Japanese: Plantation Development

Seventy-two plantations had started by 1890 and these all produced 259,789,462 pounds of raw sugar a year.  This sugar was transported to processing companies on the West Coast of Hawaii.  Sugar cane cultivation required labor-intensive work everyday an the industry looked for other technologies that would make their work less strenuous.  They needed to recruit laborers to work the fields, so they recruited the Japanese.  The Japanese came in the mid-1880s.

At that time, the plantations were using railroads more often to transport the laborers to the sugar cane fields and the cane to the mills.  They also had stationary steam plows that made the work of preparing the land for planting much easier.  Still, though, other things like planting the cane, pulling weeds, and fertilizing the cane was all the same hard labor for the people.

They all worked very hard and since it was easier, the industry made indentification tags for every person.  People knew what ethnic group you were from because of the way your bango (identification tag) was shaped and numbered.

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