Pablo Manlapit and the Hanapepe Massacre

This twenty-fourth day of Filipino American History Month brings more information on Pablo Manlapit and the Hanapepe Massacre.

Pablo Manlapit immigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii in 1909. He worked as a plantation laborer at Hamakua Mill Company. He studied to become the first Filipino lawyer in Hawaii and helped organize the Filipino Labor Union (FLU).

He led the first major pan-Asian strike in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. Filipinos and Japanese participated in the work stoppage against the Hawaiian Sugar Plantations Association (HSPA). They wanted better and fair working conditions. Filipino workers were not paid equally for doing the same work as the Japanese workers. The Filipinos were paid $0.69 and the Japanese were paid $0.99. While they were on strike, plantation workers on other islands continued to work to raise about $600,000.00 in support of the strike. It began on January 19, 1920, with 3,000 FLU members. When the Japanese laborers joined them in February 1920, more than 8,300 plantation laborers, or 77 percent of the work force was on strike. The strike went on for two months.

By 1922, Manlapit had organized a new Filipino Higher Wage Movement which numbered about 13,000 members. In April 1924, it called for a strike on the island of Kauai, demanding $2 a day in wages and the reduction of the workday to eight hours. This strike, which lasted approximately six to eight months, lead to increasing violence against Filipinos. In one incident on September 9, 1924, 16 Filipinos strikers were shot and killed by police in Hanapepe and four policemen were killed. Manlapit was jailed and deported to the mainland. Filipinos who participated in the strike were blacklisted by many employers, which led to the immigration of many families and single men to the mainland.

Although Manlapit went into labor organizing in California, he in returned to Hawaii in 1933 to continue his work. In 1935, he was permanently expelled from Hawaii to the Philippines. By that time, he had already left a lasting legacy of labor empowerment.