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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Eves and Welcome to This Day

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Speaker 1: in History Class, a show that uncovers history one day

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Speaker 1: at a time. Today is September nine, nineteen. The day

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Speaker 1: was September nine. Strikes organized by Filipinos sugar workers in Kawaii, Hawaii,

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Speaker 1: turned deadly. The Hunt of Hapai Massacre, as it became known,

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Speaker 1: resulted in the death of sixteen Filipinos and four police

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Speaker 1: officers and the injury of many other people. Sugar plantations

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Speaker 1: were a big business in Hawaii in the eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: In early nineteen hundreds, the industry and Hawaii's economy and

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Speaker 1: politics were controlled by corporations known as the Big Five,

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Speaker 1: Castle and Cook, the O. H. Davies, Alexander and Baldwin,

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Speaker 1: Sea Brewer, and am FAC. Immigrants and Hawaiian laborers remained

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Speaker 1: at the bottom of the class hierarchy, though they produced

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Speaker 1: most of the island's wealth. The Hawaii Sugar Planters Association

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Speaker 1: or h sp A, subjected workers to discrimination and segregation.

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Speaker 1: They put Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Filipino workers in

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Speaker 1: different camps, and a person's race often determined what assignments

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Speaker 1: and wages they received. By the nineteen twenties, workers began

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Speaker 1: to strike against the discrimination and poor conditions on plantations. Japanese, Chinese,

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Speaker 1: and Korean laborers left plantations to find better work in

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Speaker 1: bigger cities. The h s p A made up for

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Speaker 1: the losses by encouraging more Filipino people to move to

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Speaker 1: Hawaii to work on the plantations. More than one hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand Filipinos migrated to Hawaii between nineteen ten and nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty two. That caused a drastic shift in the ethnic

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Speaker 1: makeup of the plantation workers spread throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

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Speaker 1: Most of the Filipinos were from the Ilocos Provinces and

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Speaker 1: the Vasayan Islands. The h sp A intentionally chose people

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Speaker 1: who were uneducated and could not read or write, as

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Speaker 1: it figured they would be more compliant than people who

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Speaker 1: had received even just some schooling. But the Filipino workers

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Speaker 1: had grueling jobs. The pay was poor, and discrimination was

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Speaker 1: rampant on the plantations. Their work days were ten to

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Speaker 1: twelve hours. They lived in barracks where they would have

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Speaker 1: to share a small room with several men, and at

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Speaker 1: the low wages they did make largely went back to

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Speaker 1: company stores where they bought their living necessities. They often

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Speaker 1: lived in isolation with no temples, language schools, or other

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Speaker 1: community centers. To get a ticket back home to the

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Speaker 1: Philippines from their employers, they had to work seven hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty days over three consecutive years. On top of that,

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Speaker 1: Filipinos were discriminated against because of their nationality. But despite

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Speaker 1: the h s p a's best efforts to only hire

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Speaker 1: people who would not rebel, in nineteen twenty, Japanese and

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Speaker 1: Filipino workers demanded better conditions, including an increase in pay

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Speaker 1: from seventy seven cents to one dollar and twenty five

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Speaker 1: cents per day. The h s p A rejected their demands,

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Speaker 1: and labor leader Pablo Manlopit, along with Japanese labor leaders,

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Speaker 1: formed the Higher Wage Movement. A strike of Japanese and

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Speaker 1: Filipino laborers proceeded and lasted several months. The h s

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Speaker 1: p A evicted workers from their housing, a dispute divided

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Speaker 1: Japanese leaders in Manolapit, and the h sp A spread propaganda.

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Speaker 1: None of the strikers demands were met, but Filipino laborers

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Speaker 1: continued to petition for better pay and the right to

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Speaker 1: collective bargaining. Still, sugar plantation owners refused to acknowledge their demands.

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Speaker 1: In April of nineteen four, MAMLOPIT called for Filipino workers

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Speaker 1: to go on strike. Around twelve thousand workers from plantations

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Speaker 1: on Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kawaii went on strike. To

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Speaker 1: attempt to put an end to the strikes, the h

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Speaker 1: s p A recruited Ilocano laborers from the Philippines as

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Speaker 1: strike breakers, pinning Ilocanos against the science, and the h

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Speaker 1: s p A used spies to infiltrate strike meetings and rallies.

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Speaker 1: On September eight, strikers at a camp in Hana Pepe

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Speaker 1: close to the Maca Welly Sugar plantation, took two ilocanos hostage.

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Speaker 1: Those who had joined the strikes from that plantation were

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Speaker 1: from the Visayan regions, while Ilocos had continued working. The

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Speaker 1: next day, police demanded the strikers released the captured Ilocanos.

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Speaker 1: They did so, but violence broke out, resulting in the

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Speaker 1: death of twenty people. Strikers armed themselves with guns, knives, rocks,

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Speaker 1: and clubs and went up against the police. Governor Farrington

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Speaker 1: sent in machine gun squads and rifle companies from the

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Speaker 1: National Guard. One and one strikers were arrested, Seventy six

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Speaker 1: went to trial and sixty were given four year jail sentences.

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Speaker 1: Malopit was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Years later, a

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Speaker 1: Filipino woman said that witnesses had been promised money and

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Speaker 1: a ticket to the Philippines to testify against Malapit. The

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Speaker 1: strike continued for three more months. The hsp A continued

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Speaker 1: to exploit workers, though laborers did make some gains in

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Speaker 1: working conditions, and other successful strikes were waged by plantation

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Speaker 1: workers into the mid nineteen hundreds. Sugar plantations have since

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Speaker 1: declined in Hawaii as corporations looked to other countries where

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Speaker 1: they could pay workers low wages. I'm Eve Jeff Coote

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. And if you haven't gotten your

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Speaker 1: fill of history after listening to today's episode, you can

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Speaker 1: I h C podcast. We'll be back with more history tomorrow.

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