A Common Struggle

In January and February 1920, Japanese and Filipino sugar plantation workers implemented a major strike on the island of Oahu. Approximately 8,000 workers, over three quarters of the labor force, walked off the job.

Sugar cane harvest has always been back-breaking work. Imported immigrant workers served in indentured servitude, planting, hoeing and carrying the cane during waking hours, without breaks and for inadequate wages. At that time, most workers lived on the plantations where they worked, which meant that their employers were also their landlords. "Living expenses" were siphoned off the top of earnings, and it was not uncommon for workers to be charged more for "room and board" than they were paid for their labor.

To control the workforce, "the Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Association adopted a "divide-and -rule" policy whereby workers of different ethnicity were pitted against each other for the purpose of keeping wages down. In cases of strikes, one ethnic group would be used as scab labor to break the strike of another ethnic group. Living arrangements, job assignments, and wages were also based on ethnicity. Caucasians were higher paid, considered skilled workers, and assigned supervisory positions. The lowest paid white worker was the plantation police who earned $140 a month. In contrast, the Japanese and the Filipinos were assigned the backbreaking work in the fields. They worked at least 10 hours a day, six days a week, 27 days a month for 90 cents a day or $20/month." (Source.)

Sugar cane production was not just segregated by race. "In 1910, one-third of all employed Japanese women worked in the sugar fields. Assignment to a "women's field gang" immediately upon arrival was typical. Women on the sugar plantations earned 50¢ for a 10-hour work day and were expected to work six days a week. A full month's pay of $13 was based on 26 days of work and equalled 66% of Japanese men's wages. Women typically weeded the fields, irrigated, stripped the cane of dry leaves or cut seed cane." (Source.) Women were also used as scabs during labor disputes.

But in 1920 something amazing happened.

Japanese and Filipino workers walked off the job together. Men and women. Young and old. Many having to use translators to communicate with one another.

They struck for the most amazing and wonderful things: equal wages, improved working conditions, and paid maternity leave. In 1920. The same year that women on the mainland were granted the constitutional right to vote.

1920.

This was happening on the island of Oahu, where workers did not have any protections afforded them by the US government, because Hawaii was still a territory.

The strike lasted for six months, with the workers winning most of their demands, including an end to the tiered-wage system.

I don't know about the rest of you, but it is very easy for me to become discouraged over the current conditions of our government. So. much. is. wrong.

However...

Hope.
Dies.
Last.

And for me, at least, I find tremendous strength in stories like this one. Stories in which people with everything to lose risked everything they had to demand change for themselves and their families. We who have never had to go to bed with empty stomachs, who live our wasteful lives in soundbites, have much to learn. There is a reason why labor history is not taught in schools anymore. It is because that history is replete with examples of situations in which packs of people came together to redress their grievances.

We have to find a way to remember where we've come from so that we can use what we already know about solidarity to take back our nation.