 with John Waihei and our continuing roles, rascals, and dud, the people who made contemporary Hawaii. And today, our guest is a very special person. His name is Gary Kubota. Gary is a longtime journalist in Hawaii, a back award-winning journalist, and he's a playwright. And for today's discussion, he's also the author of a book called Hawaii Stories of Change. And it is the Kokua Hawaii Oral History Project. And by the way, folks, if you haven't read this book, I would really recommend that you get a copy or pick up a copy from someplace. Because it covers an era that many people don't really know about in Hawaii. And it's about, let's say, 50, a little over 50 years ago in the state of Hawaii, with the origins of a protest movement. Now, what's so interesting about all of this to me is that you need to know that this all happened after a lot of the legends that we talked about had their return back to Hawaii and had their chance to develop Hawaii primarily after statehood. What I'm talking about is the Nisei, Democratic Revolution, all of that came to Hawaii. And we have always, in our history, in our contemporary history, counted that as a major shift in Hawaiian governance and politics, and correctly so, rightfully so. And yet what's interesting to me is that in 1969, 1970, there was this unrest going on about what was happening in Hawaii. In other words, the children of the reformers were saying, we need to have a reform. We need to have a revolt. And something began. And the person who knows the most about what happened in the late 60s and early 1970s is with me today. And so welcome, Gary. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Not only did you write the book, you actually participate, right? I mean, you were there. You know, this is not something that you just had to research. Right. I was a member of a Kukua, Hawaii. I became a member after I got arrested in Colombo Valley. I was there just to support the group, opposing an eviction of Hawaiians and farmers. I thought that it was really unspeakable, that it was unacceptable for developments of that sort to be able to push out poor working people. And they included people who had fought in the war, Hawaiians who had fought in war were fighting in Vietnam, Japanese, two Filipinos losing their lives. So there was a huge contradiction at that time. Between what was happening in Hawaii and what was happening in Colombo Valley. Go ahead. I was just going to say, though, that you recently, I think it was May 11th, you recently celebrated or commemorated the arrest, your arrest, I guess, among others, in Colombo Valley. May 11th was the 50th anniversary. 1971. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the background as you were doing it. And also, we want to hear about the people who were involved, yourself, obviously. But who else was involved with Kukua, Hawaii? Well, we had a pretty wide mix of ethnicities. I mean, one person was a graduate or was close to being a graduate of Annapolis, Lenten Park. And he and his brother decided to oppose the Vietnam War. Like they didn't like what was happening to the Asian, the way Asians are being treated, not only in Vietnam, but in the nation as well. You know, it really ran deep and part of the problem was back then that although the 442nd Hanger Battalion had come back as heroes, they weren't in the history books. You know, it was a basically same old civilization started in the Tigris, Euphrates, and moved through Europe like that. And there was nothing in the books about Hawaiian history or the fight for labor rights and things like that. So there was an inequity and imbalance in terms of like who stories got told. Yeah, and so who are these, tell me more about these brothers, you know, who are they and the like and how do they fit into all of this? We know that they were obviously activists, anti-Vietnam War, and it seemed that in the early, late 60s, early 70s, that was the protest against Vietnam was pretty strongly felt on the University of Hawaii camp. Right. Does that predate, does that, do those protests predate Kalama Valley or? Yeah, they predate Kalama Valley and then they were happening during Kalama Valley itself like that in 71. You had the terror offensive I think, I believe in 69 where, you know, it was pretty much obvious that the United States was losing the war. They didn't have the support of the people at that time in Vietnam, and there was corruption evidently in that. The thing about it, I guess, is that, you know, and I learned about it later, Stolini Hale, who was a leader of our organization, you know, he was in the military at one point and I heard later on and learned later on that he had a real bad, bad story. He was in the South and he was with all these other people on a jeep returning from to the barracks and all of a sudden the MPs singled him out, pulled him out of the car, I mean the jeep and threw him in jail. Wow. He was there for a number of days and he got beaten up, you know. He was the only non-white guy in the group. Wow. So that, and so Stolini comes home to Hawaii and he organizes, I guess, as you said he was a leader in the Kukua, Hawaii. Who else, who else? Who did Stolini? Ed Ching came back like that and he basically, he didn't get beaten up but he saw how the military operated like that and it was, it was not, you know, it was not an equal thing. I mean obviously part of the problem I think was that a lot of people weren't aware of Asian contributions to the United States or things like that during my father's time. I mean my father was a decorated war hero who had actually rescued, helped to rescue the Texas regiment that was surrounded by Germans like that and you know two other Texas regiments had tried to rescue them and my father's regiment was the one called in to actually break through the lines and they did and it cost them dearly, you know. And that's a fantastic story for the 442nd. On a personal level and this is something I haven't talked to, I talk about it in the book because I think it's necessary and you know I didn't want to go to war obviously. I didn't, I didn't, you know, once I saw what was happening I didn't believe in it but the other part was that I remember, you know, as a surfer rescuing three Marines off Fort Deruse during the summer it was like a freakish, I think about 69 during a freakish, it was storm surfing stuff like that so I get them on the beach, John, you know, and they said wow thank you, thank you, you know. I mean they were calling for help. They were about a good two quarter miles out, you know, and I was about, you know, a mile and a half out because that, you know, you got at least two breaks some and I wanted to just the second break and then just the next break right, you know, that's a long ride that way. So I'm hearing them but nobody else can hear them because there's only me and I just had the Hawaiian guy and the Hawaiian guy had gone in. You know, so I kick out over there and I get them, you know, I show them how to give them my surfboard and they go to the channel where it's, you know, less waves and things and we get in and then they asked me before I was Hawaiian I said no, no, you know, I'm actually Japanese like that, you know, I've been living here all night and one of the guys says, and you know, they're only under 20s like that, even some 1918, they said, you mean we got rescued by a gook, you know, and then one of the guys that suddenly realized what they were saying and they apologized, you know, and it didn't strike me at the time as anything big, you know, so I just wanted to get back and go surfing, you know what I mean? I thought, well, you know, black lady blank, you know, don't go into the water, promise me not to go back into the water and then I went out loud again. But I thought about it later on. I thought, you know, here you are like that, that supposedly like the Marines and everything and they're calling the agent, how are you going to win a war when you're calling the people like that gooks? Yeah, you know, and so this is the background for yourself and solely and others that came together at Kalama Valley. Now, as I understand Kalama Valley, it was actually the Bishop of the state who owned the property that we're looking at developing it. And so the policy in Hawaii at that time was pretty pro development of a thing. Otherwise, this wouldn't be proceeding. And as a result, I'm a Kukua Hawaii got founded started. Yeah, I think before before you went to there, what happened? Who did you talk to? How do you get organized? How does all of this happen? Well, I came in, I came in a little later, but basically, the person who had a blueprint was Larry Kamakavi-Voland. Larry came back from Berkeley, and he had been listening to lectures by Bobby Seal, one of the Black Panthers. And Bobby actually went to his church and lectured on Sunday like that. It was like a regular session for like about, must have been about three months or something like that. Larry got to know Bobby. Bobby Seal later became mayor of Oakland, right? What a transformation for him to be elected mayor after being a Black Panther. And so Larry took to heart certain kind of practices and things like that. And we used those practices and what we did in terms of how you organize a march. How do you organize a demonstration with thousands of people there? How do you respond to people saying, well, why can't you all get along together? Why do you want to cause points of separation in terms of race like that? And I think that, you know, they're very articulate. Larry and Colonial Hallow, Colonial especially. Colonial Hallow. Where was he from? Colonial Housing. And I mean, he knew how to talk to the poor people, the Lumpins, the, you know, the semi-criminals or whatever. The elements that, you know, some people would not really want to talk to, they went into the prisons. And they completely mesmerized as I understand that the prisoners like that, you know, one of them said, well, you know, we enjoyed it so much, we don't want you guys to go. And what they didn't want to say. Okay, we're at all halfway mark right now. So we're going to take a short one minute break. And then we'll be right back to hear about more of the people who laid the foundation for the modern pro contemporary protest movement in Hawaii. We want to come back to where we left off, you know, with Larry and Coloni. And I just wanted to mention, you know, the Larry Kamakavibi-Oli actually becomes the father of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii. I mean, part of the protest in addition to Kalama Valley was something, if I recall, called Our History Our Way, which is, you already begin to talk about that. Right. One of the things we did is effectively stop evictions in several communities, help to stop it. Of course, it was more than just us, Kodakampi Waipahu, Waiholi Waikani, census tract 57 in Kalihi, Haula, Heiakea, and even in Kauai, like that, there was there was something going on, Nukuli at the time. Nukuli, Nukuli. Well, let's talk about some of that. Who are some of the people involved in Waiholi Waikani, for example? Soli Niheo is one, and Soli was, when he got arrested, he was like the action, almost like the head of the parks, the recreation part of Kalipalama. I mean, he had, he worked in, he worked in, he worked, I was working at Model Cities that time. Right. Soli was in charge of the recreation part for the city, in the Model Cities program, and he was still, but he was, you know, he was as active as he could be, beyond the job. And he was involved in Waiholi Waikani. What about people like the... Joyon, Joyon, who had been at one point a congressional aide to Patsy Mink. She was teaching at Waianae High School, and she got arrested in Kalama Valley. I mean, these are people who had careers, and they put it on the line in order to make a statement. And, you know, I greatly admired them for that. I mean... What about somebody like Pete Thompson? Pete Thompson was an instructor in ethnic studies, and he was the, he became the go-to guy when it came to, if you needed research, if you needed a point of view that was like different than, was more native in terms of the tourist industry, in terms of H3, Pete became the go-to guy. As far as being a journalist, I would call up Pete and say, Pete, I want to interview you, or else Pete, I was working for the TV stations as a production kind of person for a while as a student. Pete, Don Robbs wants to interview you. Well, I'll tell you, I'll give you my own personal story about Pete Thompson, and that was during the 1978 Constitutional Convention. And Pete Thompson actually came and talked to a group of delegates who were all sort of undecided whether they would like to see initiative and referendum passed by the convention. And he gave, he gave one of the most articulate, he was, he was one of the most articulate persons I've ever heard. And he gave this great speech about how poor people vote with their body. And we don't have the money to do a referendum, but we have the bodies to close down the Capitol. And I was sitting there and I was fascinated by this stuff. Yeah. Well, that's actually what we did. You know, when it came to Pete locking arms in Chinatown to oppose the eviction of, you know, tenants there, when we were at ethnic, at the, at the university administration building in Manoa, and had 500 people including community members of the community, all these leaders who were faced, who communities were facing eviction came out, they brought their stoo, bowls of pots of stew and things like that to support it. And we ate really big on around evening time. And you always see the crowd, the crowd of students kind of swell around it. You know, what about, what about some of the grassroots people like, like Kalani, for example, but the Kalahiki brother? Oh, yeah, no. Randy Kalahiki, Sammy Lono, they were just, and Buddy Ako, just fantastic. And all of them, like, you know, they would come and support ethnic studies. And Randy and Sammy appeared when we were going to get, before we were going to get arrested. I was wondering, you know, what the, later on, I figured it out. They didn't want violence to occur, you know. And, you know, a lot of the police knew who Randy was, and a lot of police knew who Lono was. So, you know, the last thing they wanted to do was get Lono and Randy angry at him. And Lono actually wanted to get arrested, but nobody would touch him. He was going around doing this, arrest me, arrest me, and police would back away. You know, that is such an amazing aspect of Sam Lono, because the legend that grew up around him, basically, was he was this cultural practitioner. And then he provided, you know, the chance and sort of the, I guess, the cultural ambience of parts of the movement. He was much, but he was much more than that. He was much more. The place where he lived was in Haiku in the back. And what happened is that the community association and the development had extinguished his trail. So he sued them and he won. Because you cannot extinguish a Hawaiian traditional Hawaiian trail. So they had to provide him actors through the community. Like we would go up to the guard gate and say, we're going to see Lono. And they say, oh, okay. And we'd park in their neighborhood like that. And it was a court case called Sam Lono versus Haiku Community Association. And it decided in favor of Sam Lono. Well, what about the ministry of the movement? What about Liko Martin, you know, and some of those types of, he was around at that time, wasn't he? He got arrested with us. And, you know, Liko is the kind, he follows his own conscience and gut. And every once in a while, you know, when we had like fundraisers going around and everything, you know, he come and play. And I mean, but, you know, I'll tell you that one of the things that people don't talk about is there are a lot of people like musicians who play fundraisers for Kalama Valley, you know, to support the eviction. Here's a, I have this right here as a matter of fact. Sunday, July. And you got people here. And this is back in 71, 72. You know, a lot of Yvonne, I could see a lot of Yvonne. But these are the ones, they weren't entertaining in Waikiki. Well, Huyahana was entertaining a cellar in Waikiki. The movement also redefined what was Hawaiian entertainment because all of a sudden, you know, our focus was on emphasizing and also supporting just the common, well, it seemed common, but, you know, the music of the people, the music that was coming out at that time. The Gabi Pahi Nui. The Gabi Pahi Nui. That's right. And so the people that you're naming are sort of protégés of music, you know. And, and while Palani did it forever. But, you know, I think there's so many interesting people in so little time. But what about people like George Cooper? George Cooper, yeah, he came in, you know, to learn actually how to help the Kauai Nukulei community. And he went back and he did help them. And then Georgia, George actually, when he was doing research, I was a journalist and I lived in a condominium in Malaya. And George stayed there for about a week with his wife while he was researching land and power in Hawaii. And we had discussions as well like that. And that's why if you look at the Maui side like that, it's very interesting. Well, you know, there's so many people that and one of the other interesting people I thought that was, well, the Reverend Bob Nakata. I mean, he's been around forever. And if you ever want to look for progressive somebody, you know, that will be consistently on the progressive side, you gotta talk to the Reverend, you know, that's right. You know, he was respected by the Japanese community because he had these degrees, you know, like in science and things of math. And he was, you know, and then he was respected by the Hawaiian community because he had sensitivity. He grew up in that area in Kahaluu. And of course, Bob was very active in terms of helping to organize both sides so that there would be a strong coalition. He was like the glue, you know, and he helped me out when we were right now present day almost front street apartments in Lahain, 250 people. Yeah, let's talk about that because some of these people are still carrying on the good fight, you know, so why don't we talk a little bit about your recent events? Well, what happened is that they couldn't get a bill passed through the legislature to fund and stop the eviction fund, the state funding and buying the affordable housing occupied by the front street tenants and they're about to be evicted. And I gather together and other people helped me gather together a coalition of other people who actually were assisted back then in terms of finding housing like Ora Camp, Waihole Wai Kani. So we had the president of the Makibaka Association was a child in the arms of Mrs. Manzano. It was in a big frame of a picture of the residence and she was just a child and she attended the meetings to testify and support the front street tenants. And he had people from Waihole Wai Kani doing the same, the Reverend K. Kapali came and testified and Larry was there and Bob was there. And then, yeah. And these are people that were way back when it started, you know, and one of the interesting things about Kalama Valley was the fact that it really was the beginning of the progressive protest piece, whatever movements in Hawaii. And it wasn't just, I think the point that a lot of people don't realize, it wasn't just whole Native Hawaiian issues, although they were Native Hawaiian attributes to the movement, but it was sort of... It was a multi... It was dealing with, yeah, Kalama Valley had a mixture of, you know, you had Hawaiians, you had Portuguese, you had Hawaiian, Chinese, and things like that. And at that point, we didn't ask, what ethnic group are you? Like that, you know, we just wanted to help. And it worked out really well. And so we have put the same formula in terms of, well, you know, I called up my contacts and then we start talking with unions like ILW, AFL, CIO and got them around to supporting the front street tenants like that because of my connections with Kukuhawaii. And eventually, it got to be a popular thing. Not only did we get the unions, we got the Maui Chamber of Commerce supporting us. Hey, that's when you know that you are really crossing over, right, to the respectable side of the dial. Well, you know, it's so exciting, you know, unfortunately, we are out of time, but I want to tell anybody, you know, who's listening to the show and who will be on the tube. This is a great book. It's a great story. Go ahead, tell us a little bit. It's a blueprint on how to organize and fight any eviction, or it could be for a lot of other things. But basically, that's one of the reasons why I assembled it, because there are stories in there on how to of it all. And it works. And there's so many interesting people here, which is, you know, this is, what is Fukunaga? The Reverend. The Reverend. There were all these reverents involved in the protest movement. Well, what's Fukunaga? Yale graduate. Well, anyway, guys, thank you so much, Gary. I appreciate it. You're spending this time with me. And you know, I hope that we can have more of these people, more opportunities for the people, like the individuals you talked about who helped build Hawaii. And really started, I believe, that what we now know as the Hawaiian Renaissance and the Hawaiian movement and the like actually started with these, these movements with the Kukua Hawaii. So thank you for being on our show. Appreciate it. And Aloha. We'll see everybody in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.