The Biggest Little Island in the Pacific

A Report from Moloka‘i

Landmark Kalani‘ana‘ole Hall awaits renovations made possible

by a $500,000 grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Photos by Curt Sanburn

By Curt Sanburn
that served as Ranch headquarters. It’s
Two days after the Hong Kong-based midmorning on Prince Kuhio Day, and
owners of the sprawling, 64,000-acre when I get there, the intersection in the
Moloka‘i Ranch announced they were middle of town looks deserted—and I’m
shutting down operations after 111 in dire need of a bathroom.
years, mothballing assets and laying Through the open double doors of a
off 120 employees, I decide to take cowboy/plantation-style building, with
an aimless drive from Kaunakakai to its board-and-batten siding and white
Maunaloa, the old hilltop plantation trim, I spot some movement: a lone
Kealoha Laemoa
town on the West End of Moloka‘i woman folding towels.

I
stop to ask her if she can help me.
She is kindly and offers a key, di-
recting me around the corner.
Returning the key, I ask her if
she is among those people laid off.
“Yeah,” she says with a slight sigh, “my
last day is April 30.”
Her name is Kealoha Laemoa, and she
folds her towels calmly and deliberately.
No rush. Her eyes are big and sad. The
luxurious bath towels in various shades
of sage green are destined for the guests
at the 22-room Moloka‘i Lodge and the
Kaupoa beach-camp resort, both owned
and operated by the Ranch and scheduled
to close on April 5.
I ask Laemoa how she feels about it all.
“Well, the Ranch gambled, and we lost
our jobs.” Her formulation is simple; her
tone of voice is resigned.
So, you blame the ranch, I ask.
“It’s a two-way street,” she says equa-
bly. “The Moloka‘i Ranch invested their
money to make the Master Plan to build
at La‘au Point, and then, you know, here
comes A‘ole La‘au and the activists saying
‘No, we don’t want it.’
“You know, when you do an invest-
ment, and people don’t agree on the in-
vestment, somebody’s gonna have to pay.
That’s just the way it is.”
She pulls a dark green, waffle-weave
bathrobe trimmed in white piping out of
the bin and folds it flat, coiling the belt
and stuffing it into a pocket.
“You know, I’m not too familiar with
the Master Plan and what’s in it, period.
I cannot say I’m against La‘au develop-
ment or for La‘au development, but what
I can say is that whatever happens hap-
pens. And this, unfortunately, is what
happened—we end up with no jobs.”
Her brother is also losing his job as a
cook at the Lodge. She says she is a lib-
eral-arts major at the Moloka‘i campus
of Maui Community College. “I have to
work,” she says.
Laemoa has lived in Maunaloa with
her parents all her life. Her grandmoth-
er worked in the pineapple fields that
once surrounded the town; Laemoa was
amazed when she heard how much her
grandmother got paid, whereas she is
compensated $8.48 an hour for her part-
time laundry job. Full-time workers get
the same thing, she says, except they get
medical benefits and she doesn’t. “On
O‘ahu, I heard that laundry attendants
get paid maybe $15 an hour.”
I a s k he r ab out he r f ut u re a nd
Moloka‘i’s future, what she sees in
them. “That’s a question I cannot an-
swer.” She is without self-pity, bitter-
ness, or panic.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen
to me. I don’t know what’s going to hap-
pen to my family. I don’t know what’s
going to happen to Moloka‘i. A lot of
our families who were born and raised
here, they’re gonna have to leave and go
somewhere else … O‘ahu, Maui, Hilo,
wherever, so they can have a job and
sustain themselves.”
W hat about t he fol ks on t he is-
land who talk about farming, or using
Moloka‘i’s famous fishponds to grow
fish or its valleys to grow taro, I ask.
“It’s a good thing to raise all those
natural beauties that we’re blessed to
have on Moloka‘i,” Laemoa says, “but is
the taro going to pay our gas? Is the fish
going to pay our gas? What is gonna pay
our bills?” She is suddenly hard and her
voice chokes. The world is a hard place.
“Someday maybe it can, but you gotta
have the economics to generate money to
say it’s gonna pay the bills.” She shakes
her head doubtfully.
“The future of Moloka‘i? Honestly,
it’s a beautiful island I’ve been privileged
to live on, but I don’t know what’s going
to happen to me. I don’t know what’s
gonna happen to my family.”
www.honoluluweekly.com
A community begins
to absorb the shock
In Kaunakakai the previous afternoon, a
dazed crew of Laemoa’s “activists” sits
around the conference table in the of-
fices of the Moloka‘i Community Services
Council (MCSC), a private non-profit serv-
ing the island through various economic
and community development projects.
The crew includes attorney and MCSC
executive director Karen Holt, Hawaiian
language translator Kahualaulani Mick,
West End farmer Steve Morgan, veteran
community organizer Bridget Mowat, and
the high-profile warrior-spokesman for
everything Moloka‘i, Walter Ritte.
Honolulu TV news crews had been
there all day, looking for sound bites to
dramatize the David-and-Goliath story of
Moloka‘i Ranch’s collapse under pressure
from the island’s rank-and-file opposition
to the Ranch’s Master Plan. For the sec-
ond day in a row, the story led the evening
news on three of the state’s top broadcast
stations, and it continued to loom large
in the two Honolulu daily papers for the
next several days, until Aloha Airlines
announced on Sunday, March 29, that it,
too, was ceasing operations, taking 1,900
jobs statewide with it.
n April 9-15, 2008 n Honolulu Weekly