The plantation had wood cutters who would cut the trees and chop the wood and after it had dried sufficiently other workers would haul the wood to the camps and deliver wood to each eligible person according to the size
The plantation had wood cutters who would cut the trees and chop the wood and after it had dried sufficiently other workers would haul the wood to the camps and deliver wood to each eligible person according to the size of the family.
The Java plum had been brought to Hawai‘i for this purpose because it burned with a hot fire and it grew fast.
By the time I started working at Kipu the wood cutters were gone and so were the communal furo. A few people had made their own furos but they had to cut their own wood in their spare time.
Ironwood and guava also made good firewood, as both were slow burning and produced a very hot fire so that a little wood went a long way. During World War II the army set up a small saw mill at Kipu to saw eucalyptus trees into bridge timbers and other heavy construction work. They did not want all the scrap pieces so our people would use this wood for their own hotwater heaters. We also sold a lot of unusable logs to different people in the Lihu‘e and Koloa districts. Fuel was in short supply and several small bakeries were our good customers.
Running water was available very early. At first it came from the stream that ran by the camp and then in the 1930s we were able to tap into a system that Grove Farm had developed.
Before the Grove Farm water all the people would save their Bull Durham bags to use as filters on their faucets. This was to prevent tadpoles and mosquito fish from getting into the food. This all went out when we started getting water from Grove Farm.
There is one little story about the “clean” Grove Farm water. In the middle ‘50s Grove Farm, while deep plowing one of the fields through which the water pipe ran, the main line was cut. We were without water for about a week until they got it fixed. One day during this outage I went up to the cistern with a man from Grove Farm and looked in. The cistern was completely dry but in one of the far corners was a small shaft of light. This light came from a crack in the wall above the concrete part of the tank. Below this corner was a pile of bones of toad, frogs and rats that had fallen into the water over the years and had swum to the light but couldn’t get out and had drowned. I then realized why the water had such a flavorful body to it. What you don’t know will not hurt you.
Medical care was supplied by the plantation at no charge to the workers or their families as long as they went to the company doctor. Dental work was not included.
A whole beef was cut up at Christmas and the Fourth of July and divided among all the people on the plantation according to the size of the family. At Christmas my grandfather would make up packages, which included two apples, two oranges, a small package of candy and some small present for all the children of the workers who were under 12 years old.
Once a month during World War II, we would kill a pig and butcher it and sell the meat for three pounds for a dollar. These pigs usually came from one of the Kipu families who had raised the pig. It was my job to weigh and collect the money then give it to the owner of the pig. Most of the time they would buy a baby pig from us but the rest of the money was his. By the time the war ended this practice was stopped because there were not enough people or pigs. At least when the meat was scarce our people had some access to fresh meat and pork.
There was no grass in most of the yards as all available space was used for fruit and vegetables. Some of the Japanese would have small fishponds where they could raise a few koi. The Filipinos grew some vegetables such as hot red peppers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes and yard long beans. They also raised katogai and marungai trees. From one they would use the leaves as a vegetable and from the other the flowers.
During the sugar cane years every little space along the edges of the cane fields and the irrigation ditches were used for planting vegetables. This was where most of the squashes and parea was grown. All unused space along the irrigation ditches were used by both the Japanese and the Filipinos and no one took what didn’t belong to them.
A great many of the Filipino yards were use for the raising of fighting cocks. Our Hawaiian families did not raise any vegetables as it seemed that they didn’t eat many vegetables.
