Part 1:
Part 2:
My name is Franklin S. Odo. I’m director of the Asian Pacific American Program here at the Smithsonian Institution.
Ah Quon McElrath, Hawaiian Strikes, esp. 1946
Transcript
Ah Quon McElrath, Hawaiian Strikes, esp. 1946
Interview by Robynn Takayama
Date:
1 Disc, 1 Track – 53:30
TRACK 1 – 53:30
ROBYNN: …descriptions that might support the workers’ claims that the work was like slavery?
Dr. William Puette, Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Hawaii
ROBYNN: So some laborers have compared work to slavery. Analyze & detail.
BILL: The question of slavery may seem like a harsh statement, that Hawaii’s laborers were treated like slaves, but if you go back and look at the records of how people were treated at that time period, it really is justifiable.
You could also argue, and there’s scholars who have argued that plantation workers were treated better in Hawaii than in any place where there were sugar plantations because that’s true. On other sugar plantations it was flat-out slavery.