day.
Filipinos were the last group of immigrant laborers to arrive to the Islands after the Chinese and the Japanese. Plantation owners pitted the ethnic groups against each other to thwart any labor organizing.
No one is left alive who survived the deadly events e of Sept. 9, 1924 that became known as the Hanapepe Massacre.
The sugar workers were on strike for better working conditions and an increase in pay, from $1 a day to $2 a day.
Filipinos were the last group of immigrant laborers to arrive to the Islands after the Chinese and the Japanese. Plantation owners pitted the ethnic groups against each other to thwart any labor organizing.
The victims of the massacre were among the 37,019 Filipinos who immigrated to Hawaii between 1907 and 1924.
Tiffany Hill writes in a magazine article in the Honolulu Advertiser:
The Sheriff and his deputies went to the strike HQ to seek the released of the Ilocanos. The lawmen were armed with guns and the strikers also had a few guns and the machetes they used to cut the sugar cane. No one knows who made the first aggressive move but in minutes 16 strikers were shot dead by sharpshooters who were hiding in the hill above the scene. The strikers fatally injured four of the law enforcement task force, which included deputized civilians.
After the violent confrontation, at the Sheriff's request, Hawaii National Guard were called in to maintain order between the strikers and plantation owners.
Though there are no speeches from dignitaries and proclamations from politicians today, the sugar worker strikes launched a history of labor organizing that should be taught in our classrooms. Asian Americans were not bystanders in the making of America.
Tiffany Hill writes in a magazine article in the Honolulu Advertiser:
"Filipinos working on sugar plantations were given the worst housing and the lowest paying jobs. On Kauai, Filipino laborers worked and lived on the Koloa, Makaweli, Kekaha, Lihue and McBryde Sugar Co. plantations. The majority of the workers were young men, single and uneducated. They came from three regions of the Philippines: Visayans arrived first, followed by Ilocanos and, in much smaller numbers, Tagalogs, each group speaking a different language. In addition, there were significantly fewer Filipino women than men. “A lack of women in the Filipino community meant many fewer families, a totally different view of life and really no sense of community,” says Andy Bushnell, a retired Kauai Community College history professor who gives talks on the Hanapēpē Massacre."The sugar strike covered the plantation workers on Oahu, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai but it did not involve the majority of the workers. Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese workers didn't support the Filipino-led labor organizing effort. The strikers in Hanapepe were from the Visayan islands of the Philippines. Plantation owners used the Ilocanos to try and break the strike. Two Ilocanos were viewed as scabs by the Visayans and were forcibly detained by the strikers.
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The Sheriff and his deputies went to the strike HQ to seek the released of the Ilocanos. The lawmen were armed with guns and the strikers also had a few guns and the machetes they used to cut the sugar cane. No one knows who made the first aggressive move but in minutes 16 strikers were shot dead by sharpshooters who were hiding in the hill above the scene. The strikers fatally injured four of the law enforcement task force, which included deputized civilians.
After the violent confrontation, at the Sheriff's request, Hawaii National Guard were called in to maintain order between the strikers and plantation owners.
Though there are no speeches from dignitaries and proclamations from politicians today, the sugar worker strikes launched a history of labor organizing that should be taught in our classrooms. Asian Americans were not bystanders in the making of America.
The sugarcane workers who died that day 100 years ago were buried in an unmarked trench. Until October, 2019, the location of the mass grave was unknown. Using new technology, researchers using underground radar determined that there were 12 "anomalies" buried in the mass grave in the Hanapepe Filipino Cementary. A simple concrete marker nearby simply says: "Born 1886, Died Sept 9, 1924."
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| This marker is over a mass grave believed to the burial site of 12 Filipino strikers. |
The "anomalies" are believed to be the bodies of 12 slain strikers, according to members of Hawaii chapter of the FANHS The burial sites of the other four victims still remain unknown.
Out of respect for the interred, the mass grave has not been dug up but their is an effort to raise funds for a permanent memorial to the strikers killed in the bloodiest confrontation in Hawaii's labor history.
After the Hanapepe incident, plantation owners stayed away from the Visayas province and concentrated their recruitment efforts in the Ilocos provinces, which explains why the largest Filipino subgroup in Hawaii today is Ilocano.
Because of the hazy details of the massacre, amazing as it may seem to us today, there was no hue and cry from the public and the violence and resulting mass arrests stunted any momentum the strike had generated.
Hundreds of the sugar strikers were arrested. The Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters Association gave $500 to the families of each of the sheriffs killed, while the slain workers’ families had to split $75. Many of the strikers were deported to the Philippines.
It wasn't until 1937 that a labor union combining all of the ethnic groups was successful in gaining any concessions from Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association. The white elite families that ruled over Hawaii since 1893 when they overthrew the islands' Queen Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha retaliated by moving their sugar and pineapple operations to other countries in Asia and Latin America.
The point is: Asian workers were never the uncomplaining, compliant, quiet, subservient stereotype that society has imposed on all Asian Americans. They were far from being the "model minority." From the sugar workers, the Alaskeros working on the boats and canneries of Alaska to the farmworkers on the West Coast to the nurses, teachers, hotel workers and domestic workers of today, Asian Americans fought -- and are still fighting -- for their rights, justice and equality.
Hundreds of the sugar strikers were arrested. The Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters Association gave $500 to the families of each of the sheriffs killed, while the slain workers’ families had to split $75. Many of the strikers were deported to the Philippines.
It wasn't until 1937 that a labor union combining all of the ethnic groups was successful in gaining any concessions from Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association. The white elite families that ruled over Hawaii since 1893 when they overthrew the islands' Queen Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha retaliated by moving their sugar and pineapple operations to other countries in Asia and Latin America.
The point is: Asian workers were never the uncomplaining, compliant, quiet, subservient stereotype that society has imposed on all Asian Americans. They were far from being the "model minority." From the sugar workers, the Alaskeros working on the boats and canneries of Alaska to the farmworkers on the West Coast to the nurses, teachers, hotel workers and domestic workers of today, Asian Americans fought -- and are still fighting -- for their rights, justice and equality.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.
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