by Rose Cruz Churma
The original Ota Camp, based on a 1960s map, was located near St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Waipahu.
By 1972, there were a total of 131 individuals who lived in Ota Camp, 11 of them were single, elderly men who were former plantation workers.
They were the first ones who resided at Ota Camp, who cleared the swamp lands in the early 1940s and built their homes on land they rented from Tatsuichi Ota, a Japanese immigrant who arrived in Hawai’i in 1901, and who settled in Waipahu.
Several of these single elderly men built extra homes, which they rented out to incoming residents and their families.
Ota Camp was a low-income community. The residents worked in the service industry as building maintenance staff, yardmen, or janitors.
Some of the men were in construction as heavy machine operators or laborers, while the women worked as cashiers, waitresses, or as workers at Dole Cannery.
A dump site near Ota Camp was also a source of income, where residents collected materials which they sold to dealers at Sand Island.
The residents lived in a barrio lifestyle. The residents tended vegetable gardens; they raised chickens and pigs. Vegetables were exchanged or shared. Although the residents lived in separate households, everyone knew each other, as well as each other’s business. The single elderly men helped babysit their neighbors’ young children, sometimes serving as ninong (godparent) to them.
The homes were called “ramshackle” and “make-shift”, but the homes, although old, were clean and neat, and the residents enjoyed what observers called a “rural lifestyle,” where the kids played in dusty but safe roads.
That lifestyle would be threatened on Christmas of 1971 when a developer who leased the swampy land from Mr. Ota proposed to evict the residents.
This book chronicles the Ota Camp residents’ housing struggle. By 1987, the residents won the right to buy their homes and homesites, but it would be another decade before the residents would receive titles to their individual homes.
Ellen-Rae Cachola, an archivist at the William S. Richardson School of Law and lecturer at UH Mānoa Ethnic Studies Department, notes that this book “highlights Filipino organizing in Waipahu during the time of the anti-eviction movements that sparked the Hawaiian Renaissance (1960s-1980s).”
Cachola explains further:
“In a clear, easy-to-read narrative, (the author) takes us for a deep dive into the Ota camp history, and situates it with other social movements like Chinatown, Waiahole-Waikane, Sand Island, and Kalama Valley. Kerkvliet provides a transparent coverage of the challenges that Ota Camp residents faced, organizing among low-income working-class Filipino immigrants during the post-plantation era, and provides a humanist portrayal of the gendered cultural dynamics, community disagreements, and family tensions experienced by members of the core organization.”
“But she also describes the resilience and strength of leaders, like Pete Tagalog, who rose out of conditions that sought to keep him in subservience. Equally important were Nora Tagalog, Precing & Johnny Domrique, Nora Bautista, and other elderly residents who served in the background, keeping their organization afloat to weather the struggles, and to finally serve their community’s need for housing.”
Cachola further adds that “the story awakens pride and gratitude for leaders in Hawaiʻi’s Filipino community who stood by their principles, spoke up, and fought for what they deserved.”
In the book’s foreword, this publication is described as an impetus to enhance the understanding of the Filipino experience in Hawai‘i and its contributions to our State because it provides glimpses of how Filipinos’ core values, and their immigration experience have strengthened the Filipinos’ resilience and gave then the courage to resist—in this instance, the eviction from their homes.
Pete Tagalog, the acknowledged leader of the group, chose the Filipino word makibaka, which means “struggle,” for the name of the village that the displaced families would eventually call home.
“The reason why I came up with that name is so people would never forget,” he was quoted as saying when interviewed for a Honolulu Star-Bulletin article on April 15, 2001.
The documentation of this struggle is important for the younger generations who may be exploring their identity and the history of their families.
This assessment of the past as it impacts contemporary issues is relevant, not just for the Filipinos of Hawai‘i, but for other groups who left their homes for other lands, or those who have been dispossessed of their own.
The Ota Camp struggle was once featured in a local Japanese American journal—the Hawai‘i Hochi—and translated into Japanese. Ota Camp was one of many local communities statewide whose residents were being evicted and dispossessed of their homes by developers during the early 1970s, the boom years following statehood.
But Ota Camp residents prevailed—enduring Hawai‘i’s longest running community struggle.
This small group of 31 Filipino families resisted eviction by organizing and articulating the importance of keeping their close bonds, shared values, and of preserving their culture and way of life, familiar themes also shared by Japanese and other local ethnic communities.
The struggle for affordable housing by Hawai‘i’s working class is depicted in the Ota Camp eviction story by allowing the main protagonists to tell their story, simply, and in their own voice. The author was able to capture their dreams and fears by interviewing each one.
This eviction story is not only a victory for these Filipinos, but also for other local people and native Hawaiians struggling to preserve their culture and way of life, living close to the land that once belonged to them.
This book is timely—the lack of affordable housing and homelessness continue to plague the State. Perhaps the retelling of the Ota Camp struggle will serve as an inspiration.
For the protagonists in this story of resistance and resilience, there is value in being true to their core beliefs—of kapwa, the Filipino core value of shared humanity, interdependence, and shared identity of seeing the self in the other, of focusing on the collective rather than the individual.
The essence of kapwa seeps through as the main characters of this eviction struggle share their thoughts and inner conflicts.
Many non-residents of Ota Camp joined in the eviction struggle. Some of these were students and activists who were also involved in other causes like the creation of the Ethnic Studies program at the University of Hawai’i, providing public access to Hawai’i’s mountains and beaches, or raising awareness of the human rights issues brought about by the declaration of martial law in the Philippines.
A chapter is devoted to four (Gary Kubota, Johnny Verzon, Leon Dagdagan, and Herb Takahashi) staunch supporters of the struggle.
Johnny Verzon produced a video documentary some years back on the eviction story.
Leon Dagdagan documented the struggle through his photographs, and these candid photos now provide us with glimpses of the residents’ lifestyles and their activities as they navigate the processes required to organize and interact with the authority figures of the State and City governments.
The book’s author, Melinda Tria Kerkvliet, received her doctorate in history from the University of Hawai’i. Her book, Manila Workers’ Unions, 1900-1950, was published in 1992. Her second book, Unbending Cane; A Filipino Labor Leader in Hawai’i, a book on Pablio Manlapit, was published in 2002.
She is a former director of Operation Manong (now Office of Multicultural Student Services) at the University of Hawai’i.
As a charter member of the Filipino American Historical Society of Hawai’i (FAHSOH), she has been conducting oral interviews with various individuals who have made significant contributions to Filipino American history in Hawai’i.
A book talk featuring this publication will be held on June 21, Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. at the Hawai’i’s Plantation Village.
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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