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MN: How about relations of, say, Japanese...

KM: Within the nonwhite?

MN: Uh-huh. Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino?

KM: In Kahului, the bulk of the camp people was AJAs. And then you had, immediately behind my house was the Filipino camp. And alongside the Filipino camp was a small group of... there, as far as I was concerned, there were, within the haole category, but they happened to be Portuguese and Spanish, but they were not considered the white color category, so they lived within the camp. There was a small, small group of these people alongside the Filipino camp, and the bulk of it was the AJA camp.

WN: And the stevedores were mostly AJA?

KM: Mostly AJA, a sprinkling of Filipinos. The Filipino immigration came in right after World War II. Before that, it was a very small working force. In fact, even in the plantations, the Filipinos were a minority of the plantation workers. To the extent that when I was growing up and working in the cane fields in my, I think the last three years that I worked in the cane fields, the last year that I worked the cane fields, I had to cut cane. Cut cane meaning you go in there and harvest the cane that was burnt. This was really an adult job, but that was the year of the Filipino strike, Filipino group that struck, and the non-Filipino group continued working. And the high school level kids were all, even from Kahului, we were gathered to work in the cane fields, and we would work on the job that normally was done by the Filipinos and the regular Japanese. But because there was a shortage, the fourteen year olds and fifteen year olds were all inducted into working in the cane fields. That when we were working, we had armed guards around us to protect us, just in case any kind of happenings would occur while we were working.

WN: So this is '37, yeah?

KM: No, I think this was... yeah, 1937, '38, Puunene, '37 and '38.

MN: You know, at that age, were you aware that you were being a strikebreaker?

KM: Absolutely not. [Laughs] We were wondering what was going on. Although, I would say this, the only place where these Filipino workers would gather for their meetings was on one of our playgrounds in Kahului. They used to have the, because were not plantation, but I remember that they were allowed to gather in one of our baseball fields right across from the Japanese school. They had a couple of rallies in Kahului that I observed while being a strikebreaker.

[Interruption]

MN: Well, getting back to that experience, when you young boys were recruited to work in the fields during the strike, was that voluntary or how was that arranged?

KM: Well, prior to that, for two years, I had been working in the cane fields. The very beginning was just cutting weeds. At that time I recall if I earned one dollar for that day, it was a big deal. So we were cutting weeds and cutting weeds which determined, your pay was determined by the number of feet that you worked, getting rid of the weeds. They would measure, you know, this and there you worked, and then you would be paid accordingly. One dollar was more or less the goal for the day, basically pay for the lunch, you know, lunch is probably about five-thirty, made it at home, but we brought ours, home lunch. You get up at two, three o'clock in the morning, then get to work. Then by two o'clock you were finished and you were home. If you made one dollar out of this, what we call contract, it was contract by the individual worker. And some of my classmates were harder workers than I was. I was more or less going out there for a fling, because everybody else was going, and I had to, my parents said, "You got to go, too."

WN: When you say contractor, you were paid by the plantation or you were paid by some individual?

KM: No, by the plantation. Contract means you weren't being paid by the hour. Contract was depending on piecemeal... instead of piecemeal, making so many items, it was how many yards of weeds that you cleaned.

WN: What kind of worker were you?

KM: I enjoyed my working because this was the summertime, and we had more fun playing than actually working.

WN: Did you actually weed it or did you just cover the weeds with dirt?

KM: No, no, we actually did cut, we actually did cut. It was quite obvious that the luna can always tell whether you did your job or not. But the girls were always working with us. It was not only boys, it was boys and girls. And I think some of the girls worked harder than we did. Like everything else, the girls worked a little bit harder, my recollection. [Laughs] They were more sincere and more earnest than we were.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.