The essay "The Sugar Kingdom: The Making of Plantation Hawai'i" written by Ronald Takaki is an informative essay on the history of the sugar plantations in Hawaii during the 1840's. The information is relevant to the Asian American experience and Asian American Movement because it reveals that those who are white have oppressed Asians long before the timeline U.S. history textbooks state so.
In 1835, William Hooper from Boston would arrive to the island of Kauai in order to establish a mercantile trading house called Ladd and Company. Him and other settlers would hire the natives of Kauai to work in their newly acquired and established sugar plantations. However, these natives would continue to develop great distrust towards Hooper and his partners and so Hooper would eventually bring those who are Chinese to work on his plantations. Exploiting Chinese immigrants would save Hooper labor and profits. These Chinese workers would also ultimately develop a lack of trust towards their employers. Hooper would continuously use the method of continuously bringing over and exploiting labor from immigrants from all over Asia like Koreans, Japanese, and Filipinos when those he previously brought over would decide not to work anymore.
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