At a recent gathering marking the 80th anniversary of the 1946 Hawaiʻi Sugar Strike, Governor Waiheʻe reminded us of a part of that history that does not always receive enough attention.
The strike involved 26,000 workers at 33 of Hawaiʻi’s 34 sugar plantations. For 79 days, they stood together against some of the most powerful corporations in the islands. They won higher wages and better working conditions, but their victory went well beyond a labor contract. Working people discovered what they could accomplish when they organized across the divisions that had been used to keep them apart.
Workers at Waialua Plantation were part of that strike. Families from our own community helped carry a struggle that changed Hawaiʻi, and one of the ways people sustained that struggle was through food. Across the islands, workers and their families or- ganized soup kitchens and food depots. They planted gardens, shared what they had, and formed hunting and fishing parties. Food moved between plantation camps and across communities whose members spoke different languages and came from different places.
It was necessary. People could not remain on strike for nearly three months if their children were hungry, and feeding one another built the relationships that made the strike successful. Plantation owners had long maintained their power by dividing workers by race, language and nationality.
Earlier strikes had failed when one group could be pressured to take the place of another. By 1946, workers understood that they would either stand together or lose separately. A shared meal made that solidarity real. It said: what happens to your ‘ohana matters to mine.
Over the past several months, I have seen that same spirit reemerging here in Waialua. After the Kona Low storms flooded our community, people did not wait for every government program to be established. Neighbors opened supply hubs, prepared and delivered meals, checked on kūpuna, cleared damaged property and helped farmers begin the exhausting work of recovery. They shared information, equipment, transportation and whatever else they could offer.
Farmers also took care of one another. Those with working equipment helped neighbors rehabilitate their fields. People translated relief applications, shared information about available assistance and helped other farmers maintain relationships with customers while their own fields remained unproductive. At the end of long work days, farmers and community gathered around shared meals.
That mutual aid mattered because the official recovery process was slow and difficult to navigate. Many small farmers lease their land, operate on narrow margins and lack insurance. Much of the assistance offered after a disaster comes through loans or reimbursement programs that require farmers to spend money before receiving help. For someone who has lost both a crop and months of income, those programs can be nearly impossible to use.
But something else has grown out of the recovery effort. In the months since the floods, Filipino farmers and farmworkers in Waialua have begun organizing together, with support from the Hawaiʻi Workers Center. Through that work, they formed the Filipino Farmers and Farmworkers Association of Waialua—not only to help one another recover, but also to build a collective voice around the challenges they have faced for years.
That development carries the history of 1946 for- ward in a particularly meaningful way. Mutual aid helps people survive a crisis. Organizing gives them the power to change the conditions that made them vulnerable in the first place.
The plantation workers understood that distinction. Soup kitchens and food depots helped families make it through 79 days without wages, but the goal was not simply to endure. The food sustained a larger effort to win dignity, economic security and a voice over the conditions of their lives.
The same is true today. Our farmers need immediate assistance to restore soil, repair irrigation and replace equipment. But they also need a meaningful voice in decisions about disaster programs, agricultural leases, water, markets and the future of agricultural land. Mutual aid should not become an excuse for government to step back. Communities should not have to compensate indefinitely for slow assistance or inaccessible public systems. Government should listen to the people closest to the problem and build programs around the realities they face. And when farmers and community organize, we make those realities harder to ignore.
The workers of 1946 did not build solidarity through speeches alone. They built it through picket lines, gardens, fishing parties, soup kitchens and shared meals. Waialua was part of that history, and eighty years later, food is again bringing people together here—not only to recover, but to build the relationships and collective power needed to shape what comes next.