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For a large part of the last century, Amfac was among a handful of companies dominating Hawaii's economic landscape.
The last of Amfac/JMB's haul-cane trucks
rumble into the past—into memoriesSee also: Corky's Hawaii
Back then, sugar was king; the plantations, the vast kingdom. But like its 'Big Five' peers, Amfac's strength waned as sugar and pineapple slowly died.
Today, the Big Five have dissolved into smaller, successor subsidiaries. Diversification has occurred; new industries have emerged.
Yesterday, that shift between old and new was directly felt again. It came on Kauai: An ending, as Amfac shut down two sugar operations, its last ones in the state of Hawaii.
Photos by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin LIHUE -- Yesterday's caravan of brightly decorated Lihue Plantation haul-cane trucks through the streets of Hanamaulu and Lihue may be remembered as the most photographed event in the history of Kauai.
Story by Anthony Sommer
Star-BulletinKauai residents who lined the roads along the caravan route took pictures of the trucks. Sugar workers in the trucks took pictures of the spectators.
And newspaper photographers and television camera crews took pictures of them taking pictures of each other.
It was as though they all wanted their own personal record of the historic closing of the Amfac/JMB plantations in Lihue and Kekaha. And it was as though no one was quite ready to let go of the past.Today, most of Amfac's 400 sugar workers are unemployed. The parade was their last hurrah. The party that followed at the Lihue Neighborhood Center was their last get-together.
"There goes 150 years of tradition rolling past us," Chris Cook, author of several books on Kauai's history, said over the din of dozens of air horns blaring as the big trucks rumbled out of the assembly area. Cook, too, was taking pictures.
"Watching all the trucks drive by was really, really touching," said Char Santos, whose father was an Amfac sugar worker and whose husband, Greg Santos, was until yesterday an Amfac worker. Greg Santos is one of the lucky ones. He starts work as a truck driver for a large Kauai construction company Monday.Very few of the laid-off workers have new jobs. They haven't had time to look. Most have been working 12 hours a day, seven days a week to harvest this year's cane crop. "We're going to work for the state -- the unemployment office," is the line they all use.
For the hour that it took the trucks to cover the route, the aloha of the island's residents covered over the ultimate sadness of the event.The largest crowd was on the lawn in front of the Historic County Building, which now houses only the County Council. Council members themselves erected a large sign that read: "MAHALO Kauai County Council."
(The sign actually was the Mahalo sign Councilman Bryan Baptiste had used along the highways to salute his supporters after election day. Baptiste's name was covered with a separate banner naming the Council. "We're OK unless the wind comes up and blows that cover off," said Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro.)"The sad thing is that Amfac, which began on Kauai and was one of the Big Five sugar companies, leaves no investment behind in the island," said Council Chairman Ron Kouchi. "When it was bought by JMB Realty (in 1988) it ceased to be a Hawaii company. All the profits went to Chicago."
Amfac/JMB still owns property, including valuable resort property, in other parts of Hawaii. But all its Kauai sugar land soon will be gone.
Effective today, the 27,000 acres Amfac's Kekaha Sugar Co. leased from the state was turned over to a consortium of agriculture companies, the largest of which is Gay & Robinson, the island's only remaining sugar company.An additional 6,000 acres of leased land in east Kauai will revert to state control.
A large sign was erected this week advertising for sale the 17,000 acres of sugar land still owned by Amfac. Numerous Kauai residents have noted that anyone who can afford to buy 17,000 acres of land isn't likely to be influenced by a billboard.
The caravan rolled past the Amfac Kauai Sugar Co. offices in downtown Lihue, but if any Amfac executives were watching they weren't obvious. Nor did they appear at the employee party afterward.
But much in evidence were the front-line supervisors."There is a goal out there," harvest Superintendent Howard Ramos, who organized the caravan, told the Amfac workers at the party afterward. "There's an adventure out there. Go get it."
"I've been through it before and we'll all survive," said Ralph Koerte, Lihue Plantation's equipment operator training supervisor, while leaning over a chain-link fence at the party and sipping a beer.
Koerte, 55, taught all the truck drivers and heavy-equipment operators at the party their jobs.
Koerte is a second-generation sugar worker: "I quit school in 1962 to go to work with my father at Grove Farm."
When Grove Farm closed in 1973 he worked briefly for McBryde Sugar Co., now also extinct, and has spent the last 26 years at Amfac.
One of the saddest things, to Koerte and every other sugar worker interviewed, is that the land that has been so carefully cared for by generations of sugar workers will be quickly consumed by guinea grass.
