Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

ALFRED Laureta was born on May 21, 1924 in Ewa Plantation’s Banana Camp in Hawaii, just two years after his parents immigrated to the Islands from the Philippines in 1922. While he was still young, Alfred’s parents divorced and he joined his father on Maui, in Makawao’s Libby camp. He studied at the Makawao Elementary School, a three mile walk from Libby camp.

Laureta attended Lahainaluna High School where he played softball and ran track, excelled in oratory and debate. He was freshman class president and, in his senior year, became student body president.

Following his graduation from Lahainaluna, Laureta studied at the University of Hawaii. After graduation, he went on to complete his fifth year teaching credential. While teaching at the University, Laureta was approached by a Fr. Osmundo Calip. "Fr. Calip urged me to go to law school,"Laureta remembered. "He stressed the need for Filipinos in the profession." Laureta was interested, but admitted he knew nothing about law schools and had no money. Fr.Calip promptly found him a law school --New York’s Catholic Fordham University --and a scholarship from the Hawaii Memorial Foundation. Thus, Laureta went on to study law on the East Coast.

Upon graduation, he returned to Hawaii. "When I got back to Hawaii in 1953, I went around to all of Hawaii’s larger law firms looking for work. None of them would hire me," he said.

A university classmate took Laureta to meet two young Japanese American attorneys, Bert Kobayashi and Russell Kono. They agreed to take him on a $100 per month with no responsibilities so that he could study for the bar exam. When Laureta passed the bar on Jan 1954, he joined his two benefactors and another newly minted lawyer named George Ariyoshi to form Kobayashi, Kono, Laureta and Ariyoshi.

"Our offices were at the corner of King and Bethel streets in downtown Honolulu," says Laureta. "My clients were mostly Filipinos, and they often couldn’t pay their bills. So I took payment in vegetables and poultry, bedspreads and bed sheets."

In 1954, Hawaii’s Democrats won control of the Territorial Legislature for the first time in history. Laureta did his part by working in the campaign of law partner Russell Kono for the Territorial House of Representatives. With the Democrats’ victory, Laureta got an appointment as House Attorney for the 1955 session.

Alfred Laureta’s political career took a new direction as a result of the 1959 election. Soon after the returns were in, newly elected US Congressman Dan Inouye called to offer him a job as his administrative assistant in Washington.

Before thanksgiving in 1962, Laureta received a call from Hawaii Governor-elect John Burns, offering him a position in his administration. In Jan 1963, Governor Burns appointed Laureta as Director of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the first Filipino American to hold a Cabinet State Position. It was a good political move for Burns since by the early 1960s the membership of the state’s dominant blue collar union, the ILWU, was overwhelmingly Filipino, as were workers in the burgeoning tourist industry.

In 1967 Gov Burns appointed Laureta judge of Hawaii’s State Circuit Court One.

In 1977, Alfred Laureta’s judicial career took another turn as his ten-year term on the State Circuit Court was coming to an end. The United States District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands was established by the Act of Congress in 1977 and became operational in January, 1978. The court sits on the island of Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands are appointed by the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, to ten-year terms or until a successor is chosen and qualified.

US Senator Dan Inouye called Laureta and asked if he would be interested in the position. Laureta said he would, and in May 1978 he was appointed the first District Judge to the Northern Marianas federal bench located on Saipan. He served there until his retirement a decade later.

But true to Laureta’s commitment to serve the community, he did not stop working even after his retirement. Until April 2008, he was on the Board of Directors on the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC).

Laurete is married to Evelyn Reantillo and they have four children.

Sources: Various sites on the web and Crosscurrents: Filipinos in Hawaii’s Politics by Dan Boylan

( www.asianjournal.com)