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March 18, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hawaiʻi Statehood Address – Aloha ke Akua

“(P)ress reports circulating the reactions of the people of Hawaii to the final passage of S. 50 by the House of Representatives (concerning Hawaiʻi statehood) indicated that the people of Hawaii quite naturally demonstrated their exuberance in many ways.”

(The Hawaiʻi Admission Act was signed into law on March 18, 1959; Hawaiʻi became the 50th State on August 21, 1959.)

“However, in justice, it should be told that a great many people of Hawaii reacted in an entirely different way.”

“For according to numerous reports received, the most immediately spontaneous reaction of the people of Hawaii was one of prayerful thanksgiving to the Almighty and of seeking His Guidance in meeting new responsibility.”

“(A)n unplanned service (was) held at Kawaiahaʻo Church. This church is the denomination of the missionaries who came to Hawaii in 1820. A crowd of more than 1,000 people, including the Honorable Neal Blaisdell, mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, gathered and paid respect to the Divine Providence within minutes of the news being received that the bill was passed by the House.”

“The next morning, thanksgiving services were held at this same church. The Reverend Dr. Abraham Akaka, pastor of Kawaiahaʻo Church, gave the sermon, which is included here.” (John A Burns, Delegate to US House of Representatives))

By Reverend Abraham K Akaka; Given on: Friday, March 13, 1959:

“One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – these words have a fuller meaning for us this morning in Hawaii. And we have gathered here at Kawaiahaʻo Church to give thanks to God, and to pray for his guidance and protection in the years ahead.

Our newspapers lately have been full of much valuable historical data concerning Hawaii’s development, growth, and aspirations. I will keep these stories as long as I live, for my children and their children, for they call to mind the long train of those whose sacrifices were accepted, whose prayers and hopes through the years were fulfilled yesterday. There yet remains the formal expression of our people for statehood, and the entrance of our Islands into the Union as a full-fledged member.

I would like today to speak the message of self-affirmation: that we take courage to be what we truly are, the Aloha State.

On April 25, 1820, one hundred and thirty-nine years ago, the first Christian service conducted in Honolulu was held on this very ground. Like our Pilgrim Fathers who arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, so did the fathers of a new era in Hawaii kneel in prayer after a long and trying voyage to give thanks to God who had seen them safely on their way.

Gathered around the Reverend Hiram Bingham on that day were a few of our “kupunas” who had come out of curiosity. The text of the sermon that day, though it was April and near Easter time, was from the Christmas Story.

And there our people heard words for the first time: “Mai maka’u ‘oukou, no ka mea, eia ho’i, ke ha’i aku nei au ia ‘oukou i ka mea maika’i, e ‘oli’oli nui ai e lilo ana no na kanaka apau. No ka mea, i keia la i hanau ai, ma ke kulanakauhale o Davida, he ola no ‘oukou, aia ka Mesia ka Haku” — “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.”

Although our grandfathers did not realize it fully then, the hopes and fears of all their years through the next century and more were to be met in the meaning and power of those words, for, from that beginning, a new Hawaii was born.

For through those words, our missionaries and people following them under God became the greatest single influence in Hawaii’s whole development – politically, economically, educationally, socially, religiously. Hawaii’s real preparation for statehood can be said to have truly begun on that day and on this spot one hundred and thirty-nine years ago.

Yesterday, when the first sound of firecrackers and sirens reached my ears, I was with the members of our Territorial Senate in the middle of the morning prayer for the day’s session. How strange it was, and yet how fitting, that the news should burst forth while we were in prayer together. Things had moved so fast. Our mayor, a few minutes before, had asked if the church could be kept open, because he and others wanted to walk across the street for prayer when the news came.

By the time I got back from the Senate, this sanctuary was well filled with people who happened to be around, people from our government buildings nearby. And as we sang the great hymns of Hawaii and our nation, it seemed that the very walls of this church spoke of God’s dealing with Hawaii in the past, of great events both spontaneous and planned.

There are some of us to whom statehood brings great hopes, and there are some to whom statehood brings silent fears. One might say that the hopes and fears of Hawaii are met in statehood today. There are fears that Hawaii as a state will be motivated by economic greed …

… that statehood will turn Hawaii (as someone has said) into a great big spiritual junkyard filled with smashed dreams, worn-out illusions; that will make the Hawaiian people lonely, confused, insecure, empty, anxious, restless, disillusioned – a wistful people.

There is an old “mele” that reminds me of such fears as these, and of the way God leads us out of our fears. “Haku’i i ka uahi o ka Lua, pa i ka lani, ha’aha’a Hawai’i moku o Keawe i hanau’ia … po Puna, po Hilo, po i ka uahi o ku’u ‘aina … ola ia kini, ke’a mai la ke ahi”.

There is a fire underground, but the firepit gives forth only smoke, smoke that bursts upward, touching the skies, and Hawaii is humbled beneath its darkness – it is night over Hawaii, night from the smoke of my land – but there is salvation for the people, for now the land is being lit by a great flame.”

We need to see statehood as the lifting of the clouds of smoke, as an opportunity to affirm positively the basic Gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We need to see that Hawaii has potential moral and spiritual contributions to make our nation and to our world.

The fears Hawaii may have are to be met by men and women who are living witnesses of what we really are in Hawaii, of the spirit of Aloha, men and women who can help unlock the doors to the future by the guidance and grace of God.

This kind of self-affirmation is the need of the hour. And we can affirm our being, as the Aloha State, by full participation in our nation and in our world. For any collective anxiety, the answer is collective courage. And the ground of that courage is God.

We do not understand the meaning of Aloha until we realize its foundation in the power of God at work in the world. Since the coming of our missionaries in 1820, the name for God to our people has been Aloha. One of the first sentences I learned from my mother in my childhood was this from Holy Scripture: “Aloha ke Akua” – in other words, “God is Aloha.”

Aloha is the power of God seeking to unite what is separated in the world – the power that unites heart with heart, soul with soul, life with life, culture with culture, race with race, nation with nation. Aloha is the power that can reunite when a quarrel has brought separation; aloha is the power that reunites a man with himself when he has become separated from the image of God within.

Thus, when a person or a people live in the spirit of Aloha they live in the spirit of God. And among such a people, whose lives so affirm their inner being, we see the working of the Scripture: “All things work together for good to them who love God… from the Aloha of God came his Son that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.”

Aloha consists of this new attitude of heart, above negativism, above legalism. It is the unconditional desire to promote the true good of other people in a friendly spirit, out of a sense of kinship. Aloha seeks to do good, with no conditions attached.

We do not do good only to those who do good to us. One of the sweetest things about the love of God, about Aloha, is that it welcomes the stranger and seeks his good. A person who has the spirit of Aloha loves even when the love is not returned. And such is the love of God.

This is the meaning of Aloha. I feel especially grateful that the discovery and development of our Islands long ago was not couched in the context of an imperialistic and exploitive national power, but in this context of Aloha.

There is a correlation between the charter under which the missionaries came -namely, “To preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to cover these islands with productive green fields, and to lift the people to a high state of civilization” – a correlation between this and the fact that Hawaii is not one of the trouble spots in the world today but one of the spots of great hope.

Aloha does not exploit a people or keep them in ignorance and subservience. Rather, it shares the sorrows and joys of people; it seeks to promote the true good of others.

Today, one of the deepest needs of mankind is the need to feel a sense of kinship one with another. Truly all mankind belongs together; from the beginning all mankind has been called into being, nourished, watched over by the love of God.

So that the real Golden Rule is Aloha. This is the way of life we shall affirm.

Let us affirm ever what we really are – for Aloha is the spirit of God at work in you and in me and in the world, uniting what is separated, overcoming darkness and death, bringing new light and life to all who sit in the darkness of fear, guiding the feet of mankind into the way of peace.

Thus may our becoming a State mean to our nation and the world, and may it reaffirm that which was planted in us one hundred and thirty-nine years ago: “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

The image shows Rev. Abraham Akaka and the Rev. Glen Balsley leading a procession of dignitaries and Hawaiian civic groups from ʻIolani Palace (where the legislature got the call that Congress had approved admission) to Kawaiahaʻo Church on March 13, 1959.

March 17, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Eleanora and Fair American

Simon Metcalfe (sometimes spelled Metcalf) (1735-1794) was an American fur trader. He traded furs from the Pacific Northwest for goods from China.

Reportedly, Simon Metcalfe was the first American captain to take sea otters on the Northwest Coast and the first American to trade those skins in China.

Traders used Hawai‘i as a trading and provisioning site; they would take on food and water from Hawai‘i on their way across the Pacific.

Metcalfe was, by all accounts, a snappish, irritable, harsh individual, who believed in strong and immediate punishment for infractions of his rules. He captained the Eleanora.

It was in Macao, China that Simon Metcalfe purchased and refitted another ship, a schooner named the Fair American. She was outfitted with sufficient cannons, muskets, and powder to make the trip eastward.

The two ships (Fair American and the Eleanora) sailed on the Philippines where they laid over for several months in preparation of the journey and to train young Thomas Humphrey Metcalfe (Simon’s 18-year-old son) to command the Fair American. The schooner Fair American sailed with Thomas Metcalfe at the helm, Isaac Davis and only four other crewmen aboard. (Durst)

The Eleanora and the Fair American on the 5th June, 1789, sailed in company from Macao. Off the Japanese coast they were separated in a storm and made their way thereafter by different routes towards Nootka.

Somewhere in Alaskan waters, or off the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Washington, then in command of Captain Kendrick, met the Eleanora probably in the month of September, and later also encountered the Fair American. (Howay)

“Everything being ready, both vessels sailed, having appointed Curacooa [Kealakekua] Bay as a rendezvous, in case of our separating at sea, at which, whoever first arrived, was to wait for the others.”

“When about half way over, we separated in a dark squally night, and the ship arrived off Kirowah [Kailua] after short passage.

The natives expressed much satisfaction at our return, and were so pleased to see us, that they were particularly desirous the ship should remain at anchor there.”

“The Captain proceeded to the appointed place to await the arrival of the schooner, and remained a number of days, hourly expecting her. There was no alteration in the conduct of the Indians; the ship was surrounded with canoes, and the deck covered with the natives from morning until sun-down, bringing with them the productions of the Island for trade.” (John Young. As Told to Captain Charles H. Barnard in 1816. By John Young-Himself In Paradise of the Pacific 1937; Durst)

In March, 1790 the Eleanora under Simon Metcalfe was at Kealakekua Bay in the Hawaiian Islands. … At the same time the Fair American, under his son Thomas Metcalfe, was at anchor near Kawaihae. At this time, however, the Eleanora was probably unaware of the proximity of the other. (Howay)

The Hawaiians were at war … “All the Chiefs of Atooi and Oneehow were gone to windward to war with the Owhyheeans.“

“Indeed they have constantly been at war since Captain Cook was kill’d, and also have had a deal of Sickness which never before his time afflicted them which they allege to having kill’d him. They made strict enquiry of me, if ever he would come back again …”

“Since I was there in the Prince of Wales, two Volcanoes have open’d on the Lee side the Isle, which burn’d night and day with great fury and Tremendous Explosion which they say Captain Cook has caus’d.” (Colnett)

“This Story was now unriddled to me. The Father of the Young man that commanded the Schooner had been here in a Brig a few days before ….” (Colnett)

Two actions by Simon Metcalfe at the end of the 1700s set in motion a series of events that, without which, the history of Hawai‘i could have been very, very different.

Simon Metcalfe (captaining the Eleanora) and his son Thomas Metcalfe (also a trader, captaining the Fair American); their plan was to meet and spend winter in the Hawaiian Islands.

Because of some infraction, Metcalfe mistreated and insulted Kame‘eiamoku (some reports say Metcalfe had Kame‘eiamoku flogged – by the way, Kame‘eiamoku is one of the twins embossed on the Royal Coat of Arms.)

Metcalfe then sailed to the neighboring island of Maui to trade along the coast (and ultimately initiated the Olowalu Massacre.)

Kame‘eiamoku vowed revenge on whatever American ship next came his way; On March 16, 1790, the Fair American was attacked by Kameʻeiamoku’s warriors at Puako, near Kawaihae, Hawaii.

“[A] small schooner named the Fair American was taken by the natives of Owhyhee (Hawaii). This schooner was tender to the Eleanora, Captain Metcalf, of New York, and commanded by his son, whom the natives killed with 3 seamen.”

“One (Isaac Davis) they threw overboard, but after beating and bruising him in a most shocking manner, they took him into one of the canoes and lashed him in with his face downwards, where [Isaac] Ridler [an American carpenter’s mate from the Columbia who was left in the fall of 1788 to collect sandalwood] found him, and interceded to save his life, in which he succeeded.” (Log of the Brig Hope-Ingraham)

“[T]he Eleanora, Captain Metcalf, Sr., was at this time in Karakakooa (Kealakekua) ignorant of the fate of his unfortunate son, although within a few miles of him.” (Log of the Brig Hope-Ingraham)

“Part of the crew of the [Eleanora] went on shore by turns to amuse and recreate themselves in any way they chose, provided they did not interfere with or give offense to the natives; but I did not feel any particular desire to go on shore, as neither the Indians nor their manners were pleasing to me, although I entertained no particular dislike to them.”

“Tired of being constantly on board the ship. I one day [March 17, 1790] took a musket and went on shore, intending to take a ramble through the woods in pursuit of birds.” (John Young)

Metcalfe waited for Young to return; finally, sensing danger or becoming frustrated, Metcalfe departed and set sail for China (abandoning Young,) not knowing that his son had been killed not far away.

“In the middle of the afternoon, I returned to the shore, for the purpose of going on board, but there was no boat and all the canoes were hauled higher up on the beach as usual; the huts were all closed and not a native visible.” (John Young. As Told to Captain Charles H. Barnard in 1816. By John Young-Himself In Paradise of the Pacific 1937; Durst)

It’s not clear what happened right after Metcalfe left Hawai‘i in 1790. It was reported, however, that, in 1794, after apparently friendly trading with the Haida natives in Canada, he and his ship were captured (there was only one survivor.)

Looking back at Metcalfe’s two significant events of 1790, it makes you wonder, what would Hawai‘i’s history be like after 1790 if (1) Metcalfe hadn’t insulted Kame‘eiamoku, who later sought revenge and (2) John Young had not gone ashore on their return from Maui.

As it turns out, Kamehameha befriended Young and Davis, who became respected translators and his close and trusted advisors. Their skill in gunnery, as well as the cannon and other weapons from the Fair American, helped Kamehameha win many battles.

“With the detention of Young and Davis in 1790, Kamehameha secured individuals able to tutor his forces in the usage of western artillery – cannons and muskets … Promoting his own campaigns with western armament clearly gave Kamehameha’s forces the advantage over enemies limited to traditional implements of warfare.” (Durst)

With these two men and the weapons, Kamehameha’s military was successful in his eventual conquest and unification of the Hawaiian Islands; first to Maui in 1790 and then O‘ahu in 1795.

The image, reportedly the oldest surviving document from Hawai‘i in the Hawai‘i State Archives is the letter, dated March 22, 1790, written by Captain Simon Metcalfe, addressed to four foreigners living there at the time (coincidently, one was also named John Young) – demanding the return of John Young and threatening revenge.

It reads, “As my Boatswain landed by your invitation if he is not returned to the Vessel consequences of an unpleasant nature must follow, (to distress a Vessel in these seas is an affair of no small magnitude) if your Word be the Law of Owhyhe (Hawai‘i) as you have repeatedly told me there can be no difficulty in doing me justice in this Business, otherwise I am possessed of sufficient powers to take ample revenge which it is your duty to make the head Chief (Kamehameha) acquainted with.”

March 16, 2026 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Hawaiian Acres

Forested areas of this region were used by native Hawaiians for hunting and traditional gathering of food and medicinals. Because sandalwood once grew in these forests, it can be reasoned that post-European contact saw the harvest of such.

Bird feathers were a much utilized resource of the Olaʻa forest. Feathers were sought for making cloaks and helmets for the Aliʻi, as well as for religious purposes.

Puna was once known for its groves of hala and ʻōhiʻa-lehua trees. Hawaiians observed, “Ka ua moaniani lehua o Puna / The rain that brings the fragrance of the lehua of Puna”.

While the Puna district does not have running streams, it does have many inland and shoreline springs continuously fed by rains borne upon the northeast tradewinds. (McGregor)

Early settlement patterns in the Islands put people on the windward sides of the islands, typically along the shoreline. However, in Puna, much of the district’s coastal areas have thin soils and there are no good deep water harbors. The ocean along the Puna coast is often rough and windblown.

As a result, settlement patterns in Puna tend to be dispersed and without major population centers. Villages in Puna tended to be spread out over larger areas and often are inland, and away from the coast, where the soil is better for agriculture. (Escott)

Between 1958 and 1973, more than 52,500-individual lots were created for residential use. There are at least over 40 Puna subdivisions. Geographically, these subdivisions are sometimes as big as cities.

Back then, they plotted out the subdivisions in cookie-cutter residential/agricultural lots across a grid, with very little space for other uses (such as parks, open space, government services, regional roads … the list goes on and on.)

To add insult to injury, most subdivision lots are accessed by private, unpaved roads. The streets generally lack sidewalks and lighting, and do not meet current County standards in terms of pavement width, vertical geometrics, drainage and other design parameters.

There are only two main roads to move the people in the district in and out – one (Route 130 – Keaau-Pahoa Road) goes into Pahoa to Kalapana; the other (Route 11 – Volcano Highway) serves the lots up in the Volcano area.

In 1958, two mainland businessmen from Denver, Colorado, Glen I Payton and David F. O’Keefe organized a Hawaii Corporation called Tropic Estates.

They purchased 12,191 acres of land between Kurtistown and Mountain View from Big Island politician and businessmen, Robert M. Yamada.

The land was divided into 4,008 lots and put on the market for $500.00 to $1,000.00 each, with terms as low as $150.00 down and $8.00 per month. The project was named Hawaiian Acres. The lots sold very well.

Hawaiian Acres became the first of many speculative subdivisions to be created. This subdivision boom continued until its end in 1975. Infrastructure was not provided.

Hawaiʻi County Planning discussed buying these lots, reasoning that should this subdivision reach build-out the county could go bankrupt providing the required infrastructure. It was an ominous economic forecast indeed.

Hawaiian Acres, under the State Land Use Law is zoned agricultural. It is composed mostly of 3 acre lots with a few larger and a few smaller.

Of the 72 miles of roadway, fewer than 10 miles are paved. Telephone service is available to about 90% of the subdivision, with electrical service at an estimated 50%. Most residents in some way or another employ alternative energy.

All Hawaiian Acres homes use some type of rain catchment to obtain their supply for household use of water. Some residents haul in their drinking water if their catchment system is inadequate or contaminated.

At an elevation of 650′ to 1350′, Hawaiian Acres sits on lava flows that range from 200-750 years in age. Some G-road lots are on flows that date to 3000 years in age.

Hawaiian Acres has some unique geological features, such as its numerous lava tubes or caves. Kazumura Cave is now known as the world’s longest lava tube at over 40 miles, and with several entrances within Hawaiian Acres.

One manmade feature that has had a significant impact on Hawaiian Acres is the series of water diversion walls that total over half a mile in length and up to 12′ in height, that channel water into Hawaiian Acres.

This channel receives overflow from the Mt. View Drainage project developed by the county. This overflow can and has reached five feet or more in heavy rains. These walls were built by Olaa Sugar Company (AMFAC) starting in 1938, to divert floodwaters away from sugarcane fields along the Mauna Loa-Kilauea boundary into what was then considered wasteland.

Hawaiian Acres sits in Lava Hazard Zone-3. Lava Hazard Zones are rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with a number 1 rating as the most hazardous. Folks predict Hawaiian Acres will be affected by lava sometime in the unknown future. (Information here is from the County, HACA, Jack Russell Brauher and Hawaiian Acres Master Plan.)

March 15, 2026 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Carlotta

In 1898, Carlotta Stewart, at eighteen years of age, came to Hawai‘i with her father (probably at his urging,) to continue her education and to begin planning her future. (Guttman)

The third child of Thomas McCants Stewart and Charlotte Pearl Harris, Carlotta was born in 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, where she attended public schools during her formative years.

Although her father had spent several years in Liberia, Africa, Carlotta had never traveled outside of the continental United States before coming to Hawai‘i.

Her father – a noted black lawyer, civil rights leader and friend of Booker T Washington – was the first African American to be admitted to practice law in Hawaiʻi (1898.) (jtb-org)

She attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) where she played on the girls’ basketball team. After she graduated from there, she continued with basketball, playing for the YWCA and serving as timekeeper for the local games.

Her brothers McCants and Gilchrist had attended Tuskegee Institute, the Southern vocational school established by Booker T
Washington (1881,) Carlotta lived with her father following a bitter divorce from his first wife. (Broussard)

She graduated from Oʻahu College in 1902, one of eight members in the senior class. The course of study there included classes in philosophy, religion, English, Latin, Greek, French or German, history, economics, mathematics and science.

After graduation, Carlotta completed the requirements for a Normal School certificate (later known as the Teachers’ College,) which she received in 1902, and she promptly accepted a teaching position in the Practice Department of the Normal School.

She had converted to Catholicism during the early-1900s, despite the fact that her father was an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and that she visited the Priory (an Episcopal school) often as a young teacher to pray, study and dine with other females. (Broussard)

Stewart remained at the Normal School for several years, where she taught English; she is listed in the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii between 1902 and 1924.

Her father and stepmother left the Islands in 1905; Carlotta later noted “Sometimes I get quite blue not having a single relative in the Islands. … I soon get over it, for I have such good friends. I want for nothing.”

In 1906, in addition to teaching, she was busy with classes, vacations, camping, surfing and frequent parties. “We took in two dances a week at the Seaside Hotel and played cards at home the other evenings or made up moonlight bathing parties.” (Stewart; Broussard)

In 1909, Carlota was noted as a teacher assigned to Koʻolau Elementary School (Kauai,) a later newspaper story noted that she was identified as principal there. “This school (is) situated on the government road near the north side of Moloa‘a Valley, between Anahola and Kilauea”.

Initially, total enrollment for the school was 61, average attendance 59; Japanese 31, Part Hawaiian 19, Hawaiian 7 and Portuguese 4.

“The majority of the children here come from the homes of the small tillers of the soil in the Moloa‘a Valley and thereabouts, especially the rice fields of the Japanese and the kuleanas of the Hawaiians.” (Evening Bulletin, October 14, 1909)

Her rapid advancement in the space of seven years was an impressive achievement, although many black women had established teaching careers and a handful were school administrators by 1909, it was unusual for a black woman at the age of 28 to serve as principal of a multi-racial school.

This achievement was particularly striking in a society in which few black people lived and, therefore, had no political influence to request a job of this magnitude. Her pupils reflected a true cross section of Hawaii’s school-aged population, which grew rapidly between 1900 and 1940.

Conditions were neither difficult nor racially oppressive for a black professional woman, in Hawai‘i, there was no substantial black community before World War II, and Carlotta saw few black people either in classrooms or outside.

Most of her socializing took place in groups, relieving her of the pressure to find a companion with a comparable racial and social background.

She met and married her husband, Yun Tim Lai of Chinese ancestry at Anahola. He was sales manager of the Garden Island Motors, Ltd, an automobile dealership in Lihue, when the couple wed in 1916. (The 19-year marriage ended, however, in 1935, when Lai died suddenly in Hong Kong while visiting his parents.) (Broussard)

Carlotta Stewart Lai never remarried but remained in Hawai’i for the next 17 years, serving as principal and English teacher until her retirement in 1944.

By 1951 Lai’s health grew increasingly more fragile, and, unable to provide for herself without fear of bodily injury, she entered the Manoa Convalescent Home in 1952 and died there on July 6, 1952.

March 14, 2026 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Mea ‘Ono Pua‘a

Originally a Cantonese custom, dim sum (literally small snack – cuisine prepared as small bite-sized portions of food) is inextricably linked to the Chinese tradition of ‘yum cha’ or drinking tea. Teahouses sprung up to accommodate weary travelers journeying along the famous Silk Road.

Rural farmers, exhausted after long hours working in the fields, would also head to the local teahouse for an afternoon of tea and relaxing conversation. (Parkinson)

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America. The first to arrive in the Islands were the Chinese (1852.)

“When they (Chinese contract laborers) reached Honolulu, they were kept in the quarantine station for about two weeks. They were made to clean themselves in a tank and have their clothes fumigated. Planters looked them over and picked them for work in much the same way a horse was looked at before he was bought.” (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

“These Chinese were taken to the plantations. There they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors. Sometimes as many as forty men were put into one room. “

“They slept on wooden boards about two feet wide and about three feet from the floor. … (T)hey cut the sugarcane and hauled it on their backs to ox drawn carts which took the cane to the mill to be made into sugar” (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai’i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.) (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

They brought their customs and cuisine with them – and it caught on in the Islands.

One such, dim sum, includes char (or cha) siu bao, a bun with a barbecued pork filling. It is either steamed to be fluffy and white or baked with a light sugar glaze to produce a smooth golden-brown crust.

Char siu refers to the pork filling; the word bao simply means ‘bun.’

In the islands this Chinese pork cake became known as mea ‘ono pua‘a (‘mea ‘ono’ (delicious thing) as in cake or pastry, and ‘pua‘a’ for pork.) Reportedly, the pidgin adaptation “mea ‘ono pua‘a” evolved to “manapua.”

These steamed or baked buns are sometimes are filled with coconut, black bean paste or chicken (and other meats and vegetables,) but char siu pork has been predominant.

Not only did the tasty snack receive a Hawaiian name, they were also Hawaiian-sized, turning the ‘small snack’ to accompany tea, into a meal. (Some suggest the name is a variant of “mauna pua‘a” (mountain of pork.)

After finishing contracted terms as sugar plantation laborers, many Chinese opened businesses and restaurants. Food peddlers would walk neighborhoods selling snacks, including manapua, from large aluminum cans hung with cord at the ends of poles hoisted on their shoulders. (Hawaii Magazine)

A Manapua Man (vendors carrying tin cans on either end of a pole over his shoulder) would walk the neighborhoods, yelling “manapua, pepeiao, manapua pepeiao!”

(Pepeiao (the Hawaiian word for ear) is what is now known as Half Moon (har gao (a shrimp dumpling) because its shape looks like an ear – or what you would imagine is a boxer’s cauliflower ear.)

The walking street vendors are gone, but manapua continues as a local staple. (The Ma‘iola Indigenous Health Program notes manapua in the foundation of the Hawaiian food pyramid.)