Densho Digital Repository - Katsugo Miho Interview II (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-2-5)

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: So first year, when you worked in the fields, you weeded, ho hana.

KM: Ho hana, they called it.

MN: Second year, what did you do?

KM: What do we call... pulapula. Pulapula was to cut the top of the cane stalks. I think the stalks were used for planting. And we did the clearing of the ditches and what else? We didn't do planting. And a little bit of what we used to call hapai ko. You know what the terminology is, hapai ko? That was after the canes were cut, you had to haul these canes into the transporting baggage trains. You would have to pick it up from the fields and then you carried 'em, hapai. Ko means taking it over into this cane loading trucks, and that was a very, very hard, dirty, tedious job. But at age thirteen, fourteen, we were doing that kind of a job.

MN: How much did you get paid that year?

KM: I forgot what it was. That was by the hour. That was by the hour because you couldn't do it by... although, as I understand it, in the plantations, those jobs were done by families, certain families. Families would be allowed to have a family work on a train load and it was their family income. So if you had more kids to help you out in the plantations, this was the incentive to have more kids in the plantations.

MN: And since we're talking about your work as a teenager on the sugar plantation, you said something like, you know, everybody went, or the group went. I'm just wondering, why did you go plantation work?

KM: Because the young people of my Kahului town, it wasn't differentiating between camp or town, it was the younger people, all. And as a group we were not differentiating between camp, Kahului was Kahului, involving town kids as well as camp kids. Did not differentiate between the two.

MN: And you mentioned, like, your parents said, told you to go. What was expected of the children in the family when it came to bringing in money or helping with family support? What was expected of you folks?

KM: There were no expectations on my level or my family consideration because it was more of a support of a community effort. The plantation needed workers. The plantation families, in and of itself, was not enough. So the call was made out to get this cheap labor, which was because we were thirteen years old, I think, twelve or thirteen. Nowadays, you have the minimum working age, but at twelve or thirteen we started to go out to work because they needed the help to do the job. Because for the adults, it was too menial. For the adults it was, I guess, a waste of labor for their kind of work to do that basic job that needed to be done.