HONOLULU (AP) — Decades before Filipino American agricultural workers organized a historic strike in California, Pablo Manlapit was organizing Filipino laborers in Hawaii.
Manlapit, who migrated to Honolulu in 1910 to work on sugar plantations, saw the exploitation of other Philippine-born workers — known as “sakadas.” A decade later and at great risk to his livelihood and marriage, he became Hawaii’s first Filipino lawyer and pioneered a Filipino labor union demanding equal pay and an eight-hour workday.
He also persuaded Japanese workers, who were paid more, to join. For these organizing efforts, he was implicated in the 1924 Hanapepe Massacre on the island of Kauai where 16 strikers and four police officers were killed…