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Community and Revolt on the Hawaiian Plantation System(Written by Cassie Wallace for Judith Schachter's class Hawai'i: America's Pacific Island State during Spring 2009.) Ladd and Company of Honolulu ushered in "a new era in the history of Hawaii" when it sent William Hooper to the islands to establish a sugar cane plantation (Takaki 3). Soon, thousands of workers from all over the world were immigrating to work on the rapidly expanding plantations (17). Employing a paternalistic system, the ruling planters governed many aspects of their laborers' lives. For example, housing and work assignments were ethnically segregated, ostensibly to render the lives of the workers more comfortable. However, although the plantation system divided workers by ethnicity in order to keep productivity high and interethnic conflict low, the burden of unfair conditions actually fostered a sense of community amongst the workers which, in turn, instigated interethnic, collaborative strikes. In other words, the plantation system inadvertently created the conditions for its own subversion. In an effort to make them more content and productive, the plantation system sought to fulfill all of the workers' needs. Although they knew that their plantations were capitalist enterprises, many planters also viewed themselves as guardians of the welfare of their workers in a social community, directing many areas of the workers lives under the claim that they were making them happy and comfortable (63). By assigning land for the workers to cultivate their own crops, offering bonuses, and creating recreational programs, they hoped to keep the workers content. While this sort of paternalism may have been somewhat rooted in benevolence, it was essentially designed to obtain a good day's work from the laborers and to weaken their power to organize and strike (65-66). Despite these attempts at alleviating worker dissatisfaction, workers of all ethnicities engaged in ethnically-segregated passive resistance as both a means to alleviate the stress of their occupation and to resist plantation management. Work on the plantation was difficult and highly regimented. After a week of hoe hana, many of the workers felt as if they had been "kicked and beaten all over," and hole hole work was even more demanding and dangerous (59). This encouraged the workers to become "creative and devious" in seeking extra compensation and avoiding work, making it extremely difficult for supervisors to monitor their efficiency (Takaki 11; 15). Workers of different ethnicities were paid different wages for the same tasks, reinforcing divisions within the work force (77). This differentiation gave each ethnic group motivation for separate resistance to plantation authority. In response, the planters began to employ other ethnicities in their search for a more obedient workforce, thereby creating an ethnically diverse island. They first looked to China, and next recruited Portuguese and Norwegians, then Japanese, Puerto Ricans, some Italians, Negroes, Spaniards, Germans and Russians, Koreans, and Filipinos in their determination to mix their labor and find better sources of work (24; 25; 26; 55). "In their worldwide search for labor, planters viewed workers as commodities," but were aware of the workers ethnicities, "systematically" developing a diverse plantation working class "in order to create divisions among their laborers and therefore reinforce management control" (23; 24). Divided by ethnicity, it is indubitable that laborers maintained a strong sense of nationalism based on their country of origin. As planters recruited groups of laborers from different countries, they constructed new camps for them. The formation of these camps reflected the pattern of labor recruitment and subsequent immigration. The laborers did prefer camps of their own so that they could practice the customs, traditions, and languages familiar to them from their respective homelands (93). Despite the maintenance of ethnic identity, it is equally clear that over time the workers began to identify themselves as part of a new, multiethnic working class in the plantation community. Language played an important role in fashioning this new, wider identity. While the different groups felt strongly about keeping their native language alive, they required a system of inter-ethnic communication in order to effectively work and live together. "Gradually there developed a plantation dialect called 'pidgin English'" that enabled the workers "to communicate with each other and helped to create a new island identity for them" (118-119). "On the plantations, pidgin English began to give its users a working class as well as a Hawaiian or "local" identity, which transcended their particular ethnic identity" (119). This interethnic identity fostered interethnic resistance to the plantation system. The 1900 strikes involved mainly Japanese workers, but two of the strikes involved interethnic cooperation (149). The Waipahu Strike of 1906 showed the importance of collective labor action, and the 1920 Strike was the "first significant interethnic strike, bringing together Japanese and Filipino laborers and advancing the labor struggle beyond "blood unionism," the organizing of workers into unions on the basis of ethnicity" (151; 164). "Aware of the need for interethnic unity and working class independence from paternalistic management, the strikers of 1920 provided new directions for the labor movement in Hawaii" (164). While the "revolt against plantation paternalism" failed, the strikers "had participated in the first important interethnic working class struggle in Hawaii" (174). Filipinos found large numbers of Spaniards, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese laborers striking with them. "Men and women of different ethnicities, remembering how they had lived and labored together on the plantations, now fought together to reach the same goal" (174). Ultimately, this interethnic resistance was formalized in the formation of a new labor union. With a new sense of cooperation and unity that went beyond ethnic boundaries, the leaders of the Japanese Federation of Labor questioned blood unionism and suggested consolidating the separate Japanese and Filipino labor unions. The Federation insisted that Japanese workers must affiliate with other ethnicities, "for as long as all of them were laborers they should mutually cooperate in safeguarding their standards of living". On April 23, 1920 the Japanese Federation of Labor decided to become an interracial union called the Hawaii Laborers' Association, "a name which gave the union a regional rather than an ethnic identity and which emphasized the class thrust of the new organization" (174). Planters attempted to assuage their workers by meeting all of their needs under a system of plantation paternalism. Laborers, as a means to resist the control being exerted by plantation management and ease the strain of plantation work, participated in passive resistance and strikes that were separately enacted by different ethnicities. To find more docile workers, planters began to search the globe for workers, bringing multiple ethnicities to the island and creating a ethnically diverse plantation community. Removed from their homes, laborers maintained a sense of national and ethnic identity, but began to construct a separate working class identity that transcended ethnic boundaries. Over time, the separate ethnic struggles for better treatment became collaborate interethnic strikes and revolts. The planters' attempts to keep interethnic revolts low, and as a result, production high, did not outweigh the difficult and unfair lifestyle that the workers had to endure. Despite initial ethnic divisions, a new plantation community based on the shared experiences of difficult and unfair conditions developed, and the members of this community collaborated to resist the plantation and ultimately form a new multi-ethnic labor union. Works Cited Takaki, Ron. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
