Mel Orpilla, from Vallejo, Calif., is on Kaua’i to research the Sept., 1924 Hanapepe plantation workers strike. The strike led to the deaths of workers and policemen and was a landmark event in the unionization of the Hawaiian sugar industry.
Mel Orpilla, from Vallejo, Calif., is on Kaua’i to research the Sept., 1924 Hanapepe plantation workers strike. The strike led to the deaths of workers and policemen and was a landmark event in the unionization of the Hawaiian sugar industry.
Orpilla is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay area. He is seeking first-hand information about the strike and union battle in Hanapepe for a planned article aimed at national publication.
He is the president of the Vallejo chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society. Orpilla said the group plans to hold its 2006 biannual conference in Hawai’i to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first large group of Filipino sugar plantation workers in Hawai’i.
The group is holding its 2004 conference in St. Louis to mark the centennial of the 1904 St. Louis world’s fair. At the fair 1,000 Filipino natives in traditional dress appeared, Orpilla said. The event came just after the Spanish-American War, and the display was used to justify America’s incursion in the Philippines.
Anyone with information on the 1924 incident at Hanapepe is asked to please send an e-mail to mailto:mel9661@orpilla.com, or leave at message at 245-3681 x.227.
