By Jan Wizinowich
On Tuesday May 15, “Plantation Life on Hawaiʽi Island” opened at the NHERC Heritage Center. This is the second exhibit at the Heritage Center, the first exhibit being the Waipio Valley Peace Core training exhibit on display for the opening of the Heritage Center. These exhibits, which highlight the lives and lifestyles of the people whose stories make up the history of this unique place, are a legacy for our island community. This stunning exhibit came together through the creative efforts of Momi Naughton, Gail Chanley, NHERC staff and many regular volunteers, who worked tirelessly.
Honokaʽa Senior Musicians The gathering for the opening took place in a newly finished pavilion on the NHERC campus. The musicians from the Honokaʽa seniors civic club, a lei akulikuli in their signature purple shirts, were sweetening the air with melodies of old Hawaii as people arrived. Helpful staff dotted the crowd, bursts of red on black in their new NHERC polo shirts.
Kaye Lundberg One of the very special aspects of living on this island is that the aloha that permeates everything will create an openness, which allows some amazing connections to happen and that is what happened in this case. The photos for the exhibit were, “In boxes, scattered around the house,” of John and Ann Bowen. How they got to the Heritage center is Kaye Lundburg’s story. While looking for photos for another event, Kaye came across some of John and Ann’s photos at the Laupahoehoe Train Museum. While her efforts to obtain copies of the photos were thwarted, Kaye did something that in this technological age would never occur to many of us, she looked them up in the telephone book. “As I heard his story, I thought ‘Oh my god, this is pay dirt for NHERC.’” Kaye invited John and Ann to meet with Momi Naughton, curator for the Heritage Center. “I want you to meet Momi, I want you to see NHERC, I want you to see all about the archives and what we’ve got here.” So began the collaboration that resulted in “Plantation Life on Hawaiʽi Island”.
Representative Mark Nakashima From the roots of the plantation life, arise many who know how to work hard and who contribute to sustaining wholesome, culturally viable communities. State Rep Mark Nakashima’s story is one that began in a cane field. “As a youngster I grew up in the middle of a cane field. My parents, my grandparents actually were independent cane growers. And so I spent weekends, summers picking Guinea grass, carrying knapsack, you know all the things that went along with being cane growers. And I think it was sad for all of us when we saw the last harvest, the last cane truck going down the road. I think what came out of all of that was the culture and heritage that we all share. The community that has grown out of those former cane fields, just above this area was all cane fields, where the hospital stands today. It’s been an experience as the community has continued to grow and survive in this area; it’s because of the people that have populated this place that has made it very special. What NHERC brings to us is the opportunity to celebrate that community and today’s exhibit sounds very promising. I’m very excited to go over and take a look at it. I think it helps us to remember the roots that we come from and hopefully it will be the foundation of where we continue to grow.”
Momi Naughton Next at the podium was Momi Naughton. It was the vision of Momi, Heritage Center curator, who drawing from in-depth scholarship and vast experience, received the photographic gifts from the Bowens and made the creation of the “Plantation Life on Hawaiʽi Island” exhibit a reality. She shared some of their story with us. “John and Ann Bowen came to Hawaiʽi in 1965 when John got a job as an agriculturalist with C. Brewer and company. Ann, probably being tired of being at home, decided that she was going to get a degree in anthropology from what was then called Hilo College. And many of you know Dr. Bill Bock and that’s who she worked with and he inspired her a great deal. What the Bowens could see right there in the 60’s going into the 70’s was that with the rapid phase out of the sugar industry, the plantation life style was shifting. So they set about documenting plantation life by photographing and audio recording the everyday people who built the industry. In the mid 1970’s the Bowens received a grant from the Hawaiʽi Bicentenial Commission to produce a slide / tape presentation. In the 1970’s as Kaye mentioned there were numerous articles that appeared in the Hawaiʽi Tribune Harold using the Bowen’s photographs, but then all those photographs went underground.
“As Kaye pointed out, the Laupahoehoe Train Museum has copies of these photographs on display, however, this is the first time since the 1970’s that these photos have been publically shown in an exhibit format and with some photos this is going to be the first time you will ever see them because they were just negatives when they came to us. I cannot thank Gail Chanley enough because she was dealing with 35 year-old negatives that she scanned and photo-shopped and printed. She was inspired by this wild color scheme, which you’re going to see that absolutely works. Both she and Monique Edwards. Monique helped with the mounting, prep and installation as well. I was able to say to them, ‘Now here’s the basic theory’ and they just took off with it and I just stepped aside. I also want to acknowledge James Silva here for photo-mounting and painting. I would also like to thank Michael McPhee. Michael is a student at Honoka’a and he comes every Wednesday, rain or shine and helps us out with whatever needs to be done.
The added depth of the exhibit comes from the many quotes that invite the reader into a world and a life, long past, but still very much a part of the nature of the plantation communities. “I chose these quotes from oral histories because I think they really, really speak to how it felt growing up small kid time on the plantation, as well as how people felt when the plantation closed. There’s some very poignant photographic images and some very poignant quotes. Coming into the exhibit there’s a quote I selected, which was written in a book called Sugar Town by Scotch Kurisu.”
Up and down the Hilo coast people are looking ahead, trying to figure out what comes next after sugar. But this is also a time for looking back at where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. Sure we raised productive sugar cane, but we also raised children and grandchildren of fine stock and good character. New generations who have built on their plantation heritage, more than anything else they are the real legacy of the sugar towns.
The added depth of the exhibit comes from the many quotes that invite the reader into a world and a life, long past, but still very much a part of the nature of the plantation communities. “I chose these quotes from oral histories because I think they really, really speak to how it felt growing up small kid time on the plantation, as well as how people felt when the plantation closed. There’s some very poignant photographic images and some very poignant quotes. Coming into the exhibit there’s a quote I selected, which was written in a book called Sugar Town by Scotch Kurisu.”
Up and down the Hilo coast people are looking ahead, trying to figure out what comes next after sugar. But this is also a time for looking back at where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. Sure we raised productive sugar cane, but we also raised children and grandchildren of fine stock and good character. New generations who have built on their plantation heritage, more than anything else they are the real legacy of the sugar towns.
Bill Garcia, John and Ann Bowen People have come and gone from these islands for centuries and of the people who stay, some really see the uniqueness of the culture. John and Ann Bowen are two such people and what developed out of their special brand of aloha, was a collection of photos that are giving back to the community through the appreciation and preservation of the history and culture of this island. John Bowen: “I’d like to thank you first of all for coming today. This is a bit overwhelming to find so many people interested in these old photographs. When I first came to Hawaiʽi and got to work at C.Brewer, I got to visit the Brewer plantations state wide, every couple of weeks for 2 years. And one thing that struck me, being from the metropolitan area of Baltimore Marilyn, was the plantation lifestyle. I realized just how unique it really was. We met so many fantastic people in the plantation camps. We found ourselves being invited to very personal events. First birthday lūʽau, funerals, weddings, ethnic celebrations of all different sorts. For us relatively recently arrived individuals, at that time we’d been here for 10 years, this was just a fantastic experience and it’s one that neither of us will ever forget.”
Although the spark of the idea came from the experiences and talents of John and Ann, as often is the case here, there were many people with aloha who encouraged and helped the Bowens along the way. “Initially we wrote a letter to Yoshita Takamine at the ILWU and proposed the idea to him. And very shortly after mailing the letter we got a phone call, ‘Please come meet with me’. He overwhelmingly supported the idea and he was the initial person who opened a lot of doors for us that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to open….Very quickly after that we met Joe Garcia and he was just a fantastic person, who helped us immensely. We got to meet his dad on Maui because he belonged to the statewide project.” Joe Garcia’s son, Bill a Big Island rancher and musician was an honored guest.
In a world looking towards survival based on sustainability practices, it will be necessary to do more with less and to create interdependent communities and the plantation lifestyle was an exemplar of this. The next speaker, Valerie Poindexter, grew up on the plantation; her experiences and memories contribute to an outlook that bodes well for the future. “When I saw the pictures in the Tribune Herald, one of them was of our home and that brought so many memories back. What did I get out of growing up in a plantation camp? When we were growing up and we were little children, we didn’t see anything special because the whole island was plantation camp so there was nothing different. There were no big subdivisions; that to us was unheard of. All the politicians today are talking about sustainability and they just got to come back and look at the plantation lifestyle.”
Although the spark of the idea came from the experiences and talents of John and Ann, as often is the case here, there were many people with aloha who encouraged and helped the Bowens along the way. “Initially we wrote a letter to Yoshita Takamine at the ILWU and proposed the idea to him. And very shortly after mailing the letter we got a phone call, ‘Please come meet with me’. He overwhelmingly supported the idea and he was the initial person who opened a lot of doors for us that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to open….Very quickly after that we met Joe Garcia and he was just a fantastic person, who helped us immensely. We got to meet his dad on Maui because he belonged to the statewide project.” Joe Garcia’s son, Bill a Big Island rancher and musician was an honored guest.
In a world looking towards survival based on sustainability practices, it will be necessary to do more with less and to create interdependent communities and the plantation lifestyle was an exemplar of this. The next speaker, Valerie Poindexter, grew up on the plantation; her experiences and memories contribute to an outlook that bodes well for the future. “When I saw the pictures in the Tribune Herald, one of them was of our home and that brought so many memories back. What did I get out of growing up in a plantation camp? When we were growing up and we were little children, we didn’t see anything special because the whole island was plantation camp so there was nothing different. There were no big subdivisions; that to us was unheard of. All the politicians today are talking about sustainability and they just got to come back and look at the plantation lifestyle.”
Valerie Poindexter That lifestyle was both simple and completely connected to the ʽaina. “… when we grew up, we had a huge garden in the backyard and I think every family had a garden. We grew corn, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, peanuts. When we were going to watch a movie, we didn’t have any popcorn to pop; it was go in the backyard, pull the peanuts, go wash the peanuts in the water, come back and then sit in front of the t.v. and then we’ll eat boiled peanuts.”
This was not an impoverished lifestyle, but one that was rich with natural resources and a close community of people. “Life was very simple back then. When we grew up we were poor and yet we didn’t know we were poor because we were happy. Back then in the camps as children, what did we have to play with? We had guava sticks and your imagination just had to run wild so you could have a lot of fun. The guys would make sling shots out of the guava sticks and the girls, you know I had a wand, I was the fairy princess; I would turn the pear tree into my boyfriend. We were a huge community. It’s really amazing this multi-cultural society that was created. Someone came from the mainland a couple of days ago and he said, ‘When you land on the island, you just feel this ahhhhh’. And that’s how we are and I think living in that lifestyle in that multicultural society how we live together in communities is the true aloha spirit.”
This exhibit is also a testament to the aloha spirit that is still alive because the kupuna, the elders have passed on the wisdom that comes with hard work and loving kindness. “We survived because we had each other. You’ve heard that African proverb, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ and that should have been our proverb, because that’s actually what it took. I look at Farrah sitting here and all the accomplishments and her grandpa sitting here. It brings about a lot of history and a lot of who we are. Sometimes the children in school, they have no clue who they are. I look at all the kupuna’s sitting here and I want to cry because it’s because of what you gave us that we are who we are today and that’s the true aloha spirit. I have a lot of gratitude for what you have done for us.”
This was not an impoverished lifestyle, but one that was rich with natural resources and a close community of people. “Life was very simple back then. When we grew up we were poor and yet we didn’t know we were poor because we were happy. Back then in the camps as children, what did we have to play with? We had guava sticks and your imagination just had to run wild so you could have a lot of fun. The guys would make sling shots out of the guava sticks and the girls, you know I had a wand, I was the fairy princess; I would turn the pear tree into my boyfriend. We were a huge community. It’s really amazing this multi-cultural society that was created. Someone came from the mainland a couple of days ago and he said, ‘When you land on the island, you just feel this ahhhhh’. And that’s how we are and I think living in that lifestyle in that multicultural society how we live together in communities is the true aloha spirit.”
This exhibit is also a testament to the aloha spirit that is still alive because the kupuna, the elders have passed on the wisdom that comes with hard work and loving kindness. “We survived because we had each other. You’ve heard that African proverb, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ and that should have been our proverb, because that’s actually what it took. I look at Farrah sitting here and all the accomplishments and her grandpa sitting here. It brings about a lot of history and a lot of who we are. Sometimes the children in school, they have no clue who they are. I look at all the kupuna’s sitting here and I want to cry because it’s because of what you gave us that we are who we are today and that’s the true aloha spirit. I have a lot of gratitude for what you have done for us.”
Farrah Gomes Farrah Gomes, director of NHERC and plantation child, emphasized the need to discover and preserve the stories of this land of Hamakua in her closing remarks. “Like Valerie, I too am a lifelong resident of this area. I grew up on the Hamakua sugar plantation. Like so many others in this community, I have so many memories and stories to share and it feels really good to know that we actually have the Heritage Center right here in our community to help us to be able to preserve these memories. While the plantation era is now gone, that doesn’t have to be the case for all of the memories that exist from that time period. The exhibit that we are about to open, is just the start of what we hope to bring and give back to the community. The value of what we have to share will depend on what the community will be comfortable sharing with us….don’t hesitate to share a story or a picture or even an entire collection with us.”
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