Mauna Kea Oral History Appendix - Office of Mauna Kea Management

1951, the Territory was getting twenty-five thousand bucks in Federal Aid, and we got
about $30,000.00 in Hunting License money.
KM: Hmm.
DW: They had two people working and there was no money, they couldn’t hire more. So, I
hopped on a yacht for a year, went around the South Pacific. And when I got back, there
was a job opening.
LW: When did you go to Pöhakuloa
DW: Well, when I got back in 1953, they sent me to Läna‘i for a year to study chukars. But I
got my parole, in six months.
Group: [all laughing]
DW: I liked the job that was a good set up but… Läna‘i was interesting, but when the
pineapple company decided to get rid of the cattle and the sheep and they had a big
strike, and part of the strike was social problems with the workers. They couldn’t go
fishing, they couldn’t touch game, they couldn’t hunt.
KM: Yes.
DW: They couldn’t own a dog.
KM: Yes.
DW: They couldn’t own a jeep. They were real bitter you know, it was a year long strike.
KM: Yes, it was a very rigid, women couldn’t leave the island without the permission of their
husbands.
DW: Yes, they couldn’t own the land, they couldn’t nothing. And they (the Plantation Co.) ,
were lucky that the Territory would help them manage their game. Fish & Game was
under the Board of Agriculture and Forestry was to help them and manage their game
resource… But the guy from Hilo (Woodworth), which was a big program with the nënë
project, and the hunting program up Mauna Kea, he wanted to move to Honolulu
because the Honolulu guy (Don Smith) quit.
UW: Who was that
DW: Don Smith. And he was the guy, Don Smith, was the one in the plane who went flying to
locate the sheep. The “diseased sheep” [chuckling].
KM: [chuckling]
DW: And Woodworth left to go to Honolulu, and Smith went to the Mainland, and I went to
Hilo, Pöhakuloa.
KM: From Läna‘i you went to Hilo Is it Ah Fat who was the Ah Fat
DW: Ah Fat.
KM: Was he working
DW: Yes. We had a nënë program and we got some money from the Federal… John Burns
got the money for budget, and so we had hired a full-time poultry man, and Ah Fat had
experienced it in the Big Island, he was a Kohala boy.
KM: Yes.
DW: And he raised turkeys for Parker Ranch, but he’d wound up a pig farmer in Wai‘anae.
[See Oral History Interviews with AhFat Lee; May 16 th & 17 th , 2002]
KM: You’re kidding.
Mauna Kea– “Ka Piko Kaulana o ka ‘Äina”
Kumu Pono Associates LLC
A Collection of Oral History Interviews (HiMK67-050606) A:343