In honor of Labor Day, first celebrated in 1882 by the Central Labor Union to recognize the contributions of American workers, we set out to profile people who help make Hawai'i what it is. These five have found their labors of love working in the Islands.

Name: Sione Palu.
Age: 45.
Residence: Kalihi.
Occupation: Tree trimmer.
Employer: The Tree People.
Wage: $15-22 an hour (depending on skill and time required).

Sione Palu does a lot of hanging around. For the last 25 years, he has made his living climbing and trimming trees.

Palu has climbed palm trees since he was a 15-year-old boy in Tonga. Back then, he climbed trees to get coconuts for his mother, who used them for everything from food to medicine. After he moved to Hawai'i, climbing became his full-time job.

The secret to being a successful tree trimmer? "Just get up there and hang on like a monkey," he said.

"You have to get a good attitude for a job. Because you around dangerous stuff all the time. Plus if you get a good attitude, it helps the people around you work better and safer."

At 9 a.m. on a Thursday, Palu, trim and tan, and his fellow Tree People workers are cutting away at palm trees on a Hawai'i Kai condominium's property. Wearing a hard hat, calf guards and spiked boots, Palu hangs from the top of a palm tree, supported only by an orange safety line.

He uses his 18-inch machete to whack away at palm fronds, which come crashing to the ground. When he's finished, he stashes the machete in the plastic sheath he wears at his waist and then sidles down the slender tree trunk, balancing his 10 pounds of gear and body weight against the safety rope.

At 45, Palu says, the aches and pains that come from this physical job are more frequent. He used to be able to trim close to 100 trees on a busy day. Now he says he's down to 50. The pair of work boots he's had for more than a decade are "air conditioned," he chuckles, pointing out the pukas. And sometimes the younger guys on the crew just don't give him no respect. "Sometimes they too tired. They don't listen," he said.

But Palu says he isn't ready to retire, and he's not sure what else he would do besides tree climbing. "Walking on the ground — you can't get money there. You got to be up in a tree to do what you do best," he said.

Name: Mary Cesar.
Age: 44.
Residence: Kailua.
Occupation: quilter, teacher and designer.
Employer: self-employed.
Wage: About $40,000 a year.

Mary Cesar wasn't supposed to be a quilter. "Most of my family dance hula or play (music)," she said. "I took hula as a kid, but I was never very good, and I can't sing even. So I went into quilting."

A visit to Cesar's home shows the influence of traditional Hawaiian culture and the formidable skill she has achieved in her work. Today Cesar, who's wearing a "Got Rice?" shirt and has her dark hair pulled back into a loose bun, is cutting quilting patterns for a class she'll teach in a few days. Scattered around the living room are samples of her work.

A large kihei pili, or traditional patchwork quilt, is spread over a chair. "I remember when I was younger, every auntie made them for the kids," she said. "Whenever I went on sleepovers every kid had a kihei pili."

She shows some more contemporary quilted wall hangings: cute cats holding sashimi and 'ukulele. Cesar unfolds a quilt named "Pineapple Soup," which mixes fabric pieces containing pineapple recipes and pineapple cans with brightly-colored fabric squares.

Cesar doesn't remember exactly when she learned how to sew. She can point out the stuffed animal she made in sixth grade and the fake-fur coat she created on a trip to the Mainland. Eventually, she took quilting lessons and then kept teaching herself.

"I kind of feel lucky because I learned to quilt and started at 21. I've been doing it ever since," she said. At first, she waitressed and tended bar to make money, quilting on the side.

Today, she runs a successful pattern company called Mary's Treasures, which Cesar estimates brings in $30,000 a year. She's working on a new instructional pattern book that will come out through a national publisher. And Cesar travels about nine times a year across the country and to Japan where she teaches, shows her work, curates exhibitions and leads quilting tours. "It's nice to have a job that's my hobby," she said. "And it's fun."

A Hawaiian quilt made by Cesar can cost from a few hundred dollars to more than $7,000. The most expensive are full-sized, hand-stitched quilts that can take around 1,000 hours to complete.

One quilt that Cesar will never sell contains an image of Pele in a volcano. "The quilt went together very easy," she said. "I asked (Pele's) permission and said if I had plenty trouble I wouldn't continue."

Cesar's now hoping her own daughter, who's 21, will start quilting. "When people used to ask her, she'd say, 'No.' Now she says, 'Not yet.' "

Neal Hazama, a fishery technician who clearly enjoys his work, flings a net in preparation for sampling the moi population along O'ahu's shorelines. Hazama works for the state's Division of Aquatic Resources.

Wearing water shoes, a white Department of Land and Natural Resources T-shirt, black swim trunks and a pair of dark sunglasses, Neal Hazama wades into the waters near the War Memorial Natatorium. Hazama, who is a fishery technician for the DLNR's Division of Aquatic Resources, hurls a six-foot-wide net into the water and pulls it in to check his catch. No fish this time. Several more throws also prove fishless, but there are many more stops to go.

Every month, Hazama spends two days on the Waikiki shoreline, traveling between the Ilikai hotel and the Diamond Head Lighthouse, fishing for adult moi that were raised at the Anuenue Fisheries Research Center on Sand Island. These and other native fish have been tagged and released in O'ahu waters as part of an ongoing finfish stock enhancement program.

"It's not just me looking for moi, but it's an effort to learn more about the biology, seasonality, numbers and sizes of nearshore fish," said Hazama, who has been a fishery technician at the Sand Island station for seven years and a research associate in Hilo for five years before that.

A fishery technician's job can include assisting station biologists with Koke'e fishing, Nu'uanu catfish, invasive species, stream surveys, and snorkel- and scuba-dive surveys. It's also good to have some practical construction and plumbing skills to do things like fixing water systems and building tables for tagging fish.

There are long hours because the fish need to be fed and cared for seven days a week, the small staff of five fish technicians and three biologists are often overworked, and the pay isn't that great either, Hazama says.

"You've got to really like what you're doing," he said. Most people in the field do, he adds, including himself. After working in management jobs for several years, Hazama went back to school and earned his bachelor's in aquaculture from the University of Hawai'i-Hilo. He loves the outdoors and doesn't mind getting messy.

And Hazama says he can't see himself doing anything else.

Name: Carol Kamikawa.
Age: 51.
Residence: Salt Lake.
Occupation: poke maker.
Employer: Fort Ruger Market in Kaimuki.
Wage: A few thousand a month.

You can find aku jerky, cucumber kim-chee, dried 'opae, lomilomi salmon and kiawe-smoked tako at Fort Ruger Market. But it's the fresh, made-to-order poke that the small Kaimuki store is known for.

And Carol Kamikawa has been dishing it up for more than eight years. The Salt Lake resident remembers coming to Fort Ruger Market when she was a kid. Now she helps manage the shop and serves as cashier and cook.

"I really had to learn how to cook when I was 20 because I left the Islands," Kamikawa said. After working in Los Angeles for 10 years, she moved back and worked as an assistant manager in the then-Kahala Hilton's cafe, and later as a manager at Harpo's Pizza in Kapahulu.

"I missed people, I guess you could say," Kamikawa said. "I like the customer contact."

There's a loose science to making a good batch of poke, according to Kamikawa. People who really like raw fish will order it with sesame oil. Customers can also pick from a shoyu-based sauce, green onions, Maui onions, limu and ogo. Shoyu poke is best with limu and onions while sesame oil poke doesn't really have any limitations.

A man who just came into the store asks if the poke is fresh, and then tells Kamikawa he wants his with shoyu and limu but no onions.

He doesn't know all the unofficial rules. Doesn't matter, though. With his made-to-order poke and a cup of poi he heads out, satisfied.

Name: LiAnn Uyeda.
Age: 40.
Residence: Kaimuki.
Occupation: licensed massage therapist, specializing in lomilomi.
Employer: her own business, Aloha Lomilomi.
Wage: $70-100 per session.

There was no going back to regular massage therapy, says LiAnn Uyeda, after she discovered lomilomi massage, the healing art of Hawaiian culture.

"I knew it was in my 'uhane, it was a part of me," said Uyeda, who started her own business, Aloha Lomilomi, 11 years ago.

"As far as career-wise, it's probably the most rewarding thing, to help people," she said. "It's a blessing every day."

Besides the physical lomilomi massage, a session can include the use of herbs, essential oils, sea salt and lomi'li'ili, or warm stones, and mental cleansing exercises. The spirit-focused approach to the massage is another aspect that sets lomilomi apart from other treatments.

Sessions last for an hour, 90 minutes or two hours.

"The goal for me is to help this person I'm working on to release whatever they need to in order to be at peace," Uyeda says.