Biography
Pablo Manlapit was the pioneering Filipino labor leader in Hawaii. Pablo Manlapit organized the plantation workers' movement and led the great 1924 sugar strike. After the Hanapepe massacre, in which police killed sixteen strikers, the territory prosecuted Manlapit rather than the killers: convicted on a subornation-of-perjury charge widely regarded as retaliation for the strike, he was imprisoned in the Oahu Penitentiary — where the ILD listed him among America's class-war prisoners — and was paroled in 1927 on condition of exile to California. He returned in 1932 and was ultimately banished from the territory for his organizing.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as Pablo Manlapit, at Oahu Penitentiary Territory Hawaii. This documents confinement at the roster’s reporting time, without establishing an admission, transfer, release, new conviction or complete duration. Existing independently sourced custody chronology remains separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n297-NYE-dec-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
Laurance Todd’s Federated Press account describes the January 1927 refusal of parole unless Manlapit accepted removal to the Philippines, his request that his family accompany him and the board’s refusal. It reports the strain on his wife and four children and attributes his treatment to plantation interests. The two years served is rounded contemporary wording compatible with the separately established May 1925 admission and August 1927 parole; it is not installed as exactly 730 days or a new detention. The report’s claim that he had never lived in the Philippines is not adopted as established biography. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n124-NY-jun-08-1927-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
1920s remaining-entry review: The Daily Worker, June 17, 1925, page 1, explicitly reports commitment to Oahu Prison on May 29, 1925; the complete page was visually inspected. Amado Dino's January 5, 1928 account, page 6, independently confirms that admission and describes the initiating criminal-libel arrest on April 22, 1924, before the later conspiracy prosecution. It reports parole on August 13, 1927 and arrival in California August 19. Fellow passenger Felipe Reyes recalls lawmen bringing Manlapit directly from jail to the City of Honolulu, which sailed August 13; this supports physical release, not merely parole eligibility. Reinecke's history independently dates conditional parole August 13. The inherited 1924 prison-admission year is corrected; the earlier arrest is not substituted for admission. Existing portrait retained.
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Manlapit's wife reports that he had answered an ILD letter dated July 24, 1926 from Oahu Penitentiary but prison authorities did not allow his response to reach its destination, for an unexplained reason. She wrote on his behalf and supplied his January 17, 1891 birth date, already recorded. This is an attributed family account of prison correspondence restrictions; no change to his independently verified admission or parole dates is inferred.
The Los Angeles dispatch dated February 29, 1928 reports that Manlapit was recently arrested and released after five hours of police questioning while touring for the All-America Anti-Imperialist League and speaking on Philippine independence. He said police threatened further arrests and return to Honolulu to serve eight remaining years if he continued speaking. The threatened eight years are not an actual new sentence or time served. The report supplies no exact date for this distinct Los Angeles detention.
