1 - American Memory

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days, more than 23,000 workers were unemployed, a rate of 6.3 percent.
By February 1972 when the strike had resumed, the rate of imem-
ployment had risen to 6.5 percent. Tliis was the first time since 1956
that Hawaii's unemployment rate exceeded the national average. Even
these alarming figures do not tell the whole story—that many people
were forced to work a reduced workweek. They of course do not
show up on the unemployment rolls, but their take-home pay was
cut by as much as half—at a time when prices were steadily rising
because of the strike.
Indeed, the effects of shipping stoppages are felt not only by our
businessmen, but by every person living in Hawaii. The consumer and
food price index is compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau
of Labor Statistics, attest to the impact of these strikes on Hawaii's
consumer prices. During the months of June through October 1971,
Honolulu's food prices rose 4i/^ percent, while nationwide food prices
were declining three-tenths of 1 percent during that same period due
to the wage-price freeze which began in August. The average family in
Hawaii was paying 72 cents for a head of lettuce and $2.28 for 10
pounds of potatoes, more than twice the mainland cost for these and
other staple food items.
I cannot impress upon you strongly enough the importance which
I attach to the problem. During the 100-plus day shipping stoppage I
flew to San Francisco for talks with both sides in the dispute.
I presented the plight of our people both to Harry Bridges of the
ILWU and to Ed Flynn of the PAL\. Both tliese men admitted to me
that the people of Hawaii were unfairly being held hostage in their
dispute. Both agreed that less than a dozen ships would suffice to pro-
vide the minimum needs of Hawaii and keep our State from facing
economic disaster. Less than a dozen ships, gentlemen, and a tieup of
west coast docks will normally idle as many as 200 vessels in west coast
ports.
I think Mr. Flynn summed up the attitude of both sides in the dis-
pute fairly succinctly. He shrugged his shoulders and he said "It's just
one of those things." Well, gentlemen, as mayor of the city and coimty
of Honolulu, in which resides 83 percent of the entire population of
the State of Hawaii, that is not a good enough answer for me or the
people I serve. Our people are entitled to protection from these stop-
pages, and if it is humanly possible for me to do so, I aim to see that
they get it.
In conclusion, gentlemen, I ask as others have done, to use your
imagination for a moment. Visualize an impeneti'able wall built
around the city of Washington. No surface transportation entering
or leaving the area, no cars, no buses, no trucks, no trains, no ships.
Your only contact with the rest of the United States would be via air
from the west coast.
If this happened to the city of Washington, how long would it take
Congress to act ? I am certain it would not take long. Not the years
and years that Hawaii has waited. A general surface transportation
strike would be unthinkable for a mainland city. Yet when Hawaii's
shipping is cut off; that is exactly what happens here.
I say to you very bluntly, gentlemen, that when one of the 50 sover-
eign States of this I^nion can find itself isolated, virtually cut off from
the rest of the world as was the city of Berlin in 1948, and the Govern-