In my youth I generally turned to construction projects when I was looking for a job. Thus, when I came to Honolulu in 1935 I became a construction laborer.
I remember shoveling mud for weeks during a rainy season. I was a bricklayer's helper for a while. I drove trucks.
Construction work did not provide steady employment. Therefore, whenever I was out of a job I spent my days at the public library. There, in a stumbling manner, I went from the works of one author to another, plodding through their writings with the help of a dictionary.
When I worked I was too exhausted to read books but never too tired to read the Hawaii Hochi, particularly its editorials. I am sure a great many of my generation were influenced by this forerunner of the present Hawaii Herald. It gave us ideas. We thought over issues it discussed. The Hochi was courageous and it championed the common people, and as its publisher, Fred Makino, told me once, it was a paper" that fought for the "underdogs."
In those days the Hochi raised its voice sharply, criticized the Big Five policies, the corrupt politicians and stepped on the toes of the privileged.
Because Makino had led the successful fight against the outlawing of the foreign language schools, I had a great admiration for him. This was more so because my father participated actively in this struggle and we kept up with developments as the case was fought right up to the United States Supreme Court.
The fight Makino carried on wiped out the illusion from the minds of many that the government is always right. To the older generation of Japanese who came here as immigrants, practically worshipping the emperor as God and ruler, Makino's constant campaigns and crusades for the people as against the practices and decisions of constituted authority, were inspiring education in democratic processes. The aliens followed closely, for instance, his defense of Pablo Manlapit when the Filipino lawyer was being deported for his labor activities here.
The Hochi was a fighting and crusading paper and through its fearless policy it inspired courage among its readers. The fact that it carried no Big Five or big business advertising was proof to its readers that it was not controlled by powerful interests. It gave the side that the other big employer-controlled dailies did not print. On the other hand, it forced the dailies to publish items that they would have left out. Progressively, I came to this realization. I can see now that the Hochi gradually opened my eyes by throwing light on events which would have passed me by unnoticed, without even raising my curiosity.
Our Understanding of Unions Came from Reading the Dailies
Since construction work was irregular, the family with which I lived obtained a job for me through a friend at Theo. H. Davies & Co., Ltd. I became a truck helper and made frequent trips to the docks. At that time my alien Japanese friends advised me to stay on with Davies, "even as a janitor," they said. There is security in a big firm and opportunities for promotion, I was told. This view was widely held until recently when five clerks were laid off, one with 31 years of service. The fact that all were of Japanese ancestry caused bitterness and resentment among some employes. Oldtimers I knew at Davies have now organized themselves into a union, after all these years, for protection.
When I worked at Davies about 15 years ago, union was an unpopular subject. Most of us were ignorant about this subject. Whatever we read about unions was picked up in the dailies and looking back, I can see that the articles were unsympathetic, if not hostile to the trade union movement.
Many Waited for a Few Jobs
When I started working at Davies there was a shipping strike (1936) on the West Coast. The waterfront became a beehive of activity once the strike was over and I heard longshoremen say there were plenty of jobs on the docks. I left my Davies employment to work as a longshoreman.
The regular longshoremen belonged to gangs and casual employes like me were picked up only when steady gang members did not show up for work. A timekeeper stood on a box at the corner of Queen and Awa Sts. and filled the vacancies in gangs as foremen went to him with men they had picked from among 200-300 who waited for jobs.
A Hawaiian foreman picked me practically every day. since one of his men was sick. The piers were then crowded with ships and we worked from seven in the morning to eleven at night. Almost every day I worked in the ship's hold and just like old-timers, I carried a towel with me to wipe away perspiration. We wrung our towels and hung them around our necks and soon they would drip with perspiration from our heads and faces again,
Took Stevedoring As An Adventure
The work was hard but to me it was extremely exciting. I liked the sound of the grinding winches and the warning call of the operators as the cargo came swinging into the hold. I remember my great satisfaction when a foreman, for whom I had never worked before, picked me on the second day for "machine sugar," which was loading sacks of sugar brought to the ship on a conveyor from the warehouse. "Machine sugar" was considered hard work and dangerous. This was the first time that I had done it, and I was able to perform my work because I had handled sacked material in Kona as a truck driver and coffee mill worker.
Some of us who felt that stevedoring was a great adventure, took pride in being picked up to fill vacancies in "number one" and "star gangs." These were high-production gangs which were assigned more skilled work such as "heavy lift" and cleaner cargoes, while some other gangs handled sacks of cement and such other material. This preferential treatment of gangs was a speedup technique of the company but a great many of us didn't see it that way. We competed with each other, between gangs, and exhausted ourselves.
My reaction to stevedoring was that of a rugged individualist. Every morning we casual employes waited to be picked up. We wished more regular gang members would be exhausted and stay home so that we would all be hired. We crowded around the foremen, made ourselves conspicuous and every man was for himself. It was dog-eat-dog competition for a day's work and this shaped our behavior.
Could Not See Eye To Eye With Oldtimers
While working as a stevedore I wrote a series of articles on the plight of coffee farmers in Kona. I did this when I read in the papers that the legislature was being asked to provide assistance to the distressed farmers. The Star-Bulletin published the series, which told of the poverty, the bootlegging of coffee, overcharge by the company stores and so on.
Following this initial writing venture, I did a series on stevedoring. Longshoring to me then was a romantic undertaking—hard labor fit only for a "man." This attitude ingenuously flavored the articles. I felt too that the shipping company treated the stevedores comparatively well, a view which I soon learned oldtlmers on the waterfront did not share.
I could not see eye to eye with them. For six years I had worked at some of the toughest jobs at small pay. On the waterfront a day's pay, including overtime, was more than half what Davies had paid me for a whole week.
Problems of the Farmers and Workers Are Similar
At this time I came to know a brilliant young Chinese American who was associated with the YMCA. One day he told me that my articles on Kona coffee farmers were splendid. But he saw no reason why I should glorify stevedore work and praise the company. He asked me if it wasn't the same thing— the coffee farmers being squeezed by the company and the stevedores overworked by the shipping companies?
"But stevedores are well paid," I said to him.
He said I had written that we worked 14 hours a day. That's almost two days' work, he said. I had written that we worked 36 hours without sleep, sweating on the docks and in the holds of ships. He remarked that it was no wonder that I received) the pay I mentioned.
When I said that I was man enough to take it, he was not pleased. He asked me if the old stevedores, in their 50s and 60s would be able to take the grind day after day. We intensified the speedup. They became exhausted. And we waited to take their places, actually like vultures picking a man's bones.
Competition To Exploit Laborers
Discussions with this friend made me see that he was right. The coffee farmers, the plantation workers at Pahoa and the longshoremen were all struggling for a living. Unorganized, they were pitted one against the other. Those of us who were seeking steady employment competed with the regular stevedores and in this way we stepped up the competition for their jobs from the outside.
New vistas were opened to me through associations like this. I began to have new ideas. On many Sundays I rested from work to attend breakfast gatherings at the YMCA and there listened to young men of my age discussing local and world problems. All these were entirely new experiences to me.
Kamahoahoa's Answers Gave Me Satisfaction
One Sunday Frederick Kamahoahoa was our guest. He was a pioneer of the longshoremen's union here and we asked him questions after he told us about the fledging union. I had read a few leaflets on the waterfront but I had not paid much attention to the union movement. On the job, we worked long hours and we were tired. Close to midnight we rushed home in order to recuperate ourselves for the following day. We were thus kept from getting acquainted with unionism. We knew that some of the longshoremen were union members, but membership was more or less a secret, for it was tacitly understood that this might cause an employe to lose his job.
On that Sunday I asked Fred Kamahoahoa numerous questions, and most of them were not sympathetic. He was patient as he explained what a union could da for employes. We had a long session and Kamahoahoa's answers gave me great satisfaction. It was a great surprise to me that while union activities went on in our midst, many of us had been oblivious to them.
YMCA Sessions Were a Turning Point
On another Sunday, Arnold Wills of the NLRB, spoke to a larger group and we had a discussion period. These sessions were valuable in giving me an understanding of trade unionism. On the job, I began to take greater interest in the union and as I talked to longshoremen like Benjamin Kaito or Sam Kohunui, I discovered that they were union members. Both of them were in my gang.
A lesson I learned from this period is this: That union consciousness does not come spontaneously. People learn from personal experience and from each other, some faster and others slower. Many learn from others who champion a good cause like unionism which at the particular moment may be under the sharpest attack from the dominant ruling class.
Another lesson I learned is that there is need of patience to explain to people in order to raise their understanding of the problems confronting them. It was a young man close to the YMCA who helped me to appreciate trade unions, although he was not a worker and I was one. I am ever grateful for the interest he took in me. He helped me acquire, generally, a liberal outlook.
Thus today, when I hear that certain individuals do not appreciate unions and what their organizations are doing for them, I first raise the question—how well do the people understand their unions and the role they should play to strengthen them and improve their general welfare.
The YMCA sessions were a turning point for me, for there I began to think differently of unions. The basic YMCA approach of working together helped me to rub off the rugged individualism. I began to take greater interest in union and not long after that I was asked to join the organization.
At that time, membership in the longshore union was considered a conspiracy against the shipping company and I remember wearing the union button inside my cap. Sometimes I pinned it inside my pocket and showed it to longshoremen I wanted to recruit into the union.
All this comes back to me. I am now charged by the government of alleged conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. A little over a decade ago it was a conspiracy in the eyes of employers for laborers to belong to a union and union-minded men were blacklisted and denied employment by the conspiracy of employers. Today, militant unions are still the main targets of employers but it is not "dangerous" to discuss union problems. Today, people are persecuted for criticizing the government's war policy, which profits big industry, for advocating peace, and the extension of constitutional rights as they should be, to all.