Big Island resident Kenneth Fujii has shared several stories about his family and their lives as immigrants. Recently he told me about his grandparents’ work at Onomea Sugar Co. plantation in Papaikou, north of Hilo.

“Life on the sugar plantations on the Big Island in the old days was hard work for the early immigrants,” Fujii says. “The pay was meager and the hours were long: 10 hours a day, six days a week for a 60-hour workweek. Sunday was their only time off.

“The wages on the plantation were low, even by early 1900s standards. Pay was determined not only by occupation or craft, but also by ethnicity, with Japanese and Filipino workers getting the lowest pay. White workers earned the most, with Portuguese workers a close second in wages on the totem pole, and Hawaiians and Chinese in the middle.

“In the early 1900s,” Fujii says, “my grandfather made $20 a month working as a carpenter on the sugar plantation. That’s about 90 cents a day. No wonder many Japanese immigrant workers returned home to Japan after completion of their contracts. Work was hard and pay was low.”

The plantation workday started with the loud, piercing steam whistle from the sugar mill, which carried throughout the plantation community and was the signal for workers to wake up.

“Actually, the wives of the workers were already up, cooking breakfast and also preparing a bento lunch pail for their husbands to take to work, to eat for their lunch break in the fields.”

The lunch for his grandfather was usually rice with fish, chicken or beef from the evening meal the night before. Since there was no refrigeration, the fish, beef or chicken were usually highly salted or were cooked in a sugar-shoyu, syrupy glaze that would prevent spoilage when stored in a screened cabinet at room temperature overnight.

At lunchtime workers of different ethnicities often ate together under a shade tree and shared their lunch pail contents. “Foods like teriyaki beef and tempura, Portuguese sausage, kalua pork and laulau, pancit noodles, hamburger patties and sandwiches all became part of the familiar taste preferences of the multi-ethnic workforce in Hawaii,” Fujii says.

The work began at 6 a.m. at the crack of dawn and lasted until the pau hana whistle at 4:30 p.m. In between they had a half-hour break for lunch around noon, for a 10-hour workday. In the evening there was a lights-out whistle from the sugar mill at 8 p.m. to signal that workers should be getting to bed. It was a highly regulated lifestyle, all governed by the plantation whistles.

Payday came once a month. “My grandfather often told us that at the end of the month, on payday, he would line up along with other workers at the paymaster’s table No. 1 to get his monthly pay of $20, paid with a single $20 gold coin.

“He then had to go to table No. 2, which was the bill collector for the Onomea plantation company store. He and his wife often bought supplies at the company store and ran a tab during the month, like a charge account.“

On payday the payments were due and bills had to be settled, “so my grandfather gave the shiny gold coin to the bill collector at table No. 2, who would then deduct what was owed and give my grandfather the change. His take-home pay was often just about half of what he had earned for the month, and it had to last their family for another whole month.

“We often joked that the plantation could use a single gold coin to pay everyone because the gold coin which they received at table No. 1 had to be turned in to the bill collector at table No. 2 to pay for outstanding balances at the company store, and the coin went back and forth between the plantation management and the workers on payday.

“To make ends meet, my Hayakawa grandparents grew vegetables in the back of their house. Daikon, pole beans, gobo (burdock), bo­bora (kabocha), carrots, soybeans, cabbage, sweet potatoes, pineapple, papaya, ginger, araimo (dasheen), eggplants, peanuts (this was the first time I realized that peanuts grew underground) and onions were common crops.

“They also raised chickens both for eggs and our weekend chicken hekka dinners, made with chickens from the coop and veggies from the backyard garden,” Fujii recalls. “The chicken manure was used to fertilize the crops, so they were very robust and healthy. Friends in the plantation community often brought freshly caught fish and crabs to the house. Without refrigeration, seafood had to be consumed or shared quickly.

“As children we sometimes went with Grandma into the gullies and upcountry bushes to collect and harvest fruits and other edibles like avocados (locals called them alligator pears in those days), mangoes, poha, guavas, bananas, warabi (bracken ferns), bamboo shoots and kakuma (young tree fern fronds).

“For extra money my grandmother cooked bento meals for the single men who lived in longhouse dormitories and who did not cook for themselves. She did laundry for the men, too. That brought in additional income to the family. But it was hard work, especially doing the laundry for the men who brought their work clothes to be washed.

“The clothes were always stained by red dirt and grass from working in the fields, and she had to scrub the clothes by hand to get them clean. After washing, the clothes had to be starched, ironed and folded for pickup by the men.”

A big treat for the children on the plantation was at Christmas time. At Onomea Plantation in Papaikou, plantation manager John T. Moir and his wife would invite all of the children of the plantation workers to come to their big house on the hill on Christmas Eve.

There the children lined up in front of the big porch and then, one by one, approached the porch where Mrs. Moir and husband were sitting in rocking chairs.

“Each child in succession would go up to the Moirs and wish them a Merry Christmas, and the child would then be rewarded with a bright red delicious apple imported from Washington state,” Fujii says. “What a treat for the children. Apples were a rare commodity in early Hawaii, and to be given a fresh apple was definitely a precious occasion.

“My mom said that she always held on to her Christmas apple to take home to show to her mother and father, while her four brothers and sisters would eat their apples right away on the spot on the way home. That always proved to be a mistake for my mom because once they reached home, the family would peel and slice her apple into thin wedges, and everyone got a taste of my mom’s apple. But she did not mind sharing.”

Fujii also told me that after a while his grandparents started their own micro- businesses, but I’ll save that for a future column.

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.