Dr. William Puette, Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Hawaii
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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.
Alma Ogata
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Alma Ogata
Interview by Robynn Takayama
Transcript created June 8, 2005
WHAT WAS YOUR MOTHER’S LIFE LIKE IN JAPAN AND WHY SHE WANTED TO BECOME A PICTURE BRIDE
:42 My mother Sugi Misukami was born in Kumamoto City. It was in the city at the time. It was a prefecture. Kumomoto prefecture and the county was…I forgot. And she was very happy working in a place where there were micro…
5 My mother Sugi Misukami was born in a little village in Kamikai in the province of Watakugun, Kumamoto prefecture. She was the last of three children and the only daughter of Yahichi Misukami and Tojo Misukami. :29 She was sent to the temple to learn sewing for three years and after that, she was employed at a silk worm company where the high school graduates were able to look through the microscope to look for disease in the worms.