Between 1908 and 1920 nearly 20,000 Japanese, Okinawan and Korean women arrived in Hawai'i as "picture brides" while thousands of others also migrated to the U.S. Mainland. Photographs extended traditional matchmaking across oceans and reflect women's participation in 20th century immigrant communities. In Hawai'i, this concentrated emigration of young Japanese

	A women's work gang composed of various nationalities

women and the subsequent growth of families changed the composition of sugar plantation communities from primarily single male laborers to a mix of families and laborers. Immediately upon arrival in Hawai'i, women contributed both paid and unpaid labor to their families and communities. Their work in the canefields and in their homes ensured the economic survival of their families and the development of a substantial family community on Hawai'i's sugar plantations.

Paid Labor: Field Work & Kitchen Work
Immigrants came to Hawai'i hoping for a better economic future. The wives of sugar workers, including Japanese picture brides, constituted a key financial resource. While young men married to establish households and obtain the benefits of marriage - home-cooked meals, sexual relations, and a family - they also expected, and needed, their young brides to contribute to the family coffers.

In 1910, one-third of all employed Japanese women worked in the sugar fields. Assignment to a "women's field gang" immediately upon arrival was typical. Women on the sugar plantations earned 50¢ for a 10-hour work day and were expected to work six days a week. A full month's pay of $13 was based on 26 days of work and equaled 66% of Japanese men's wages. The plantation supplied each laborer [and his family] with housing, basic medical care and fuel for cooking but the quality of these perquisites was often in dispute. Women typically weeded the fields (hoe hana), irrigated (hanawai), stripped the cane of dry leaves (holehole) or cut seed cane (pula pula). However, when women worked with their husbands in contract (konpan) gangs, they did everything, including the heavy work of cutting, carrying and loading cane.

The canefields were a social space as well as worksite. With families to care for, women had little free time and fieldwork offered daily contact with other women. The companionship of others is what women most often remember about their fieldwork days. As picture brides, women often emigrated to new communities without the support of sisters or mothers. They created new networks of friends from their prefectures to replace the assistance of friends and female relatives back home.

Pregnancy necessitated a decision between fieldwork and other income-earning activities. Not only was fieldwork hard physical labor, but watching over a child in the fields was difficult and required a sympathetic luna. While a number of "progressive" plantations offered childcare, not everyone had access or could afford the fees. Thus, women used a number of childcare strategies, including tying their infants to their backs or leaving their younger children in the care of an older sibling or a neighbor. Other women left the canefields and earned money by providing laundry services, meals, or clothing for the "bachelor" men on the plantations. For many women, this was the only way to combine family responsibilities with income earning.

Mother and child, Pu'unene, Mau'i

While the emigration of Japanese women during the picture bride era changed the composition of the plantation camps, there still remained a large community of single male laborers. In 1910 men outnumbered adult women 2-to-1 in the Territory and in some communities, the sex ratio was even more skewed. Concurrent with picture bride emigration, sugar planters recruited young single Filipino laborers. A 1927 census of all 43 sugar plantations reported that while the ratio of Japanese men to women was 1.5:1, Filipino men outnumbered Filipinas 7 to 1 and, unfortunately for men on the neighbor islands, most Filipino women lived on O'ahu. Both Filipinas and Japanese women earned money providing domestic services - laundry, clothing, and meals - to single men. The money women earned, from fieldwork, laundry or a combination of both, was essential for their families' survival.

Unpaid Labor: For Family and Community
In addition to their income-earning activities, women also performed unpaid work at home as they maintained the well-being of their families. After an exhausting 10 hours in the fields women returned home to care for the household needs of their families - cooking, cleaning, sewing and child development. These family responsibilities extended women's work days into the dark hours of night. A woman's household labor benefitted not only her family, but also her family's employer as she provided the daily necessities - food, clothing, emotional care - to replenish the worker. Women's "reproductive labor" extended beyond their biological capabilities to include the care and maintenance of workers and family members.

The entire community benefitted from women's unpaid labor as women built stable communities and maintained cultural practices within their families and communities. Temples, prefectural associations and cultural groups depended upon women's community work and perpetuation of cultural traditions, especially in immigrant communities.

Labor Organizing for A Better Life
After 1900, various plantations found married men to be more dependable workers. With families to feed, they couldn't afford to take days off or cause trouble. But family responsibilities cut both ways. With families to feed, workers also needed larger paychecks. Not surprisingly, increased wages were the primary demands of both the 1909 and 1920 sugar strikes.

Women sugar workers hoe hana in the canefields

Constituting 70% of the workforce, the Japanese organized the 1909 strike but were defeated by the united efforts of the Hawai'i Sugar Planters Association (HSPA). However, three months after the strike, the HSPA raised wages and abolished wage differentials based on race (although wages for women were usually uniform). Both the restrictions on Japanese immigration and the solidarity of the Japanese strikers encouraged the HSPA to diversify its work force and begin recruiting in the Philippines.

Sugar workers did not organize a multi-ethnic, unified labor union until 1946 under the auspices of the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Worker ethnocentricity, combined with the sugar planters' history of playing one ethnic group against another as strikebreakers, kept workers wary of each other, socializing separately and organizing separate labor unions.

However, in 1920 both Japanese and Filipino workers participated in a coordinated, six-month strike on Oahu (with workers on the neighbor islands sending funds). But the existence of two separate "ethnic unions," the Japanese Federation of Labor and the Filipino Labor Union, did not facilitate a unified strike. The strength of the workers and the preparation of the Federation of Japanese Labor is manifest in the 12,000 workers the plantations evicted and the estimated $11.5 million loss by the plantations.

As 20% of the Japanese sugar work force, Japanese women participated in the 1920 sugar strike in large numbers. The Japanese Federation of Labor initially included paid maternity leave (2 weeks prior and 6 weeks post-partum) as a strike demand. The key issue in the 1920 strike, the demand for higher wages, was based on the need to provide for workers' families.

Kiyomi Katsununuma's 2nd birthday party, 1901

The number of Japanese women working in the sugar fields decreased rapidly after 1920. As the immigrant generation aged, widowhood was the most likely reason to remain working for the plantations. Young Japanese American daughters worked as domestic servants and in pineapple canneries. Young women only returned to the plantations after 1932 when the Depression forced many nisei (second generation) men and women back to the plantations for stable but low-waged work. However, an occupational shift occurred as these young women did not work in the fields but in plantation offices and stores.

The early 20th century was a time of immense social change in Hawai'i's sugar plantations. Annexation of Hawai'i as a Territory of the U.S. abolished contract labor and workers were theoretically free to leave plantations whenever they could afford to do so. This change in the employer/employee relationship encouraged responsible plantations to begin to consider workers' needs to entice them to stay on their plantations. The 1907 Gentlemen's Agreement restricted the immigration of Japanese male laborers who responded by sending for wives and family.

There is always a tension between the controlling, very powerful forces of employers who control where workers live and work, and the human side of this social interaction we call work and community-building. Even with limited choices, people interact and build lives for themselves.

It is part of our immigrant folklore to expect a mismatch of a young beautiful woman with an older, work-wearied husband whose matchmaking photo was taken many years before. The folklore of romance includes the not uncommon tales of those couples who grew to love and cherish each other. However, no community is immune from the social ills of abuse, alcoholism, gambling and the stress of a new marriage in a new country. Both these extremes, as well as the middle ground, are the history and legacy of immigrant picture brides as they labored in the canefields and in their homes to develop a strong family community in the sugar plantations of Hawai'i.

Bibliography
Beechert, Edward. Working in Hawai'i: A Labor History. (Univ. Hawai'i Press, 1985).
Ethnic Studies Oral History Project. Waialua And Haleiwa: The People Tell Their Story. (ESOHP, 1977).
Nomura, Gail. "Issei Working Women in Hawai'i," in Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women. Asian Women United of California, eds. (Beacon Press, 1989) pp.135-147.
"Picture Brides: Lives of Hawai'i's Early Immigrant Women from Japan, Okinawa and Korea." Univ. of Hawai'i Women's Studies. (Video)
Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawai'i. (Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 1983).

Teresa Bill teaches Women's Studies and U.S. History at Honolulu Community College. She has been researching and interpreting women's labor history and Hawaii's sugar history for a variety of public history venues since 1989.
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