Honolulu Record, August 19, 1948, vol. 1 no. 2, p. 8
looking backward
Contract Laborers Emancipated
Fifty years ago today, when the Republic of Hawaii was annexed to the United States as a territory, the Hawaiian sugar planters never imagined that the "docile" and “obedient” Japanese laborers would revolt against them to secure their freedom.
In 1899, one year after annexation, the sugar planters imported 26,103 Japanese contract laborers — the largest number of Japanese brought to the islands in any single year.
This was the planters' last minute effort to beat the United States contract labor law of 1885 which prohibited importation of contract laborers into the states and territories.
Organic Act Ends Servitude
Then came the Organic Act which put an end to penal contract labor in June 1900, two years before the contracts of the 26,103 Japanese expired. The Organic Act stated in part: "That all contracts made since August twelfth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, by which persons are held for service for a definite time, are hereby declared null and void and terminated, and no law shall be passed to enforce said contract any way; and it shall be the duty of the United States marshal to at once notify such persons so held of the termination of their contracts."
Black Snake Rule
To the surprise of plantation owners, the Japanese laborers everywhere demanded that their contracts be cancelled and returned to them.
They wanted freedom, and dignity which came with it. As contract laborers their bodies were practically the property of the sugar planters, to be abused and even whipped with black snake whips. In several places the Japanese went on strike to enforce their demand on the planters who were daily violating a US law in keeping them under servitude.
One of these places was Spreckelsville.
The Hawaiian Star reported the Spreckelsville strike of June 20, 1900, in the following manner: " . . .
On Tuesday evening, a United States census agent, Moses Kauhimahu, with a Japanese interpreter entered a camp of strikers, who had not worked for several days, for the purpose of enumerating them immediately upon asking the first Japanese his name, the Special Agent and his interpreter were accused of being agents of Manager Lowrie sent into the Camp to secure the names of the ringleaders of the strike, and were set upon by a number of Japanese.
Strikers Revolt
"The Special Agent took to his heels . . . but the interpreter was beaten and very roughly handled for a time, finally getting away with many bruises and injuries.
On Wednesday morning Sheriff Baldwin with a small posse of police went to this Spreckelsville camp to arrest the assaulters [sic].... Upon their arrival there, the Japanese at a signal gathered together, about two hundred of them and attacked the police."
Sheriff Baldwin then called upon Mr. Lowrie and his lunas, as citizens to assist the Government, which they did, making all together a force of about sixty men armed with black snakes. The assaulting force of Japanese armed with clubs and stones, which they freely used and threw, were met and most thoroughly black snaked back to their camp and to a show of submission.
"On a road not far from this camp along which the white men and police were expected to pass, several hundred Japanese from other camps had gathered, armed with clubs and stones, with the apparent intention of attacking them as they came along.
The Government force however decided as they had no quarrel with this gang to leave them unmolested, and so did not pass near them; consequently the Japanese have the idea that the white force were afraid of them.
It perhaps would have been better had the Government force gone in and dispersed this gang, with a good thrashing thrown in, as the sixty men well mounted, were able to have done, merely for the moral effect of the same."
The Maui Planters' Association subsequently cancelled all contracts, thus ending the strikes at most places.