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IRENE COCKETT PERRY INTERWOVEN MEMORIES OF LÄNA‘I Come rainy time, you know, the time when can’t work outside, then the ladies would get together and clean the lau hala and soften them and put them in pöka‘a. Pöka‘a is rolls. When that’s all done, they get together and they weave. . . . All the ladies, like the Kahaleanus, and I think Cousin Hattie [Kaopuiki] all get together and they make it a nice time. Irene Perry is the sixth of eight children born to Robert Cockett and Rose Kahikiwawe Cockett. At the time of Perry’s birth in 1917, her father worked as a foreman for Läna‘i Ranch, overseeing the cattle in Keömuku. Perry attended Keömuku School until the family moved permanently to Kö‘ele in 1928. She completed her education at Kö‘ele Grammar School. In 1934, she married Dick Perry, a Hawaiian Pineapple Company employee. Irene Perry worked at the company’s daycare center and also operated her own bake shop, supporting her two daughters and parents after her husband ’s death in 1950. When her daughters joined the military service, Perry followed them to the Mainland for a year. She then moved to Honolulu and worked for the Moana Hotel. After retirement , she returned home to Läna‘i, where she enjoyed weaving and other Hawaiian crafts. Irene Perry was interviewed in 1989 by Hermina Morita, a longtime Läna‘i resident who later became a representative in the Hawai‘i state legislature . The interviews were part of COH’s Läna‘i Ranch: The People of Kö‘ele and Keömuku, a project conceived after Castle & Cooke, Inc., virtually sole owner of the tiny pineapple plantation island of Läna‘i, decided to transform the island’s economy by closing the plantation and constructing two major resort hotels: the 250-room Manele Bay Hotel and the 102-room The Lodge 220 Talking Hawai‘i’s Story at Ko‘ele. The latter hotel, which was still under construction at the time of the interviews, stands on the former site of Läna‘i Ranch. The site is historically significant because the ranch represented the island’s major commercial activity prior to the beginning of pineapple cultivation in 1922. The oral history project came about when the County of Maui Planning Department, which oversees land use for the county (which includes Läna‘i), approved Castle & Cooke’s request for land development and hotel construction provided that a comprehensive oral and written history project be undertaken . This was in congruence with an archaeological reconnaissance survey conducted in 1986 that recommended that oral history information should be collected from a number of older Läna‘i residents with special knowledge of the island since 1900. KEÖMUKU: CLOSE AND NICE For me, Keömuku was the best. I just loved it, even if you were much to yourself and all, but there was so much that you could do and enjoy. We’d go crabbing and a little fishing, even if you don’t get much, and pick limu and all that. Saturdays we’d go out and catch fish and we’d bring home. That was fun because we kids would go in and swim and splash water so that the fish would run into the net (chuckles). We would eat some fish and dry some for the winter months. Every week, we’d go out and get enough firewood. We had to go out in the kiawe and pick up little twigs. Three different sizes, we’d get. We’d bring them home and we’d stack them up. When there was plenty of lau hala, we had to go and help pick, the children from around there. Like the ones that can do the gathering of the lau hala, we’d do that, and the older ones would maybe strip the kuküs. Come rainy time, you know, the time when can’t work outside, then the ladies would get together and clean the lau hala and soften them and put them in pöka‘a. Pöka‘a is rolls. When that’s all done, they get together and they weave. I don’t remember seeing my mother weave a hat, but I know she weaved mats. All the ladies, like the Kahaleanus, and I think Cousin Hattie [Kaopuiki] all get together and they make it a nice time. Summertime, before then, we used to plant...

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