Helen Lake Kanahele

Helen Lake Kanahele (May 26, 1916 – June 12, 1976) was a Hawaiian labor organizer. She was president of the Women's Auxiliary of the International Longshoreman's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) and worked with the United Public Workers union. Due to her labor organizing and opposition to the death penalty, Kanahele was subpoenaed by the Territorial Committee on Subversive Activities in the 1950s.

Early life and family Helen Lake was born on May 26, 1916, in Kona, Hawaii, to a Hawaiian mother and an English father. She recounted that her father died when she was five followed by her mother the following year. She was raised by Irene Woods as a hānai child. At the age of 12, she assisted in the political campaigns of Democratic Party candidates.

Kanahele started work in Maluhia Hospital's laundry in Honolulu in 1948. The next year she lived in Papakolea in a Hawaiian Homestead house with her hānai brother and her two daughters. Her brother was participating in a strike by International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) dockworkers. She visited him at the union's headquarters at Pier 11 and encountered a group of two hundred haole women who were against the strike. She joined the counterpicket line of union women. In the following days, she joined the Women's Auxiliary's pickets. She cooked food in the strike kitchens and delivered it to the homes of strikers. By 1951 she was elected president of the Women's Auxiliary.