Dole Food Company

Dole Food Company, Inc. is an American-based agricultural multinational corporation headquartered in Westlake Village, California. The company is the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, operating with 75,800 full-time and seasonal employees who are responsible for over 200 products in 90 countries. Dole markets such food items as bananas, pineapples (fresh and packaged), grapes, strawberries, and other fresh and frozen fruits.

The company traces its origin to the 1851 establishment of Castle & Cooke by missionaries Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke. Castle & Cooke rapidly became one of the largest companies in Hawaii, investing in shipping, railroad construction, sugar production, and seafood packing. The other half of Dole's corporate heritage, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, was founded in 1901 by James Dole, who opened his first pineapple plantation in the central plateau of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Sanford Dole, the cousin of James Dole, had been president of the Republic of Hawaii from 1894 after the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii (her last monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani), and first governor of the Territory of Hawaii until 1903.

Dole Food Company in Days of Infamy
After Japan conquered Hawaii, Dole's fruit plantation were forced into being replaced with rice paddies by the occupiers as rice is a staple, possessing more fiber and grain than the company's grown fruits to continue out the occupation. Stanley Owana Laanui, the puppet king of Hawaii, possessed a grudge against the Dole Company when he was younger which fueled his intentions against Hawaii's white population.

After Hawaii's liberation, it is expected that the Dole Company will not recover its losses after its plantations were turned into rice paddies.