The changing shape of Hawai'i during the boom years of the 1960s and '70s — when development replaced rural enclaves with subdivisions and hotels — gave rise to a new radicalism in the Islands.
It was a blend of civil disobedience and Native Hawaiian culture that championed the growing ranks of the dispossessed — fishermen, pig farmers, taro growers, the elderly and the poor, many of them Native Hawaiians. Two activist groups, Save Our Surf and Kokua Hawai'i, emerged as organizers of strident rallies, protest marches and occupations.
In 1971, they stood beside George Santos, a pig farmer who refused to leave Kalama Valley so Bishop Estate could build homes on the windy, dusty, weed-filled land behind Sandy Beach. Santos and his 200 pigs were all that remained of a community of 68 families evicted a year earlier.
Kokua Hawai'i, whose members favored Black Panther-style berets, set up a camp in the valley for nearly a month so they could lend moral support to Santos. As the final deadline for eviction approached, they had created a low-key commune, complete with chores, a garden and an outdoor shower.
It was a battle that pitted Hawaiians against themselves, in that the Bishop Estate was a wealthy land trust mandated to support Kamehameha Schools.
On May 11, nearly 50 riot-equipped police officers arrived to clear the valley. Although Santos had left, the activists had to be carried out. Some climbed onto the roof of Santos' home and sang the Kamehameha Schools alma mater, but they left peaceably. When two of his pigs died, Santos tried to leave them outside the estate offices but was turned away by police.
By the mid-'70s, the militant movement was spreading.
The Windward O'ahu agricultural communities of Waiahole and Waikane continued the resistance to unchecked development, drawing strength from farmers who had worked the land for decades and succeeding. They formed the largest and most organized anti-eviction group of the '70s.
In Honolulu, People Against Chinatown Evictions won the struggle for permanent, subsidized housing for its working-class community.
And at Ke'ehi Lagoon, public outrage helped stop evictions at the fishing village on Mokauea Island, where state officials set fire to the homes of 17 families in 1975 to make them leave.
Evictions had created a growing homeless population, and the poor responded by creating shantytown communities, such as the one that stood between the state and its desire to complete a park on Sand Island.
On the eve of their December 1979 eviction, a vocal group of 80 to 100 "squatters" — a community of parents, children and the elderly — vowed to stay in the tidy, weather-beaten homes they had built from scrap lumber.
It would be more than a month before state bulldozers were able to clear the village.
By dusk on the last day — Jan. 23, 1980 — police had arrested 19 people who wouldn't get out of the way, the last of the homes had been reduced to piles of timber, and plastic bags filled with household possessions were scattered throughout the former shantytown.
But some homes escaped the bulldozers. Their owners, rather than see them crushed, had set them on fire.
