West Hawaii Photo of Yoshito Takamine, 1981
Yoshito Takamine, a longtime Hawaii Island labor and political leader, died Oct. 27 at his Honokaa home. He was 89.
The eldest son in a family of 14 children raised by a plantation worker and his picture bride, both from Okinawa, Takamine went to work for the former Honokaa Sugar Co. after his 1944 graduation from Honokaa High School. He became a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and later a business agent for the ILWU in 1950. He was a union division director when he retired in 1986.
Takamine was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1958, when Hawaii was still a territory, retiring in 1984. As longtime chairman of the House Labor Committee, Yoshito Takamine helped to push bills through the Legislature that would protect and advance the interests of Hawaii’s working people, including the state’s worker’s compensation law, temporary disability insurance law and collective bargaining law, which gave government workers the right to organize.