Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 11, 1 November 1993 — Makainai family overcomes threat of quiet title action [ARTICLE]

Makainai family overcomes threat of quiet title action

Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation is a non-profit pub-lic-interest law firm established in 1974 to assist native Hawaiians with their legal assertions to land, natural resources and related entitlements. OHA pro\ides funding to NHLC for legal representation \'ia its Land Title Project. Jo^eph Garcia admits to not owning mueh. But a recent court judgement has enriched his life in unexpected ways. With help from the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation's OHA-funded Land Title Project, the retired salesman, along with his sisters and brothers, successfully defended their elaim to property that has been in the family for close to 100 years. Garcia, his sisters Beatrice Voight and the late Justina Kelly, and brother Jesse Makainai bat-

tled for three years against an adverse possession elaim for 48.57 acres of Holualoa land on the Big Island. On Aug. 18, their attorneys, Alan Murakami and Carl Christensen of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., delivered the good news.

A favorable court judgement would enable the family to retain their interest in the property.

"We didn't know my grandmother had this land and we didn't know we had this land." Jesse Makainai

But the case generated other

results better measured in terms of pride and excitement than acres or dollars. "It isn't just the land. It's finding out about your roots," said Janet Garcia, Joseph's wife. In 1933 Virginia Makainai executed a deed whieh gave her onesixth interest in the property to her children and grandchildren. Yet it wasn't until 1990 that her grandchildren learned of their ownership and the full history of the Makainai family. That information eame to light only after Jesse Makainai was served with a court summons to answer a quiet title lawsuit by Sataro Kimura. Kimura, 81, is a second-generation Big Island farmer whose family leased lands from the Makainai family from 1922 to 1939. The Kimuras built a thriving business growing coffee and raising pigs and cattle. They eventually purchased a portion of the Makainai's property interest in 1938-39.

"We didn't know my grandmother had this land and we didn't know we had this land," said Jesse, who works full time in construction at age 62. "We were all young when they died. Nobody told us." The silence surrounding Makainai's assets was not uneommon given the tragic history of many Hawaiian families following the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy, said Virginia Fontaine, a paralegal with Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., who worked on the case. "People didn't tell their ehildren about things that had been lost or their positions in society. They didn't want to pass on all the hurt or disappointment to future generations," she said. For the Makainai grandchildren, disruptions in family life and the death of their mother, Beatrice Makainai Sarmiento, at

age 28 further severed the ehildren from their past. Soon after they were born, Joseph and Jesse were eaeh placed with different families under a hānai arrangement. Both men grew up on Moloka'i within 30 miles of eaeh other but it was only as adults that they discovered they were brothers. Beatrice and her late sister Justina lived with their parents in California, returning to visit their grandmother on O'ahu at regular intervals. After their mother died, the sisters lived with Virginia Makainai until her death in 1935. "I remember my grandmother telling us these stories but she would remind us to keep it to ourselves," Beatrice said. But the threat of losing the property mobilized a new generation of Makainais to search for their family's history. Terza Garcia, Joseph's daughter, and her sisters spent a year, piecing together the family's genealogical puzzle. Their work was augmented by Fontaine's research.

Some of the discoveries were unexpected. "I could barely breathe," Terza said, recalling the moment when she realized her Makainai great-grandfather was related to a high chief from Maui. "Now Hawaiian language, eulture and history are so important to me. It's no longer just theory, there's this personal connection," she said.

This new link to the past is especially important to Joseph, 69, who knew almost nothing about his Hawaiian identity until the case started. He also realizes that such information will be lost unless shared with successive generations. "Now that I know, I ean talk about it," he says, hoping that future Makainai descendants, despite their different ethnic backgrounds, will know about their ties to some of Hawai'i's high-ranking ali'i. "I never met my grandmother. But I have great appreciation and aloha for her. She had such foresight and love to do what she did so that we could benefit some day."