Once they had been reunited with their families and were fed,
they were met by representatives from the Sugar and Pineapple plantations who
gave them their work assignments and signed them up for housing. Single men
were given the option of higher pay, but they would live in a boarding house
where they would pay for room and board. The married men and their families
were provided with a home and a plot of land to grow a vegetable garden and to
raise chickens etc. As promised, there was free (mandatory) school for their
children and free medical care. Within each plantation they were divided into
camps with camps being spread out about a mile from each other. The plantations
would try to assign families and friends to the same camp.
There were different sizes of houses to accommodate families
with the majority having four rooms. The houses also included a storage room to
keep the wood they used for cooking. They had both indoor and outdoor cooking
area with a beehive oven outside for baking bread. For the most part, the women
cooked outside.
Due to the amount of rain that would fall during a tropical
storm, the houses were placed on stilts that raised the house about three feet
off of the ground. This not only protected the houses from rivers created by
the rains, but provided shade for their chickens, pigs and milk cows during the
heat of the day. The roof was made from galvanized steel allowing them to
collect the rain water in buckets placed at the corners of the house. This
fresh water was used for cooking in addition to bathing and the washing of
clothes. The houses were white-washed yearly to keep down the bug population.
They did not have electricity, running water, or indoor
plumbing. They had community toilets, which they placed sacks on the doorways
for privacy. The outhouses were white-washed and treated with lime to absorb
order and keep the flies away; the waste was collected, and used as fertilizer
both in the sugar cane fields and in their family gardens.
It did not take long for families to settle into their homes,
the women would plant flowers including roses, carnations, and daisies and the
men would turn their small plot into a vegetable garden filled with tomatoes,
cucumbers, potatoes, peppers, and garbanzos. The rain and the warm Hawaiian
climate were perfect for growing vegetables; these were the foods they used to
feed their families. All around were coconut, bananas and guava trees. What
they could not grow, they bought from at the company store. When they purchased
items, it was on the credit system, with the amount of their purchases deducted
from their monthly pay.
The life of women was basically the same as it was back in Spain; they
raised the children, kept the home, cooked and baked. Some women would even
bake additional loaves of bread to sell. The Spanish tradition of baking bread
used yeast made from potatoes mixed with their flour, a sour dough starter;
this made it sweeter and more desirable to the Hawaiian women compared to the
bread the Portuguese women baked. Women also had the option of working for the plantation
owners, with their pay added to their husband/father. They also sold eggs, cow
and goat’s milk, cheese and fresh produce.
Six days a week, from sun up until sunset, the men and those
women without children, would work for wages; some in the fields, or in the
mill itself. Muleskinners earned an
additional dollar a day as they not only drove the mules that moved the cane
from field to mill, but cared for the animals. There were three plantings of
cane a year, providing for work year round.
In the field the men
would cut and discard the top six or so inches of the cane with the soft
leaves, the next foot of plant would be kept to use in the next planting, with
the remaining of the plant being collected and sent by mule wagons to the mill
for processing. This was tedious work from sunrise to sunset. They used a 20 inch
knife to cut the cane. There was a hook at the end of the knife blade to help
pick up the cane. The field workers were tired and sore by the end of their
very long day
Once the mule wagon arrived at the mill, there were more
workers who used their knives to unload the cane and placed into troughs. The
Mill would then crush the cane forcing the juice to run into vats. There the
sugar juice was crystallized. Some plantations would use trains to aid in
moving the cane from field to mill.
In addition to planting and harvesting, the men would clear
new land to prepare them for planting. For the most part, there was no need for
irrigation because the majority of the plantations received enough rain to
water the fields.
They would be paid monthly, with the earnings of the whole
family being recorded and paid through the head of house; charges at the
company store would be taken out before they were paid. There were no banks on
the plantations, so if they wanted to keep their money in the bank they would
take the train to Hilo,
many of the Spanish workers would bury it thus using the “Spanish bank.”
In school, the children quickly learned to speak English
this enabled them to communicate beyond their small community and make friends
with children from other countries. Each plantation had a school in one of its
camps. The children had to get themselves to school, sometimes walking several
miles. The schools kept careful record of who attended, and if a child did not
attend, they had to have a note from the camp doctor.
Each camp had doctors that would care of the workers and
their families. The modest Spanish women preferred to follow the traditions of
their homeland and utilized the services of the midwives that lived in the
camps. Just 3 ½ months after the Heliopolis arrived, one woman gave birth to a
little girl; she was baptized in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Hilo, as were
most of the other children born in Hawaii.
I am not certain which plantation our family was assigned
to, it is quite possible that it was with the Pepeekeo Sugar Company as the
family was living in Pepeekeo when Grandpa and Grandma were married.
The Pepeekeo
Sugar Company was located on the windward side of the island of Hawaii
between Onomea and Honomu. The plantation was approximately four miles long and
ran along the ocean cliffs.
