Born in Ilocos Norte, Philippines, in 1906, Agapito Sadang was recruited by the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association, and upon his arrival in 1926 at Honolulu aboard the ship “President Cleveland” he was assigned to Makee Sugar Co. of Kealia, Kauai.
While employed at Makee, and later, Lihue Plantation, he resided at Camp 35, once located below the intersection Olohena and Kaapuni roads, Kapaa.
In 1947, he married my wife’s grandmother, Rita Composo Esquirra (1904-76), after her husband, Bernadino, died, and he moved from Camp 35 up to her house in Stable Camp, sited just above the intersection of Olohena and Kaapuni roads.
Their marriage was unusual for the time, since he was Ilocano and she was Visayan — two different Filipino ethnolinguistic groups.
Agapito was a stern man, yet most kind to Rita and her children, and he helped raise Rita’s grandchildren, when their young mother, Ramona Ditch, passed away.
I became friends with Agapito after my marriage to Rita’s granddaughter, Ginger Beralas of Lihue, in 1968, and I lived at Stable Camp in 1971 with Rita, Agapito, Ginger and our children, Michelle and Brett.
If he wasn’t working as a push rake operator for Lihue Plantation, he was busy making lauhala hats, or caring for his prize fighting cocks and his pigs.
Some days, a couple of his plantation compadres would stop by Stable Camp and they would talk story, or he would drive to the Olympic Cafe in Kapaa, when it was a bar, and drink whiskey with them.
I’d not seen a cockfight before, when one Sunday he took me to Kumukumu Camp above Kealia to watch a big cockfight.
And, Ginger told me that during the 1950s, men of all nationalities, among them county supervisor Louie “Smokey” Gonsalves (1907-85), took part in cockfights on Sundays at Stable Camp.
Men were on the lookout for cops, and if cops were spotted, the men would grab their roosters and scatter down the pali behind the camp.
Agapito retired in 1971, and in 1978, after Grandma Rita died in 1976, he returned to the Philippines and died in Manila in 1995.
Do you have stories or pictures of Kumukumu or Kealia camp?