HAWAII. The unique political economy of the Hawaiian Islands has meant a quite different political spectrum from the rest of the United States throughout most of Hawaiian history. From 1850 to the end of World War II, Hawaii was ruled by a very small oligarchy that controlled both the political system and the plantation economy. Entirely dependent upon imported Asian labor, the planters established a firm grip on the political system—a grip that was only dislodged by the climactic attack on Pearl Harbor. The stark contrast between the opulence of the small ruling class and the destitution of the Asian workers made for a greater degree of class consciousness in Hawaii. The plantation camps and villages further promoted solidarity among the workers, who slowly learned to eliminate ethnic and racial animosities. Resistance to the political system was perforce confined to individual plantations until 1900.
The US annexation of Hawaii in 1900 brought federal law to Hawaii. Workers promptly took advantage of the freedom from indenture contracts and formed strikes organized around issues and goals. Convinced by strikes in 1909 and 1920 that a radicalism similar to that perceived on the mainland was coming to Hawaii, authorities introduced a wave of repressive legislation to eliminate plantation labor unions. The fear of radicalism was spurred by the development of the Japanese-language press. Of the fourteen such newspapers, three were distinctly Marxist in orientation. A handful of American Federation of Labor craft unions struggled for survival in Honolulu. The Socialist Party that had put in a brief appearance in 1910–1912 disappeared from the scene in World War I. The military, always prominent in Hawaii, viewed the large non-Caucasian population as potentially radical. Military intelligence monitored labor activity closely.
The Great Depression began the effective alteration of the oligarchical structure in Hawaii. The final cutting off of imported labor supplies in 1934, New Deal subsidy legislation, and the growing militancy of the American labor movement were the principal agents in this process. Radical sailors organized a weekly newspaper, the Voice of Labor, in 1937, which reflected the militancy of the maritime labor community of the Pacific Coast. The Communist Party in New York sent Bill Bailey to Hawaii in 1937 to organize a chapter. Recruiting members on the waterfront and in Honolulu, Bailey also served as a writer for the labor paper. He and seaman Jack Hall (1916–1972) were sent to Maui by the newly opened office of the Congress of Industrial Organizations to assist the Filipinos in the last ethnic strike in Hawaii. For the first time the planters sat down and negotiated with the workers.
Hall began to organize plantation workers for United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America on Kauai and to bring workers’ political pressure to bear on the oligarchs with the Kauai Progressive League. The strong Marxist message appealed to the group-conscious Japanese and Filipino workers. There were enough citizens in the plantation work force to replace Kauai’s two aristocratic senators with labor representatives in 1938 and 1940.
The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) responded to local workers and led a sweeping organization of agricultural and maritime workers. Between 1944 and 1946, all but one of the sugar plantations were organized. Frank Thompson, veteran of the Industrial Workers of the World and the California Agricultural Industrial Workers Union, led the field organizing, while Jack Hall handled the very effective political organizing. Union-endorsed candidates were elected in 1945 in sufficient numbers to secure passage of a “little” Wagner Act, which closed the loopholes of the national act and permitted the effective organization of field-workers along with the sugar-mill workers.
All of this activity came to a focus in the first industrywide sugar strike of 1946. The ILWU effectively shut down the industry and defied the companies to use the old technique of eviction from plantation housing. The seventy-nine-day strike won union recognition and significant changes in the work situation. This victory gave the union the strength and base to conduct a 1949 strike in which longshoremen effectively curtailed shipping for 179 days. Solidarity with West Coast maritime workers made it impossible for the usual employer tactics to succeed.
Reflecting the rising antiradical sentiments in Washington, the territorial governor launched a Redbaiting assault in 1947, targeting two prominent schoolteacher-activists—John and Aiko Reinecke. Their dismissal, despite the complete lack of evidence in the “hearing,” launched a vigorous anti-union campaign in the press and the legislature. An effort was made to split the Filipino workers away from the supposedly radical Japanese by forming an anticommunist rival to the ILWU. A parade of congressional committees, both House and Senate, linked the labor movement to Communism with a variety of paid informers.
The indictment of Jack Hall, regional director of the ILWU, and six of the leading members of the Hawaii Communist Party in 1951, came as no surprise. The indictments charged the “Hawaii Seven” with “conspiring to teach and advocate the need to overthrow the government of the United States by force and violence,” as well as with a variety of other crimes. Other than their membership in the Party and labor organizing, the evidence against the seven consisted solely of reading from Marxist-Leninist works, day after day, in the lengthy trial.
Although the convictions were overturned, the trial eroded public support for the labor movement. It had little impact on the loyalty of ILWU members. The democratic structure of the union and the continuing impressive contract gains turned aside all efforts to split the workers away from the union. The influence of the Communist Party had been strongest among secondary leaders of the ILWU. As mechanization of the plantations reduced the work force, the sugar and pineapple workers were converted into something approaching mass-production industrial workers. The locus of radical activity shifted to the urban community.
Active Left-oriented groups have continued in Hawaii since the 1960s. The University of Hawaii’s firing of a young assistant professor over the Vietnam War issue in 1966 mobilized the heretofore tranquil student body to win his reinstatement after a two-year struggle.
The decade of the 1970s was a time of transition from the old Marxist Left to a younger, more environmentally oriented Left with few connections to the labor movement. This shift is reflected in the history of radical newspaper publishing in Hawaii. The Honolulu Record, edited by Koji Ariyoshi, one of the Hawaii Seven, between 1948 and 1953, was financed by the ILWU. A recent Left-oriented newspaper was Ka Huli’au (1982–1986), edited by a young radical environmentalist and supported by public contributions; the editor then won election to the state legislature.
The decade of the 1970s was a time of transition from the old Marxist Left to a younger, more environmentally oriented Left with few connections to the labor movement. This shift is reflected in the history of radical newspaper publishing in Hawaii. The Honolulu Record (1948-1953) edited by Koji Ariyoshi, one of the Hawaii Seven, was financed by the ILWU. Whereas the Left-oriented newspaper Ka Huli’au (1982–1986) edited by Roland Kotani, a young radical environmentalist was supported by public contributions; and Kotani then won election to the state legislature.
Since the 1970s the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement has been the most visible expression of radical social change in the contemporary State of Hawaiʻi. The corporate oligarchy’s transition from industrial agriculture to tourism socially and economically dislocated many working-class people. This pivot to resort and residential development reinforced hotels as “the new plantations” perpetuating their ethnic and racial hierarchy and initiated an affordable housing crisis that persisted as a viseral political issue. In 1971 the multi-ethnic, community-based and leftist-organized struggle of Kalama Valley served as a catalyst not only for other anti-development struggles but also for the re-emergence of a visible, modern indigenous Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Benefitting from the work of both progressive and left activists, this movement is based on indigenous Native Hawaiian (or Kānaka Maoli as Native Hawaiians self-identify) values that are also anti-colonial and expressed through a variety of cultural, ecological, economic and political forms.
Sometimes collaborating, sometimes disagreeing over the cultural nationalist aims of Native Hawaiian movements, leftist community organizers continued their engagement with land use and environmental issues. Lasting nearly a year in 1971, Kalama Valley was the first of many land struggles as communities fought their displacement. Kokua Kalama expanded and, as “Kokua Hawaii,” community organizers continued to build coalitions and support other community-based struggles – including evictions (Sand Island, Waiahole-Waikane, Niumalu-Nawiliwili, Chinatown, Ota Camp); environmental (Save Our Surf) and education with the fight to “save” Ethnic Studies (“Our History, Our Way!)” at the University of Hawaiʻi, which since its inception engaged in community-based research. Individual leftists also engaged in a variety of movements including legal, safe abortion (achieved in 1970), anti-militarism, welfare rights, and the Hawaiʻi Peopleʻs Fund in 1972 to support grassroots social change.
The cultural, spiritual, environmental, economic and political strands of the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance intertwined, each strengthening the others and the overall Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Renewed indigenous language education (Hawaiian immersion education, starting with Preschool), cultural expressions (especially Hawaiian music and handicrafts), and celestial navigation generated cultural pride and activism that reinforced and developed an overtly political movement for self determination.
Beginning in 1976, the Protect Kahoʻolawe Ohana (PKO) used a combination of non-violent direct action (occupation), legal and political strategies to challenge and eventually stop (1990) the bombing of the island of Kahoʻolawe by the US military. PKO’s deliberate articulation of Native Hawaiians’ cultural, ancestral “connection” to the land and the right to maintain cultural practices sparked a transformation of Native Hawaiian activism towards a sovereignty framework. And decades of PKO’s cultural access to Kahoʻolawe for restoration activities (cultural, spiritual and environmental) fostered new leaders in various movements for Native Hawaiian self-determination.
The 1976 successful sailing of the traditional polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkuleʻa from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti by celestial navigation ignited great cultural pride and developed another arena where multiple generations engaged with language and culture as crewmembers. The impact of the Hokulea on the larger community’s pride cannot be overstated. Researching and sharing cultural protocol to welcome the Hōkuleʻa at each landing engaged elders and also developed new, younger generations of cultural practitioners and leaders. Crewmembers selected for a Hōkuleʻa journey sparked connections with other elements of the sovereignty movement.
Through the 1970s, the ILWU continued it’s leadership establishing a strong floor of unionized labor and progressive legislation to benefit the rest of Hawaii’s non-unionized workers. The Hawaiʻi Pre-Paid Healthcare Act (1974) ensured that all employees working more than twenty hours a week were provided affordable health insurance by their employers. In 1970, public sector employees achieved the right to organize and bargain collectively, marking the 1970s as the zenith of organized labor in Hawaii. In the decades that followed, organized labor continued to organize, often taking action (pickets, boycotts, strikes) for living wages in a tourist-driven economy with a cost of living most service workers could not afford. The 2018 UNITE HERE strike slogan “One Job Should Be Enough” resonated with and garnered support throughout the local community.
Self-determination remained, however, a focal point for radicals. The 1993 “Onipaʻa” (Remain Steadfast) observance of the 100th Anniversary of the illegal overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian Kingdom served as a show of force and mobilization of the Native Hawaiian community behind self determination with a large public gathering estimated at 20,000 attendees. In 1997 respected hula practitioners organized an unprecedented protest – a twenty-four vigil at the State Capital protesting legislation that limited access for traditional gathering rights (rights affirmed in the 1978 Constitutional Convention).
Citing years of mismanagement as well as the cultural and spiritual significance of Mauna Kea, resistance to the expansion of the Mauna Kea Observatory (Astronomy) began in 2015 and re-ignited in summer 2019. A new generation of Native Hawaiian activist leaders (often graduates of Hawaiian immersion education) joined with elders to physically block, occupy and deter construction of another telescope at Mauna Kea. This effort sparked another highly visible, vibrant push for Native Hawaiian self-determination took shape as another “Hawaiian Renaissance.”
Further reading
Beechert, Edward. Working in Hawaii: A Labor History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.
Fuchs, Lawrence. Hawaii Pono: A Social History. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1971.
Horne, Gerald. Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawai’i. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011.
Kent, Noel. Hawaii: Islands under the Influence. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982.
Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Hussey Ikaika, and Wright Erin Kahunawaika‘ala, eds. A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2014.
Reinecke, John E. A Man Must Stand Up: The Autobiography of a Gentle Activist. Edited by Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
Zalburg, Stanford. A Spark Is Struck! Jack Hall and the ILWU in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1979.