Pablo Manlapit

Pablo Manlapit (January 17, 1891 – April 15, 1969) was a migrant laborer, lawyer, labor organizer and activist in Hawaii and the Philippines.

Manlapit was born on January 17, 1891 in the Philippines. He came to Hawaii in 1909 as a migrant worker and worked as a sugarcane plantation laborer at Hamakua Mill Company in the sugarcane fields of the Hāmākua district of the island of Hawaiʻi. He later on moved to Oahu. In June, 1912, he married Annie Kasby, a Hawaiian of German-American descent and they started to raise a family. He left the plantation job and moved to the city and worked in various office jobs while studying law.

The Filipinos were the last large group of recruited sugarcane plantation workers to migrate to Hawaii. From 1907 to 1931, approximately 120,000 Filipino men came to Hawaii. When they came to Hawaii's plantations, they found that they had to buy everything at the plantation store, and often at highly inflated prices due to shipping and other costs. After living in Hawaii for a while, many began to resent the strict hand of the luna (foreman), and social discrimination that they experienced. They were also not used to the commercial business system. Many believed the practice of fixed prices in the plantation stores to be a violation of their personal freedom because they were accustomed to bargaining in the Philippines. The oldest, poorest housing was given to the Filipinos because they were the lowest skilled and held the least prestigious jobs. They were also the most recent arrivals to Hawaii. Immigration laws did not permit them to bring families, so the men lived in barracks.

Manlapit became one of the few Filipino lawyers in the 1920s and distinguished himself as spokesman for the Filipino labor movement in Hawaii, spending most of his time organizing and fighting for the rights of plantation laborers. He helped organize the Filipino Labor Union in Hawaii and was a leading figure in the strikes in 1920 and 1924 that involved thousands of plantation workers.

...
Wikipedia