Documentary, research team hope to solve mystery of 1924’s Hanapepe Massacre

Winds whipped around the camera crew at the Hanapepe Filipino Cemetery on Kauai where historians, researchers and community members cautiously stepped around gravestones — searching for the unmarked graves of 16 Filipino sugar plantation strikers killed in what has been dubbed the Hanapepe Massacre of 1924.

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stephanie Castillo was also on-site late last month directing members of the camera crew, who flew in from Oahu to work on her 11th documentary, “The Hanapepe Massacre Mystery.”

Castillo, 71, aims to uncover the full story of the massacre through oral history told by surviving family members and others who witnessed the slaughter.