Talking Hawai`i's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION The truth of a narrative is not necessarily to be discovered in its historical consistency, but rather in its ability to create common identity and shared values and to facilitate survival. . . . The validity of narratives must be evaluated not according to a foreign yardstick, but instead on the basis of their success in sustaining a culture that provides a system of coherent beliefs, nurtures a cohesive community, acknowledges the humanity of all members and ensures survival of a people. —Robert Archibald Talking Hawai‘i’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People reflects the common identity, shared values, and survival of a unique culture that gave rise to and sustained a special sense of community in twentieth-century Hawai‘i. Measured by standards suggested by historian Robert Archibald, this book holds truths and statements that readers can identify with and relate to as representations of a past still meaningful and relevant to the people of Hawai‘i. In this book are the experiences and observations of men and women who began their lives in the first three decades of the last century, and who speak not only of their own times and lives but of their parents’ and grandparents’— reporting experiences and observations covering more than a hundred years and extending beyond the shores of our island state. Featured are seventeen men and thirteen women: Faustino Baysa, Abigail Burgess, Lillian Cameron, Agnes Eun Soon Rho Chun, Severo Dinson, Henry K. Duvauchelle, Martina Kekuewa Fuentevilla, Ernest Golden, Alice Saito Gouveia, Venicia Damasco Guiala, Robert Kiyoshi Hasegawa, Lemon “Rusty” Holt, Jennie Lee In, Mae Morita Itamura, Emma Kaawakauo, Robert Kahele, Moses W. “Moke” Kealoha, Helen Fujika Kusunoki, Frederick P. Lowrey, Ernest A. Malterre, Jr., Stanley C. Mendes, Fred Ho‘olae Paoa, Irene Cockett Perry, Alfred Preis, Alex Ruiz, John Santana, Etsuo Sayama, Willie Thompson, Kazue Iwahara Uyeda, and Edith Anzai Yonenaka. They talk about the routines of everyday life—cooking, doing chores, going to school, and working—as well as special events and pivotal decisions and their consequences. They speak about family, neighbors, and friends. Persons prominent in their lives—teachers, supervisors, employers, mentors —are mentioned, as are the famous and notorious. Personal issues, family matters, and community concerns are shared. They talk about their homes, x Talking Hawai‘i’s Story living conditions, foods, clothing, and means of transportation and communication . They describe their surroundings, both natural—mountains, valleys , streams, and shorelines—and built—villages, plantation camps, towns, and cities. They elaborate on their religious and cultural practices. Aspirations , expectations, triumphs, disappointments, and tragedies are recalled. Values and beliefs are openly discussed or conveyed in the telling of events. These personal experiences and observations intersect with what many call the “historical record.” The men and women who share their lives in this book lived through many key events and transformational periods of modern Hawai‘i: the immigration of agricultural laborers to the islands, labor strikes, the Great Depression, two World Wars, statehood, the expansion of an American military presence in the Pacific, the growth of tourism, the demise of the sugar and pineapple industries, and the development of a multiethnic , culturally diverse island society. This intersection of the personal and historical expands our knowledge of the past, adding the names and faces of largely anonymous people, together with their emotions, commentaries, and reflections, to the record. This intersection gives context to both the personal and historical. For some readers whose memories may converge or coincide with those of the men and women featured here, the narratives will serve as mnemonic devices, rekindling and confirming remembrances that affirm the shared nature of their island experiences and observations. For these readers, the narratives easily settle into time and place. For others lacking such remembrances, the narratives may serve as vehicles to revisit dissimilar experiences or to experience vicariously events of the last century. For these readers, the narratives will not settle into time and place so easily, and will require mediation by more of the historical record. Other works on the history of Hawai‘i, and the project volumes that hold the oral histories on which these narratives are based, should be consulted. The anthology’s thirty narratives are selected from among sixty-nine originally published between Fall 1984 and Spring 2008 in the Oral History Recorder, the semi-annual newsletter of the Center for Oral History of the University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa (COH).1 Only after a thorough review of all sixty-nine...