Hawaii's Plantation Village

A l o h a !

I have said it before:

Hawaii is more than beaches.

“Don't grow up too quickly,

lest you forget how much

you love the beach.” 

 Michelle Held

We are more than amazing skies

"You can't put your feet on the ground

until you've touched the sky. "

Paul Auster

Our history still lingers, IF you know where to look

The past is our definition.

  We may strive, with good reason, to escape it,

or to escape what is bad in it,

but we will escape it only

by adding something better to it."

Wendell Berry

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On Saturday

I visited Hawaii's Plantation Village,

an outdoor history museum

that tells some of the stories 

of life on Hawaii's Sugar Plantations

(c. 1850-1950).

The Village includes restored buildings

and replicas of plantation structures,

buildings like the plantation store,

community center, 

and the humble homes

of the workers

who built our Hawaii.

The story that emerges

speaks of Hawaii's various cultures:

Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Puerto Rican,

Japanese, Okinawan, Korean,

and Filipino.

There are the people that came to work,

and then stayed to shape

and to share our uniqueness.

The lives of those people breathe in the setting,

and in the veins of locals

who come to see where grandma, grandpa

came from. 

Waipahu

was one of O'ahu's last plantation towns,

and its sugar mill operated until 1995.

I remember the emotion

as the last 'cane trucks' sounded their horns,

carrying the last crop to the mill.

  A way of life was passing.

But the smokestack still stands proudly

above the Waipahu town

that it built,

  reminding us to be grateful

to those workers,

and

for all

that has been accomplished 

Listen to the song,

While you watch the slide show: