The owners of Hawaii’s second-largest fruit and vegetable farm will plead guilty to charges of importing laborers from Thailand to force them to work, court records show. — ABC News
In this day and age, it’s shocking to learn that importing workers for forced labor — to the US, no less — could happen. There is, however a long history of imported workers for hard labor on the pineapple and sugar cane plantations throughout the islands. The influx of these workers — from Japan, the Philippines, China, all over the Pacific — that’s contributed to Hawaii’s amazing mix of cultures.
Japanese plantation worker/actor via gochie* on Flickr
There’s an interesting read about the history of labor in Hawaii here. The accelerated version? Native Hawaiians, who had been subsistence farmers, were not so keen on plantation conditions and eventually, walked off the job. Imported foreigners filled the gap, though conditions remained bad enough that workers overlooked their cultural differences and joined together to create a union. [Read the whole thing, this is just my summary.]
Sugar and pineapple are fading from the Hawaiian landscape, replaced the land eating monster that is real estate. Maui Pineapple managed to get a stay of execution, saving jobs and the Maui Gold brand, but Kauai’s sugar plantation shuttered last year. Even though the farmlands are struggling, the impact of those immigrants who worked the fields remains strong, on the faces of the people of Hawaii, the variety in food, and the fantastic mix of culture that makes Hawaii so appealing and fascinating.
Just a disclaimer: While I’m interested in the role that immigrant cultures played in developing Hawaii’s modern personality, I have no desire to trivialize the seriousness of the current slave labor issue. There’s a critical look at the what happened on Aloun farms here.