This is the third of a three-part series focusing on the recollections of ILWU leaders who made important contributions to the building of the union in Hawaii. It features Carl Damaso, a Filipino immigrant sugar worker whose struggles against the employers in the cane fields culminated with his becoming president of Hawaii Local 142 in 1964. His stories here center on the pre-ILWU days of the 1930s.
The first two articles highlighted the legacies of Frank Thompson, the union’s chief field organizer in the Islands during the great 1944-1946 unionization drive there, and Dave Thompson, who served as ILWU Hawaii education director and International representative between 1946 and 1979.
Carl Damaso went to Hawaii from the Philippines as a teenage contract laborer in 1930. His experiences differed significantly from those of the two Thompsons, who came to the Islands from the U.S. mainland. Frank Thompson arrived as a seasoned California labor organizer intent on unionizing Hawaii’s sugar and pineapple workers for the ILWU. Dave Thompson, an Oregon native, was a university student in Honolulu before World War II. He returned to the Islands after the war as an ILWU activist and labor educator.
Damaso, on the other hand, toiled for years as a sugar worker. Although he suspected that only multi-ethnic unionization could succeed, he supported attempts at single-nationality organization as they emerged between 1934 and 1937. But in those years, Hawaii’s plantation managers ran a closed, essentially feudal or colonial system. Thus Damaso was fired and blacklisted—labelled “do not hire” by the planters—for trying to bring a little representation and dignity to Hawaii’s long-suffering agricultural workers.
Ultimately the ILWU brought the kind of multi-ethnic unionism to the Islands that Damaso felt was needed for the long-term success of labor organization. Clearly, his pioneering efforts helped pave the way. Although Damaso himself was blacklisted until 1940, he eventually found work on the Honolulu waterfront. He became an ILWU longshore worker in 1946. During the 1949 Hawaii longshore strike he was a picket captain and acted as interpreter for Harry Bridges and other ILWU International officers.
Damaso was elected business agent for the longshore units on Oahu in 1950 and held that position for nearly a decade. From 1960 to 1963 he was Oahu division director. In 1963 he was elected president of ILWU Local 142 and took office in 1964. He served with distinction until his retirement in late 1981.
The interview that formed the basis for this article was conducted in the Islands by Professor Edward D. Beechert in 1966. Beechert, the author of the masterly “Working in Hawaii: A Labor History,” recorded many ILWU veterans as part of the Regional Oral History Project at the University of Hawaii, which he founded.
We are greatly indebted to Beechert for this service and for allowing us to draw from his interview with Damaso for use here. Thanks too for their help to retired Local 142 Social Worker Ah Quon McElrath, Voice of the ILWU Editor Mel Chang and Local 142 Archivist Rae C. Shiraki.
-Harvey Schwartz
Carl Damaso: union pioneer, 1930-1950
CARL DAMASO
Edited by Harvey Schwartz
Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection
I was born in the Philippines, but I came to Hawaii when I was 14 years old in 1930. My first destination was as a plantation worker at Olaa Sugar Company on the Big Island of Hawaii. There was no union there. It was really hard for the workers.
Most of the Filipinos in Hawaii then were concentrated in field work. A few were employed in the mills. But most were sugar cane cutters or cane loaders. The plantations still had those old-fashioned railroads in the early 1930s. The workers loaded the rail cars for just so much money. But it was not really “piecework,” because that is based on how much you can produce. Instead, the wages were limited, regardless of how strong or fast a worker you were. The plantation management just set the price. You could say nothing. If you raised a question about wages or any sort of grievance, the managers would throw you out.
I had all kinds of objections to how things were. I was amazed that there was this big segregation. The Filipinos were concentrated in one camp, the Japanese in another camp. The Portuguese were the first-class citizens. Despite this segregation and other bad conditions, you couldn’t fight back much. People were scared. You had to obey what the company said or be out of a job.
My first dream was to be organized under one strong union, but there was no unified labor organization for plantation workers in 1930 in what was then the Territory of Hawaii. But by 1932 Pablo Manlapit was trying to organize the Filipinos. Manlapit started meeting with the sugar workers. You could tell that his organization wasn’t too liberal of a union. I felt at the time that if we were just organizing Filipino workers, it didn’t make sense, because the Filipino group alone could not succeed in a strike in the sugar industry.
Around 1933 some of his co-leaders collaborated with the plantation managers against him. Most important, though, the workers were beginning to realize that labor organization would be all right, but not strictly on the basis of one race, as had been the case in Hawaii before. They believed that there should be some kind of an organization among the races. That was my feeling also. You cannot succeed by fighting separately.
In 1934 the managers began asking me what I did after my days of work, and especially on Sundays, our one day a week off. After working hours and on Sundays I’d devoted time to Manlapit. But I just told the managers I was interested in listening to what he had to say. They wanted to know if I was also interested in becoming a “liberator” some day. I told them, “That’s not my plan.”
By 1934 I was one of the fastest cane cutters in Olaa. The field boss said that if you were fast you deserved some kind of an incentive. I observed what he said and I figured that I was supposed to get a bonus. But on pay day at the end of the month it didn’t come to me. That went on and on. So I worked faster. Then one day I felt rotten. I could hardly move, so I just worked at the pace of the old guys. I felt like I could at least keep up with them.
So this field boss said, “What are you doing? That’s not the way you work every day.” Then he started swearing at me. I told him, “I can’t work fast ‘cause I’m not feeling so good. I can’t keep up the pace that I have made for the last four, five months. On top of that, I’ve been cheated many times. You didn’t live up to your promise.” So he started calling me all kinds of names. I asked him, “What do you want me to do, kill myself?”
I had no choice but to argue with him. He started calling me a bastard and every damn thing, so what I had to do is hit him with a sugar cane. Then he said, “I’m going to break your bone.” I told him, “Go right ahead.” He tried to wrestle with me, so I got a big cane again and hit him across his face. That was it.
After that, the son of the field boss came around. He got off his white horse and started wrestling with me, so my partner hit him with a cane and he took off. The assistant manager of the plantation came to investigate. I tried to explain about the whole situation, but the managers didn’t want to listen to me. They said, “You better pack your clothes and go. We don’t need you anymore.”
I went home and waited until six in the afternoon. Then I started to meet with the workers from all the various Olaa Sugar Company camps from miles around. I was meeting with people until ten o’clock at night. The next day, half the people didn’t show up to work.
The managers called the police. They came to my camp and started asking questions. I had to leave the camp or go to jail. So I told ’em, “I got no money, I don’t have a place to go. Give me some time to call the Philippine government to find out what they can do. I have to try to settle this as a labor dispute or else go back to the Philippines.” I’d been in Hawaii going on four years. So I added, “I know how you people have treated us. We’re human like you, but you treat us worse than animals.” They gave me until the following day.
We sent a wire to the Philippine government. They sent over Jose Figueras, one of their Philippine resident commissioners. I thought they’d send the first Philippine commissioner, because he was supposed to come in if the problem involved the working conditions of Filipinos. We had a meeting with management and tried to resolve the dispute. Finally the Olaa managers agreed to reinstate the strikers without any charges, except for me. So I was fired.
I stayed in a secluded place, but one afternoon I had to go to the camp where I had belonged because I had my parents there. I had to sneak in to eat with them. About six o’clock I started having dinner. Then somebody knocked at the door. My brother opened it up. It was the head of the plantation camp police plus two government cops. I couldn’t even finish my meal. They just said, “You need permission to come in here.” They grabbed me and locked me in jail for 48 hours.
Now I had to get out of the Big Island. I had no money, but my friends and my brother raised 40 bucks for the $22 boat fare to Maui plus $18 extra for me and my wife. We’d just been married. At Maui I didn’t get a job for five months. Since I was desperate, every now and then I’d write to my two brothers for money.
In early 1935 I got a job at Wailuku Sugar Company. I worked there as a cane cutter. It was the same old story, hard work for a dollar a day. You’d start work at six in the morning and go to six in the evening. They pushed the incentive idea again: “Cut a little bit faster, you’ll get some kind of an incentive.” But by then I knew that it was the same old story.
Then the workers began to realize that this was too much. There was a meeting now and then in the clubhouse. I happened to sit down in the front of the clubhouse at one of the meetings one evening. Two to four hundred workers used to get together to discuss what we could do to improve our working conditions.
I sat down there like an innocent guy and didn’t say a word. But one of the guys at the meeting found out I was from Olaa. He started calling my name and addressing me. I told him, “The only way we can improve our working conditions is to stay together and appoint someone to bring grievances to management.”
I never knew then that during the meeting the Filipino camp police was sneaking in the back of the clubhouse. They heard what I’d said. The next day, at 5:30 in the morning, the camp police came knocking at my door. They said, “Pack your clothes and go to the manager’s office at six o’clock.”
It seemed like I’d have to leave the camp, but I said to the manager, “What about my wife and kid? Can they stay here this month?” My wife had given birth to my son in late 1935. The manager said, “No, everybody must go, kid and all.” We didn’t even have a chance to pack. My wife was crying, but they just put a lock on the door and said, “Get out.”
I went over to the local plantation office and the man there said, “I know what you are doing. I wish I’d known before I hired you that you were the instigator of the strike at Olaa.” I was let go and was “blacklisted.”
After that my wife left me and took my kid with her. I had no chance to try to bring him up. I even had the thought that with my record, maybe my wife and kid would live better without me. That was the hardest thing.
I applied for jobs, but they wouldn’t hire me. For almost a year I didn’t have no job. I tried to make a living shooting pool. Finally in late 1936 I got hired at Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company. The man there said, “We’ll put you to work, but any false move you make, that’s it.” I was desperate for the job, so I said, “I’ll try to obey whatever you tell me.”
Then Antonio Fagel, another labor leader, came along. He led another nationalistic Filipino organization, the Vibora Luviminda. That label came from a Filipino patriot’s nickname plus the letters for key areas in the Philippines. One Sunday morning Fagel’s organization held a meeting that I attended. I asked, “Why is it that every time a Filipino labor leader comes here his plan is to organize only a Filipino group? What about the rest of the workers? There are other elements besides Filipino grievances that we have to consider. We should involve all the other groups.”
One morning in April 1937 all the cane cutters lined up and nobody wanted to move. The workers had been cheated on wages when pay calculations were changed. Twelve hundred of them engaged in a sit-down strike. They were just sharpening their cane knives and wouldn’t move. Nobody said a word. The assistant manager arrived in his Cadillac. He said, “Work, or you guys are all fired.”
I went inside this place to hide. I didn’t want to be seen by the assistant manager because they’d told me I had to obey. But my mind and heart were pleading to fight for the common cause of the working masses. So I negotiated for the guys. But the assistant manager said, “You guys should get a wage cut. You cut yourself. If you don’t want to work, we’ll make a cow pasture out of the sugar cane field and you guys can go.”
Then everybody went home. The strike was on and nobody worked. About six o’clock in the morning the camp police and the managers came to my house. They said, “We know the workers believe you. We’ll give you a good job and a new car to drive. You’ll join the camp police. Just convince all these guys to go back to work.” I thought, “I’m not going to be a pig for you people.” I said, “Give us our demands. That’s all I’m asking for.”
The third day of the strike they drove me from the camp. The camp police came and I was strong-armed out. In the following days all my leaders were evicted from camp, too. Finally they forced many strikers away. We were thrown onto Kahului Beach at the Maui Dry Goods Store. The strike became a major confrontation that lasted for three months. We tried to mobilize all the surrounding plantation guys to back us. We said, “Our struggle is yours. Whatever we come out with, you guys will benefit also.”
We did sign a contract, but after the strike some in our leadership betrayed us and the agreement we’d reached went to the dogs. One guy entered Maui management. He got a gold car and joined the camp police. Finally I was the only guy of my group who was unable to go back to work. I was blacklisted again. I looked all over Maui, but there was no job for me.
Next I took a ship to Molokai to look for a job there. I went to the pineapple camp at Hoolehua where I had friends. At 2:30 in the morning a camp manager knocked on my friends’ door. The manager asked, “Is Calixto Damaso here?” Calixto was my name before I came to Hawaii. I changed it when I became a naturalized citizen. I told the manager, “I am, sir.” He said, “How many of you people came from Maui?” The answer was, “All of us, sir.” Well, he said, “Pack your clothes, get out, this plantation is not a hotel. Move or I’m going to call the government police to lock you guys up.”
We moved on to Kaunakakai. We had no jobs. I labored there fishing for three months during late 1937. But I had no clothing, no food, no nothing. Then in 1938 I went to Honolulu. I told my friends, “As soon as I leave, try to find jobs. Don’t say I was with you.” They got jobs then. I think the managers decided, “As long as Damaso is not with you, we’ll give you guys a job.”
I applied for a job at Waimanalo Sugar Company. The manager opened a drawer. There was my picture taken during the ’37 strike. The manager said, “We’re not hiring.” When I heard that they hired about 38 people the following day, I went back to see the manager again. He said, “Not you, fella. You were the ringleader in ’37. You think I’m going to hire you?”
I tried at California and Hawaiian Sugar Company, but it was no dice. I couldn’t find a job, basically, in late ’37, ’38, and ’39. This went on until 1940, when I got employed as a truck helper at the Ready Mix Concrete Company. After that I got a job for a year with American Stevedoring Company. During the war, 1942 to 1945, I worked for the navy supply depot.
In 1946 I applied to Castle and Cooke Terminal as a stevedore and got hired. I was now an ILWU longshoreman. At Castle and Cooke I attended ILWU meetings, but because of my past record I just sat and listened until we took a strike vote in 1949. Then I got active again. Right after the strike I was acting business agent. In 1950 I ran for Oahu longshore BA, got elected, and served for eight years.
When I was in the ILWU I began to realize that my dream had come true. I started from the hard nuts of the laboring group, but now the workers were respected. And they realized that the only way for them to do better was through unity and understanding more about everyone.