My Absurd Life

Ah Quon - Extra Notes & Quotes

Ah Quon (Leong) McElrath
Born: December 15, 1915
Died: December 11, 2008
High School: McKinley, class of 1934
Father: Jack-of-all-trades, even made ‘okolehao (Hawaiian moonshine)
Husband: Robert McElrath, former Hawai‘i ILWU regional director (died in 1995)
Went to: A burlesque theater at age 17 to hear famed muckraker Upton Sinclair give a speech on poverty

Ah Quon on Anna Nicole:
We think people need to be entertained, and that market economics is the only way in which we can make money. … And so, you have the Nicole Smith who died, this poor woman, and so they worry about whether she should be buried in the Bahamas, or somewhere else, and all that kind of crap. Who cares? Except her family.

Lots of times these (stories) are used in place of the important things because we feel we can’t do anything about the things that are really important to us as human beings. It is a displacement, a transference.

Ah Quon on politics:
(In the past), a number of women came to me and they said, ‘AQ, why don’t you run against Cal Say (State Representative in Hawai‘i)? We will go house to house for you. We will raise all of your money for you. …’

And I said to them: ‘Thank you very much, but no thank you. I don’t perceive that I can make a kind of contribution in public service if I have to compromise my principles. …’

It’s not that I would have done it, but I never wanted to be put in that particular position of giving up that which I believed in, in order to make it. And, good God, goodness knows, that you’ve got to give up, a lot of times, part of your principles if you want a particular legislation to pass.

Q&A with AQ – Labor Icon Ah Quon McElath

Ah Quon’s story has been documented in numerous articles and an ILWU oral history project. So instead of asking the usual questions, I wanted to know what gave Ah Quon the strength to speak out and overcome the challenges that she has faced. Her answers provide a first-hand account of history and a few lessons in courage. Here are the highlights.

Me: Have you felt vilified?

AQ: …(After the 1951 arrest of ILWU regional leader Jack Hall and six other locals accused of being Communists under the Smith Act) I didn’t receive any death threats, but I used to have friends who used to walk across the street so that they wouldn’t have to talk with me. … And my kids used to have dinner with us and say, ‘Mommy, what is a Commie rat?’ What are you talking about? ‘Oh, the kids in school say I’m a Commie rat.’ And both my kids at that time were at the University Laboratory School. I remember that it was during that period when they wouldn’t allow me to run for PTA office. …

Me: What did you tell (your kids)?

AQ: I would tell them exactly what was going on in the political situation. And (“Commie rat”) was an epithet that was used for people whom they felt they could not trust. You know, what can you say to a 7-, 8-, 9-year-old kid which would make sense? …

Many times, you think, ‘Oh God, what fools these people are.’ Well, what could we do? What could we do? Basically, we protected the kids as much as we tried to, took them out, fed them, clothed them, went out and did things together to show them that we were still a family. That it didn’t matter. That there were lots of other people who were suffering the same things. …

Me: You were never afraid?

AQ: No, hell no. I remember … there was an FBI agent who came and talked to us, and wanted to know, ‘Hey, is there any possibility of this, that or the other thing happening?’

We moved to St. Louis Heights and (a family) which had a home catty corner to ours started a petition. … They said (the loan company) should not sell the property to us because it would lower real estate values. Well, (that company) wasn’t interested so much as they were interested in getting the down payment and the monthly mortgage payments, so they didn’t do anything about it. Interestingly enough, (the woman) who started the petition moved out two years after we left, and she sold her house, we learned, for twice what she had paid for it.

Me: You brought the property values up. (Laughs.)

AQ: Yeah … The other interesting thing was that the people next door to us, with whom I had known because I had gone to school with the woman of that household, she told me afterwards that both she and her husband, who worked at Pearl Harbor, were approached by the FBI and asked to please write down all the car numbers of automobiles that stopped at our house. They never told us this until several years after the Smith Act trial had been settled. And we used to work in the yard together, plant the same plants, and all that kind of stuff. …

Me: Knowing all these things are happening, what gives you the courage to speak out?

AQ: I don’t think we even thought about it. … It was kind of a defiance and knowing that other people were going through the same thing.

Me: There are people like me … I have opinions on certain things, but I don’t feel like I’m smart enough to speak out or I’m …

AQ:  It’s not that you’re not smart enough. It’s whether or not you feel that there is a time at which someone has to take a stand in the interest of keeping the body politic alive. In the interest of civil liberties being kept alive. …

You don’t have to take a position on everything. You take a position on those things which matter to you. And when you do that, that’s fine. You give other people who are interested in the same thing as you are interested in, the courage to go on. That’s the important thing.

‘Cause individually, we can’t really do a lot. But as a group, that’s the important thing. And that’s why the ILWU was successful. We were able to bring together all members of a group who believed that they were being exploited, not only under martial law, but also by the employers who were able to take advantage of martial law, hire them out and keep the proceeds, and not give it to the workers. ...

It doesn’t matter what color I am, they did it to all of us. Then, as a group, you are able to get the kind of strength and courage and power that you would not have as one. It’s like this alone [holds up one finger] is different from this [forms a fist], you see.

Me: Could you name some who might be able to turn things around (for labor today)?

AQ: I don’t know them. The thing is, you make use of the people in your union if you have one. And you train them, you educate them, you make them realize what the working conditions are, so that they will take the lead. ...

Outsiders like me don’t amount to a hill of beans. After a while, I die off, and they will say, ‘Who the hell is she?’ or ‘Who the hell is he?’ In other words, the leadership has to come largely from the group that has organized the workers. …

Me: The most important thing for a young person today, you would think, is to get an education?

AQ: My feeling is that it is important for him to get a good education, which is an education that will allow him to think about what is happening in the world, in our community—whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. And, does it therefore turn him to a situation where he says, ‘I’m gonna do something about it.’

Interview With a Labor Icon: Ah Quon McElrath

Author’s note: Last night, I learned of Ah Quon’s passing. I started to grieve and then felt angry at myself. After our interview in 2007, I asked Ah Quon for permission to obtain her late husband’s FBI file. She didn’t care to know what the government thought about them. From her experience, she knew they were being followed and investigated. Still, I thought she might find it interesting, so I wrote to the FBI. It took almost a year to get the file, and now I have most of it. I’ve had it for a few months. I planned to call and present it to her, but things came up and I put it off. So she never got to see the file that contained over 500 pages of intelligence on her husband, Robert McElrath. And she never got to see this story.

Here it is.

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Conducted Sunday, March 25, 2007, on O‘ahu

One of Hawai‘i’s most significant figures emerges from a grey, stick-shift Toyota Corolla wearing sensible shoes. It’s 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

At Kapi‘olani Community College, Ah Quon McElrath meets me for a three-hour interview that includes weather straight out of a TV sit-com.

 
(Strong winds blow and seeds start to pelt us. Ah Quon says, "Oh God. There's your snowstorm.")

The younger generation may ask, as the 91-year-old Ah Quon herself put it: “Who the hell is she?”

It’s a shame that today’s newsmakers are Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith (even hotter post mortem), instead of people such as Ah Quon, who dramatically changed the landscape of labor in Hawai‘i, and who continues to fight for social justice.

Hawaii Business, Honolulu Magazine and the two Honolulu dailies have all placed her on their A-lists of influential people. And when even the FBI takes notice, you know you’re somebody.

Ah Quon has been an active voice for the working class. She played a role in the organization of the Inter-Island Steamship Navigation Company, Hawaiian Tuna Packers, American Can Company and Hawaiian Pineapple Company.

As a longtime organizer and social worker for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 142, she helped unite workers on the plantations and the docks, “regardless of classification, regardless of sex, regardless of ethnicity,” into one powerful and effective force.

 

By speaking her mind, she garnered both respect and contempt. Her children were called “Commie rats.” The FBI investigated her.

She and the ILWU persevered, however, and brought about increased wages, ethnic equality, worker benefits and the weakening of economic, social and political domination by Hawai‘i’s “Big Five” companies (Alexander & Baldwin, American Factors, C. Brewer & Co., Castle & Cooke and Theo H. Davies & Co.) For her contributions, including the editing of the Voice of Labor newspaper, the ILWU made her a lifetime honorary member.

The daughter of poor Chinese immigrants, Ah Quon, whose mother was Punti with bound feet, and whose father died when she was five, started working in the pineapple cannery at age 13.

Those summer jobs helped support the family and pay for her school books. She graduated from McKinley High School in 1934, and went on to the University of Hawai‘i, earning a B.A. in Sociology and a B.S. in Anthropology.

Today, Ah Quon, known to friends as AQ, is still as feisty as ever. Dynamic, intelligent, articulate and a committed social activist, she’s our very own Bono of U2, complete with distinctive glasses. She’s served as a member of the UH Board of Regents, is a recipient of the UH Founders Alumni Association Lifetime Achievement Award and regularly goes to the state capitol to speak on healthcare issues concerning the elderly.

 

The sun is shining as Ah Quon and I walk past the school’s glorious cactus garden to a picnic table under a shady tree. A beautiful day this is not, however, as light showers turn into a torrent of rain.

“All we need is for it to snow,” I groan, horrified by my choice of location. And just when Ah Quon starts to talk about global warming, the winds pick up and the tree pelts us with hard, round seeds. “There’s your snowstorm,” Ah Quon jokes.

During an even bigger downpour, we huddle beside the trunk of our tree. My back and my notes are soaked as I try to keep Ah Quon from getting wet. The situation is so absurd, we both start laughing.

When the rain eases up, Ah Quon drapes a towel over her head, and I wrap another one around her shoulders. We proceed back to the parking lot as two joggers watch in amusement. I think to myself, “Oh, the ignominy! I’m going to hell for putting such a great woman through this.”

We finish the interview in the backseat of my car, towels drying on the front headrests. Despite it all, Ah Quon is a good sport. When I apologize profusely, she brushes it off saying, “Actually, it’s kind of an interesting deal.”

Like her life, Ah Quon is accustomed to taking on anything that comes her way—weather included.

Next: Q&A with AQ