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HALIIMAILE – An attempt by Maui Land & Pineapple Co. to let its employees start small farms on disused parts of its plantations went awry, with the result that Tuesday morning the company called on Maui police and mobilized its own guards and workers to evict squatters from a gulch on the outskirts of Haliimaile village.

Company managers were nervous ahead of time about a possible confrontation with Hawaiian sovereignty partisans, but police Capt. Milton Matsuoka said afterward that the eviction went smoothly with about a dozen police officers involved.

Word of the big operation leaked out ahead of time. Maui Land & Pineapple Co. Vice President Fred Rickert said Monday that indications were that up to about 10 people were living on the scrap of wooded land, which does not have water, electricity or sanitation facilities.

But only three people, three horses and several dogs were present Tuesday morning.

Friends of the Domens took the animals to care for them.

Laborers moved in to remove an accumulation of stuff: three 25-foot boats and three smaller boats; an assortment of trucks and SUVs, most not in running condition; two ocean shipping containers; several horse trailers and motorcycles; a stack of lumber and other building materials; and the impedimenta of a long-used campsite.

All were being moved to a Maui Pine storage facility. Plantation manager Wes Nohara said he hoped the owners would claim their movable property.

A framed but yet unroofed two-story house was to be torn down later.

Rickert planned a meeting this morning with the managers who supervised the eviction and a lawyer to determine how to proceed. He said Maui Pine plans to press the trespass charges.

Curious neighbors, none of whom wanted to give names, watched the action. One woman said, “Haliimaile is not what it used to be.”

Later in the morning, Domen had a different version. In the offices of Ka Aha O Na Wai Eha Aku Moku O Maui Loa in Wailuku, he said he had been leasing “the whole gulch” from Maui Pine for 10 years for $350 a year.

The Rev. Kenneth Hoopai Jr., chairman of Ka Aha, said the real owners of the land later had given Domen permission to stay. Ka Aha asserts that the genuine title rests in royal patents from the 19th century that are inextinguishable.

“We’ve been sleeping so long,” said Hoopai. “We don’t want no more land being sold to anybody anymore.”

Joann Domen said she and her husband did not have any other place to go, and Bill Domen said he doesn’t know what they will do next.

Rickert said an unnamed Maui Pine employee who was given a lease to farm the land had given permission to someone else – apparently the Domens – to stay on the land.

Bill Domen said he had been living there about eight months.

When plantation managers found out, they were concerned for a number of reasons, including health hazards and the possibility of a wildfire.

Rickert says the Maui Pine employee was asked to tell his tenants to leave. When he said they wouldn’t listen to him, Maui Pine began eviction.

Domen showed a letter dated in October ordering him to vacate. Another letter gave a deadline of Dec. 14 to go.

Maui Pine finally moved on Tuesday, after assembling a task force that included police officers, at least three tow trucks, a backhoe on a flatbed trailer, a passel of managers, a photographer to create a visual inventory, private guards and a small force of laborers to clean up.

There were no signs in the vicinity of the camp that anybody had been farming. Rickert said Maui Pine will have to review its policy of providing its employees with opportunities to farm independently, but that this situation may be unique.

Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.