Forgotten Filipino labor leader Pablo Manlapit gets new push for justice from Hawaii lawyers
HONOLULU (AP) — Long before the grape fields of Delano became a symbol of farmworker resistance, a Filipino labor lawyer named Pablo Manlapit was risking everything to organize sugar workers in Hawaii. Now, more than a century later, a group of Filipino lawyers is trying to restore his place in history—and clear his name legally.
Manlapit arrived in Honolulu in 1910 as a "sakada," one of thousands of contract laborers from the Philippines recruited to work on Hawaii's sugar plantations. He quickly saw the exploitation his countrymen faced: low wages, long hours, and segregation from better-paid Japanese workers. By 1921, he had become Hawaii's first Filipino lawyer and founded a union that demanded equal pay and an eight-hour workday.
He also managed to bridge ethnic divides, persuading Japanese laborers—who earned more—to join Filipino strikers. That coalition building made him a target. In 1924, a violent confrontation between striking Filipino workers and police on Kauai, known as the Hanapepe Massacre, left 16 strikers and four officers dead. Though Manlapit was not on the island at the time, he was implicated, convicted of conspiracy, imprisoned, and later exiled to California. He was eventually deported to the Philippines and died in 1969 in relative obscurity.
Today, the Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association is working to overturn that conviction posthumously, arguing that Manlapit was wrongfully implicated. The effort, they hope, will not only restore his legacy but also shine a light on a chapter of Asian American labor history that has been largely ignored on the U.S. mainland.
“It’s a story that needs to be told,” said Daniel Padilla, the group’s president. “A lot of us are second generation, so we don’t have knowledge of these stories. His story gets overshadowed in the broader labor movement in California.”
Recent sexual abuse allegations against César Chavez, the iconic Mexican American labor leader, have prompted broader reflection on the diverse roots of the farmworker movement—and on Filipino activists who played a key role long before the 1965 Delano strike. That reflection inspired the lawyers' group to explore clearing Manlapit’s name.
Kevin Nadal, president of the Filipino American National Historical Society, said Filipino Americans have historically been left out of mainstream labor narratives. Those in Hawaii, an ocean away from California’s Central Valley, were even less documented. “It may have been documented through oral histories,” Nadal said. “We love oral histories, but if no one writes them down and it doesn’t get published, it just gets lost.”
According to Nadal, Manlapit’s mobilization was likely the first documented instance of organized Filipino labor in the United States. “It started with Hawaii,” he said. “What was happening in Hawaii, it would have been hard for people to know it was happening in California.”
In recent years, there has been some progress. In May, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center partnered with Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono on a poster exhibit highlighting the sakadas. Those laborers were central to making Filipinos one of the largest ethnic groups in Hawaii today—they once made up more than half of the state’s plantation workforce. Hawaii also produced the nation’s first and only governor of Filipino descent, Ben Cayetano.
Cayetano, now 87, said he never felt a strong connection to his Filipino roots growing up poor in Honolulu. “I was born and raised here so I was more influenced by the local culture,” he said. But he added that honoring leaders like Manlapit is also a way to honor the sakada who raised him as a single father.
For Becky Gardner, a lawyer who moved to Honolulu from rural New York, connecting with her Filipino ancestry meant uncovering her family’s history as laborers on Kauai plantations. She typed her great-grandfather’s name, Francisco Alcano, into an online database and found records of his 1928 arrival on a steamship named for President Grover Cleveland. “It made me feel like I was part of Hawaii’s history too,” she said.
The Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association is reviewing whether Manlapit’s 1924 conviction was legally wrongful. They are also exploring the creation of a fellowship at the University of Hawaii’s law school to formally examine the case. Kainani Collins Alvarez, a former public defender who now runs a family-law firm, said she wants to apply her criminal defense background to the effort. “For me, it's really important to go back and rectify the truth. History is built on the facts that we knew at the time.”
Even though Manlapit was eventually pardoned, the association argues that a full overturning of the conviction would mean more than a pardon. “It would mean more of understanding justice and ensuring that people realize that we can fight for justice and that justice can prevail,” Nadal said.
Manlapit’s story has also inspired a new generation. Khara Jabola-Carolus, a lawyer who grew up in California and graduated from Hawaii’s law school, said she wanted to become a lawyer because of him. “There's a long history of Filipino organizing. That's why I wanted to be a lawyer here.” She wants people to know Manlapit as well as they know Filipino pop stars. “We need representation and access to seeing ourselves as heroes and movement leaders and not just entertainers. Filipino Americans need to know Pablo Manlapit as much as they know Bruno Mars or Olivia Rodrigo.”
___ Tang reported from Phoenix.