Hanapepe Massacre - September 9, 1924

On this day in 1924, a strike organized by Filipino sugar plantation workers turned into a massacre of Filipinos by local police. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Eves and Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that uncovers history one day
at a time. Today is September nine, nineteen. The day

(00:26):
was September nine. Strikes organized by Filipinos sugar workers in Kawaii, Hawaii,
turned deadly. The Hunt of Hapai Massacre, as it became known,
resulted in the death of sixteen Filipinos and four police
officers and the injury of many other people. Sugar plantations

(00:49):
were a big business in Hawaii in the eighteen hundreds.
In early nineteen hundreds, the industry and Hawaii's economy and
politics were controlled by corporations known as the Big Five,
Castle and Cook, the O. H. Davies, Alexander and Baldwin,
Sea Brewer, and am FAC. Immigrants and Hawaiian laborers remained

(01:12):
at the bottom of the class hierarchy, though they produced
most of the island's wealth. The Hawaii Sugar Planters Association
or h sp A, subjected workers to discrimination and segregation.
They put Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Filipino workers in
different camps, and a person's race often determined what assignments

(01:37):
and wages they received. By the nineteen twenties, workers began
to strike against the discrimination and poor conditions on plantations. Japanese, Chinese,
and Korean laborers left plantations to find better work in
bigger cities. The h s p A made up for
the losses by encouraging more Filipino people to move to

(02:00):
Hawaii to work on the plantations. More than one hundred
thousand Filipinos migrated to Hawaii between nineteen ten and nineteen
thirty two. That caused a drastic shift in the ethnic
makeup of the plantation workers spread throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
Most of the Filipinos were from the Ilocos Provinces and

(02:22):
the Vasayan Islands. The h sp A intentionally chose people
who were uneducated and could not read or write, as
it figured they would be more compliant than people who
had received even just some schooling. But the Filipino workers
had grueling jobs. The pay was poor, and discrimination was

(02:43):
rampant on the plantations. Their work days were ten to
twelve hours. They lived in barracks where they would have
to share a small room with several men, and at
the low wages they did make largely went back to
company stores where they bought their living necessities. They often
lived in isolation with no temples, language schools, or other

(03:05):
community centers. To get a ticket back home to the
Philippines from their employers, they had to work seven hundred
and twenty days over three consecutive years. On top of that,
Filipinos were discriminated against because of their nationality. But despite
the h s p a's best efforts to only hire
people who would not rebel, in nineteen twenty, Japanese and

(03:29):
Filipino workers demanded better conditions, including an increase in pay
from seventy seven cents to one dollar and twenty five
cents per day. The h s p A rejected their demands,
and labor leader Pablo Manlopit, along with Japanese labor leaders,
formed the Higher Wage Movement. A strike of Japanese and

(03:52):
Filipino laborers proceeded and lasted several months. The h s
p A evicted workers from their housing, a dispute divided
Japanese leaders in Manolapit, and the h sp A spread propaganda.
None of the strikers demands were met, but Filipino laborers
continued to petition for better pay and the right to

(04:14):
collective bargaining. Still, sugar plantation owners refused to acknowledge their demands.
In April of nineteen four, MAMLOPIT called for Filipino workers
to go on strike. Around twelve thousand workers from plantations
on Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kawaii went on strike. To

(04:34):
attempt to put an end to the strikes, the h
s p A recruited Ilocano laborers from the Philippines as
strike breakers, pinning Ilocanos against the science, and the h
s p A used spies to infiltrate strike meetings and rallies.
On September eight, strikers at a camp in Hana Pepe

(04:55):
close to the Maca Welly Sugar plantation, took two ilocanos hostage.
Those who had joined the strikes from that plantation were
from the Visayan regions, while Ilocos had continued working. The
next day, police demanded the strikers released the captured Ilocanos.
They did so, but violence broke out, resulting in the

(05:17):
death of twenty people. Strikers armed themselves with guns, knives, rocks,
and clubs and went up against the police. Governor Farrington
sent in machine gun squads and rifle companies from the
National Guard. One and one strikers were arrested, Seventy six
went to trial and sixty were given four year jail sentences.

(05:40):
Malopit was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Years later, a
Filipino woman said that witnesses had been promised money and
a ticket to the Philippines to testify against Malapit. The
strike continued for three more months. The hsp A continued
to exploit workers, though laborers did make some gains in

(06:01):
working conditions, and other successful strikes were waged by plantation
workers into the mid nineteen hundreds. Sugar plantations have since
declined in Hawaii as corporations looked to other countries where
they could pay workers low wages. I'm Eve Jeff Coote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today

(06:23):
than you did yesterday. And if you haven't gotten your
fill of history after listening to today's episode, you can
follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t D
I h C podcast. We'll be back with more history tomorrow.

(06:55):
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