Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Photo courtesy of Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum
Cut cane is "flumed" to the mill at Paia, Maui. This photo was
taken about 1920. Former residents of the plantation camps in
the area are organizing a reunion expected to attract thousands.

Paia plantation
reunion set for
August 2001

A meeting of former camp
residents is expected to draw
people from Hawaii and
across the mainland

---

By Gary Kubota
Star-Bulletin

PAIA, Maui -- Sugarcane fields occupy many of the former sites of plantation camps in Paia, where thousands of workers and families lived before the 1950s.

But many still have fond memories of an era when cars were few and the town and camps were the center of social life, including birthdays and weddings, baseball and softball games, and boxing matches at Paia gym.

"We basically lived a good life. There was no crime to speak of, no TVs and no paved roads for cars," recalled Toshio Ishikawa, 71.

A group of former Paia camp residents is organizing a Grand Paia Reunion for a year from now (Aug. 17-19, 2001) to see friends and recall shared memories.

"It seems to me that this is the finale," said George Ito, 83, the reunion co-chairman.

Planners welcome involvement PAIA, Maui -- The group planning to hold the Grand Paia Reunion on Aug. 17-19, 2001, may be contacted by calling co-chairman George Ito at (808) 871-4026 or sending a letter to Paia Reunion, P.O. Box 61, Kahului, Maui 96733. Contributions to assist in the organizing may be sent to the Paia mailing address. Ito said organizers are still developing the schedule of events. The group is holding a general meeting for the reunion on the last Saturday of each month at the Kaunoa Senior Citizens Center in Spreckelsville. The steering committee is holding a meeting on the third Saturday of every month at the same location. Both meetings are set for 10 a.m. - noon.

A Grand Paia Reunion was held in 1985 that attracted some 4,000 to 5,000 people, hundreds coming from the U.S. mainland.

Ito expects attendance at this reunion to be as large, with many coming from other states and at least one from as far as Germany.

The plantation camps in Paia served as a foothold in the United States for immigrant workers, including the Portuguese, Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos, many with less than a high school education but all with a willingness to work in the fields and mills.

"These were the people who were the backbone of the sugar industry," said Gaylord Kubota, director of the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum. "They were the ones who helped to build up the economy."

More than 12 camps were located in and around Paia, providing housing for an estimated 6,000 sugar workers before the 1950s.

Maui Agricultural Co., which merged into Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. in 1948, provided free housing and water to its employees.

With the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union demanding housing outside of camps for workers, Alexander & Baldwin developed "Dream City" in Kahului in the 1950s and employees began moving out of the camps.

The camps served as an economic stepping stone for many children of immigrants.

Retired Maui Circuit Judge S. George Fukuoka, 80, said children of his generation in Paia developed a kind of independence, hiking for miles into the wilderness, swimming in reservoirs, and daring each other to walk across a railroad trestle spanning a gulch.

"They did a lot of things probably today's parents would not allow them to do," he said.

Fukuoka, who lived in School Camp, said there also was an air of safety within the community and a lack of predatory crimes.

"In our case we never used to lock our doors. Everybody was our neighbor," Fukuoka said.

Charles "Ozzie" Ferreira, 70, worked 45 years for the sugar plantation and remembers how people used what they had to make life better.

Before drinking water was treated, residents used empty Bull Durham cloth bags as a water filter over their indoor pipes.

Retired police officer Rafael Acoba, 79, said celebrating Rizal Day on Dec. 30 was a big event for Filipinos in Stable Camp.

Families would gather to roast pigs and cook ethnic foods and dance and play music. The camp also had a clubhouse where single men played basketball and volleyball.

"Plantation life was really a family life," Acoba said.

Ishikawa, a former Maui planning director, remembers living with seven brothers and sisters in a three-bedroom home in Nashiwa Camp.

"At the time, it was common to have large families," Ishikawa said. "I don't know how we managed."