Nori looked up when the screen door whined open, and Kang, a young Chinese dockworker dressed in a faded shirt, dungarees, and a soiled bandana wrapped around his neck, hurried into the market, nodded at her, and walked straight back toward the bulletin board. At least twice a week he came in, quickly pinned up a few flyers on the board, and was back out the door again without saying a word or spending a cent, the slap, slap of his sandals echoing behind him. He was just one of many union supporters who came in to pin up announcements for the growing number of labor meetings.

Jelly was fed up. “Enough,” she said, banging another can on a shelf she was restocking. “Ban them from coming in if they’re not going to buy anything!”

“It’s why we put up the bulletin board, remember? More trouble than it’s worth trying to keep them out, yeah,” Nori reminded her again. “Even Pele hasn’t stopped them from organizing.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to buy a piece of licorice now and then, eh,” Jelly mumbled.

From the front window Nori watched Kang amble down the street handing out flyers before she walked back to the bulletin board to see when the next meeting of the dockworkers would be. On a light blue sheet of paper, black, block lettering announced that another meeting was being held at the longshoremen’s union headquarters down by the wharf.

COME ALL BROTHERS!

STAND UP AGAINST

LOW WAGES AND POOR WORKING CONDITIONS!

DECEMBER 1, 1935—7:00 P.M. MEETING.

UNION HALL

Nori sighed. If only talking could solve all the problems that were increasingly ending in violence. Like the persistent lava flow, the continuing labor issues were heating up again amid the never-ending Depression. Even though the Immigration Act of 1924 had prevented any more workers coming from Asia to Hawai‵i, those who had already worked on plantations continued to rise against the long working hours and low pay. She shivered, recalling past worker strikes that had led to numerous deaths on O‵ahu and Kaua’i. It felt like a festering boil that would need to be lanced soon. But at what cost? More lives lost? She lost count of how many times she’d warned Razor to be careful when he first became involved.

Nori reached up and pulled down several old flyers from the bulletin board. Every week it grew heavier with announcements. But as fast as the old flyers were taken down from the board, another round was back up.

No one really knew where the bulletin board came from. One morning in 1911, a year after Nori opened the Okawa Fish Market, Jelly and her son Nobu carried it up from the basement. Before she knew it, Nori was helping them tack it up. It spread completely across the back wall.