General | Page 151 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

July 22, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ruggles’ Quilt

“The making of tapa was a time-consuming and labor intensive process. The outer bark was stripped away and the inner bark was soaked in water to make it soft.”

“Artistically carved round wooden mallets were used to pound the strips of the inner bark into meshed fiber to form sheets of various sizes, thicknesses, and textures. Then, the tapa was colored by native dyes and decorated with block prints.”

“New England missionaries arrived in 1820 and taught high-ranking Hawaiian women to make American-style patchwork quilts. On April 3, 1820, seven young New England missionary women held the first ‘Sewing Circle’ aboard the brig Thaddeus.” (Cao and Park)

“The high-ranking Hawaiian women were Kalakua, mother of King Liholiho, her sister Namahana, and two wives of Chief Kalanimoku. The missionary wives were Lucy Thurston, Lucia Holman, Sybil Bingham, Nancy Ruggles, Mercy Whitney, Jerusha Chamberlin, and Elisha Loomis.”

“The missionaries supplied the scissors and furnished the native women with calico patchwork to sew. Sewing calico piecework was new to the ranked Hawaiian women, but the geometric and symmetrical patterns associated with quilting were not.”

“The Hawaiian women were taught both types of quilt making. The pieced variety technique was used to make geometric repeated blocks, and the appliqué style used the ‘snowflakes’ method.” (Cao and Park)

Lucy Thurston, the wife of one of the first missionaries, recorded in her journal (1882): “Monday morning, April 3rd [1820], the first sewing circle was formed that the sun ever looked down upon in his Hawaiian realm.”

“Kalakua, queen-dowager was directress. She requested all the seven white ladies to take seats with them on mats, on the deck of the Thaddeus. Mrs. Holman and Mrs. Ruggles were executive officers to ply the scissors and prepare the work. … The four native women of distinction were furnished with calico patchwork to sew-a new employment to them.” (Thurston)

“For the first few years the missionary wives spent a great deal of time sewing for the upper class Hawaiians.”

“These ladies preferred to spend their time instructing the Hawaiians in spiritual matters and when regular supplies of fabric and patterns arrived from the mainland, the missionary wives began teaching Hawaiians to sew”.

“According to Wild, the missionaries’ instructional program included other domestic arts in addition to sewing lessons, and both sexes were welcomed into the domestic arts classes.”

“Leftover scraps of fabrics from the lessons were used to teach patchwork quilting. As they began learning to quilt, Hawaiian women incorporated traditional and familiar kapa designs into their quilts.”

“As part of the assimilation and acculturation processes, western fabric, fashions and quiltmaking were integrated into Hawaiian material culture. As this happened, the making of kapa began to decline, and by the end of the nineteenth century, kapa production waned.”

“To the Hawaiian seamstresses, it probably seemed illogical to cut new materials into small pieces only to be sewn together to make a patchwork quilt.”

“It was quite natural, therefore, that the Hawaiian women would move toward individual designs as they were accustomed to producing original designs with their own kapa beater and wood-blocks from which they made kapa designs of their own.”

“It is not known exactly when, or even how the appliquéd Hawaiian quilt evolved. What is most striking about the Hawaiian quilt is the appliqué technique in which a large sheet of fabric is folded, cut into a design, then stitched onto a contrasting background, followed by contour quilting around the motif.”

“Both in technique and style, Hawaiian appliqué reminds us of paper snowflakes made by schoolchildren, a contemporary remnant of cut paper work that was popular in the northeastern United States during the early decades of the nineteenth century.” (Arthur)

In addition, 9-year-old Huldah, daughter of missionary Samuel Ruggles made her own patchwork quilt, it is featured in the image. It was recently on display at Hawaiian Mission Houses. It is made from scraps; images of other clothing are also included in the album (from which Huldah Ruggles used scraps to finish her quilt).

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Huldah Ruggles Quilt-HMH

Huldah Ruggles Quilt-HMH and Garment-Huldah Ruggles used scarps of material for quilt

Huldah Ruggles Quilt-HMH

Garment-Huldah Ruggles used scarps of material for quilt

July 17, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pālama Settlement

Central Union Church dates back to the days of the Seaman’s Bethel Church in 1828. It was formally founded in 1887 and it moved into its present location in 1924.

In addition to developing new institutions within the church, the congregation made great strides in the field of missionary work in the city of Honolulu, including the beginning of the present Pālama Settlement.

Pālama, then a sleepy neighborhood of neat little cottages and taro patches, was chosen by philanthropist and Central Union members Mr. and Mrs. PC Jones as the site for a new chapel.

On the makai side of King street, opposite Liliha Street, the chapel was dedicated on June 1, 1896, and presented to Central Union by the Joneses, on the condition that the church …

… “maintain public preaching there on Sundays, a weekly prayer meeting, sustain a Sabbath school and also an occasional social for the residents of Pālama, the services to be conducted in the English language.”

Located west of Nuʻuanu Stream, near Downtown Honolulu, Pālama was home to mostly working-class Hawaiian families.

Walter F. Dillingham, long active in philanthropic endeavors in Honolulu, once observed of Pālama: “One must picture Honolulu at the end of the century with its mixture of races, their variety of foods, dress, cultures, customs and living habits. All this gave Honolulu a character and personality not duplicated in any American city.”

“The business section was composed mainly of low framed buildings with corrugated iron roofs near the water front. Streets were unpaved, horse-drawn vehicles, with the ox-cart was a common sight. Taro patches, duck ponds and even sugar cane grew in the section of Palama. It was in such a section that Palama Chapel was built and which grew to be Palama Settlement.” (HJH)

In 1900, as Honolulu health officials attempted to rid the nearby Chinatown area of bubonic plague, fire destroyed a four-block section. Displaced residents took up residence in newly built tenements in Pālama, changing the physical, social and economic make-up of the community.

The chapel’s staff located housing for many of the displaced and took care of the injured and children. It also ministered to the needs of immigrants who moved into the Pālama area soon after arriving in the Islands.

Social worker James Arthur Rath, Sr. and his wife, Ragna Helsher Rath, turned Pālama Chapel into Pālama Settlement (in September 1906,) a chartered, independent, non-sectarian organization receiving contributions from the islands’ elite.

“… they called them ‘settlement houses,’ the philosophy being that the head worker, as they called them, settled in the community. Instead of going in to spend the day working and coming out, they settled in, raised their families there and in that way learned …”

“… one, what the people needed; two, gained their confidence so that they could help them fulfill their needs; and then, three, went ahead and designed programs for exactly what the people needed.”

“So they were settlers and therefore they called them settlement houses. Which is what the origin of Pālama Settlement was because my father and my mother settled there and all five of us children were born and raised in our home in the settlement.” (Robert H. Rath, Sr)

The Raths established the territory’s first public nursing department, a day-camp for children with tuberculosis, a pure milk depot, a day nursery, a night school, and low-rent housing.

In 1908, an indoor swimming pool was opened, and a year later, a gymnasium and bowling alley were built above it. Later, outdoors, a playground, tennis court, and basketball court were added.

Also that year, a new Parish House was erected on an adjacent property at Richards Street, to be used for Sunday School classes and midweek meetings

After a territory-wide fund-raising effort, in 1925 Pālama Settlement moved to its present location with nine buildings spread over eight acres of land on Vineyard and Pālama streets.

Over the years, a medical clinic, an outpatient clinic and the Strong-Carter Dental Clinic were established along with annual circuses, athletic competitions, social and community-service clubs, boardinghouses for women and a preschool. Classes and events relating to music, arts, vocations, and athletics were also offered.

World War II and the postwar era brought about widespread changes in Hawai‘i’s social, economic, and political environment. These developments, in turn, led to changes in the way social agencies such as Pālama Settlement addressed community needs.

Observers noted that Pālama Settlement was departing from its original settlement house philosophy by offering programs for fees and catering to a broad cross section of people regardless of where they lived.

The 1960s and 1970s were periods of re-evaluation, adjustment, and growth, with the settlement’s programs becoming more people-centered rather than activity-centered, stressing human and community needs as opposed to uncoordinated, departmentalized activities, following the large-scale social and economic programs being implemented nationally.

Civil rights and anti-poverty legislation brought large amounts of federal monies to Pālama Settlement for local programs geared to at-risk youth and community development.

Pālama Settlement – a smaller one due to the widening of Vineyard Boulevard and the construction of the H-1 Freeway – continues to exist as a nonprofit, nongovernmental agency dedicated to helping needy families and at-risk youths.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Palama Chapel-(centralunionchurch-org)-circa 1897-1901

Original Palama Settlement at King and Liliha streets-(HJH)-circa 1912

Palama_Settlement-(palamasettlement-org)

James Arthur Rath (1870-1929) and Ragna Helsher Rath (1879-1981)founded Pälama Settlement in 1905-(honoluluadvertiser)

Palama_Settlement

Palama Settlement Swim Meet-(hawaii-edu)-1932

Palama_Settlement

If you had a toothache in 1935, you could get dental work done at Palama Settlement

July 11, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kalaupapa Field System

Molokai Island can be divided into three ecological regions based on rainfall, exposure to northeast trade winds and landform: (1) the wet, windward valleys of the north shore, (2) the dry, leeward valleys of the south shore, and (3) the arid rocklands of the island’s west end.

The Kalaupapa Peninsula, located at the western end of these valleys, is a unique landform formed by a volcanic rejuvenation centered on the Kauhakō Crater (about 330-thousand years ago,) at the base of the north shore’s cliffs.

Archaeological and carbon-dating evidence indicate that the initial settlement and presence of people on the Kalaupapa (“the flat plain”) peninsula on the Island of Molokai was between 800 and 1200.

Next to the peninsula is a distinctly-different, wet ecological zone with sediment soils distributed at the bottoms of the short Waihānau and Wai‘ale‘ia Valleys, the large Waikolu Valley and along the base of the cliffs.

Based on archaeological studies, the northern portion of the peninsula has “two main types of agricultural complexes … alignments with enclosures around them, and alignments without enclosures”. The density of plots within the later type suggested “possible intensification of an earlier field system”.

Identified as the Kalaupapa Field System, there is a grid of rain-fed plots, defined by low stone field walls built, in part, to shelter sweet potatoes and other crops from trade winds, that cover the Kalaupapa Peninsula.

It appears that the field system was a secondary area of settlement and agricultural development, with the wetter valley and sediment soil being the preferred areas.

Like other windward areas, wind erosion is a problem. To address this, long, narrow linear plots (defined by low field walls,) are packed densely together in locations exposed to the northeast trade winds. In addition, plots were in swales between boulder outcrops.

Initial theories suggested the entire field system was primarily the result of a historic boom in the production of potatoes for “gold rush” markets in California.

Recent work by various teams of archaeologists, which included surveys in different ecological zones – specifically, the peninsula and several valleys – revealed a well-preserved archaeological landscape across the region.

Instead of enclosed fields associated with the more recent historic era, archaeologists found dense rows of unenclosed alignments and substantial house sites quite unlike the temporary shelters found in other Hawaiian field systems.

The findings suggest that early agricultural development in the area started well before the “gold rush” exports and was first concentrated in valleys (with permanent streams) and, perhaps more significantly, that most of the Kalaupapa Field System was likely to have been built before European contact.

Although limited cultivation in dryland environments may have begun as early as 1200 and continued through the 13th century, widespread burning across the Kalaupapa Peninsula, which archaeologists suggest signals of the beginning of the Kalaupapa Field System, does not commence until 1450-1550.

It appears that not only is there a correlation between rich, geologically young soils and Hawaiian dryland intensive agricultural systems, but also the creation of these large-scale systems around 1400 appears to have been nearly simultaneous in both windward and leeward districts.

Then, between 1650 and 1795, there were increases in the peninsula population, indicated by house sites, rock shelters, an animal enclosure, a possible shrine and a site interpreted as a men’s house (mua.)

In terms of agriculture, there is good evidence that people continued to actively cultivate the entire area throughout this period.

Following the abandonment of the field system at the end of the 18th century, settlement shifted to small house sites spread along the coast and local roadways.

The introduction of cattle in 1830 caused the construction of large, architecturally-distinct walls to protect fields and yards from roving animals.

In 1849, portions of the fields were reactivated and intensified to supply potatoes and other crops to California’s “gold rush” markets.

The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi instituted in 1865 a century-long program of segregation and isolation of patients with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) and patients were banished to the isolated peninsula of Kalaupapa, displacing resident families.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Kalaupapa_Field_System_Walls-(McCoy)

Kalaupapa_Field_System-Walls-(McCoy)

Kalaupapa_Field_System-Field-Plot-(McCoy)

Kalaupapa_Field_System-Field_Plot-(McCoy)

Kalaupapa_Field_System-Zones-(SJSU-McCoy)-Map

Kalaupapa_Field_System-densely packed windbreak field walls are visible from the air-(McCoy)

Kalaupapa_Field_System-(SJSU-McCoy)-Map

Kalaupapa_Field_System-(SJSU-McCoy)-Island_Map

Kalaupapa_Field_System-Illustration_of_Erosion-Zones-(SJSU-McCoy)-Map

July 10, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Japanese Internment

During World War II, Japanese Americans were incarcerated in at least eight locations in Hawaiʻi.

These sites that include Honouliuli Gulch, Sand Island, and the U.S. Immigration Station on Oahu, the Kilauea Military Camp on the Big Island, Haiku Camp and Wailuku County Jail on Maui, and the Kalaheo Stockade and Waialua County Jail on Kauai.

The forced removal of these individuals began a nearly four-year odyssey to a series of camps in Hawaiʻi and on the continental United States.

They were put in these camps, not because they had been tried and found guilty of something, but because either they or their parents or ancestors were from Japan and, as such, they were deemed a “threat” to national security.

In all, between 1,200 and 1,400 local Japanese were interned, along with about 1,000 family members. The number of Japanese in Hawai‘i who were detained was small relative to the total Japanese population here, less than 1%.

By contrast, Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized the mass exclusion and detention of all Japanese Americans living in the West Coast states, resulting in the eventual incarceration of 120,000 people.

The detainees were never formally charged and granted only token hearings. Many of the detainees’ sons served with distinction in the US armed forces, including the legendary 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service.

During the war, there was a Hawaii Defense Act, Order No. 5 that stated “all aliens were forbidden from possessing weapons, firearms, explosives short-wave radio receiving sets, transmitting sets, cameras, or maps of any United States military or naval installation.”

They could not travel by air, change residence or occupation or move without written permission from the provost marshal.

On December 8, 1941, the first detention camp was set up on Sand Island. Several factors made Sand Island a logical place for establishment of the first detention camp. Geographically, it was an island immediately adjacent to the city of Honolulu in the Honolulu Harbor.

The Territorial Quarantine Hospital had been located on Sand Island and it had housing, food prep and administrative facilities.

Within one week of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI detained 370 Japanese, 98 German and 14 Italians. Almost all of the Japanese detainees were men; of the European detainees, many were women. The European and Japanese internees were segregated.

The first POW of the war (Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, of the captured Japanese submarine that beached at Waimanalo) was also interned at Sand Island.

Each compound operated its own mess and maintained its own sanitary and internal administrations. The detainees supplied their own recreational activities, such as softball and volleyball games. Each compound had its own spokesman.

While most of the internees were residents of Oʻahu, there were Japanese detained on the Neighbor Islands.

On Kauai internees were crowded into the county jail. According to Gwen Allen (Hawaii War Years), the December 12, 1941 issue of the Kauai newspaper reported that “the men are building double decker bunks.” On the Big Island, detainees were interned at Kilauea Military Camp at Volcano.

Restrictions at each were different. On Kau‘i, after two days of war, a newspaper announcement invited families to call on detainees any day between 1 pm and 3 pm and they were allowed to take clean laundry and simple Japanese food.

On Maui, each detainee was given a questionnaire asking if they had any animals that needed feeding and other care, and if so, where can they be found. On the Big Island, there was no public visiting until February 14, 1942.

For some O‘ahu internees, they began their detention at the Immigration Station at Fort Armstrong and were then moved to Sand Island. Internees at Sand Island lived in tents until wooden barracks were built.

“Until books and other materials were allowed, the internees passed the time by smoothing sea shells for necklaces by rolling them on the concrete floors.”

In March 1942, Sand Island closed. Some detainees were sent to Honouliuli Internment camp.

Because arrests and detentions continued through the war, the community remained on edge, fearful as to who might be next. Japanese culture became equated with Japanese political affiliation, and Japanese language clothing and customs suddenly disappeared.

Though some detainees were released after a short imprisonment, the majority were detained for the duration of the war, with most eventually transferred to camps on the continental United States, for a period approaching four years.

Most eventually returned to Hawai‘i after the war.

In 2006, President Bush signed the Camp Preservation Bill (HR 1492), which authorized $38 million in funding for the preservation of former World War II confinement sites.

In part, the intent is that the Honouliuli site become a public historical park where the Hawai‘i internees story can be shared with future generations.

The fact that the internment did happen here in the Hawaiʻi are something to never forget.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

JapaneseAmericansChildrenPledgingAllegiance1942

Honouliuli-

Honouliuli_Camp

Sand_Island-Gate-Fence

Sand_Island-camp

Sand_Island-Aerial

Sand Island-Internee tents shortly after the camp opened in December, 1941

Sand Island, 1946. What remains of the internment camp can be seen in the middle portion of the image.

Kilauea Military Camp, 1942

Hawai‘i internee group at Sante Fe camp, 1944

Ansel_Adams,_Baseball_game_at_Manzanar,_1943

Sand_Island-Camp-Layout

japanese-internment-poster

July 8, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Haiku Valley Communications … and Stairway

With World War II underway, the Navy recognized the need to be able to communicate across the Pacific.

A plan was proposed in the early spring of 1942; a group of radio experts determined a superpower radio station with pan-Pacific range might be built provided that the antenna could be raised high enough above the ground.

The greater the power to be radiated, the higher and larger must be the antenna system and the network of ground wires under it.

An Alexanderson Alternator was the sending source; it is a rotating machine invented in 1904 for use as a radio transmitter (as a technology, it was later replaced by vacuum tube transmitters.)

The Navy discovered that, rather than the conventional steel radio tower, the best way to accomplish that was by stringing copper cable between the peaks of two mountains with vertical drops.

The solution was to find a topographic feature that would act like the “unbuildable” tall tower. Using technology developed pre-World War I, they strategically positioned four Alexanderson Alternators; one was located in Haiku Valley.

Haiku Valley with its horseshoe shape and sheer side-walls filled the prescription perfectly, except for the logistical nightmare of constructing in an all but inaccessible area.

Then stepped forward (and up) two pioneers, Bill Adams and Louis Otto, who in 21-days, climbed the vertical cliffs in Haiku Valley, pounding in iron spikes into the face of the cliff (to be used as supports for a ladder and wooden staircase up the mountain.)

The Navy then installed a lift to haul up materials and strung cables across the valley. The Alexanderson Alternator radio system, transmitting Morse code across the Pacific, was operational in 3-months.

The equipment at Haiku provided reliable transoceanic radiotelegraph communication and was able to send signals to submarines during World War 2 – while they remained underwater – as far away as Tokyo Bay.

The Navy maintained the Haiku system from 1943 to 1970, when they reconfigured the facility as an OMEGA radio navigation system: it then became part of a network of worldwide OMEGA stations (two US stations (Haiku and North Dakota,) joined by Argentina, Norway, Liberia, France, Japan and Australia.)

When the eight station chain became operational, day to day operations at Haiku were managed by the United States Coast Guard and was used by several airlines flying long range routes over water, as well as by military forces. The new station could radiate transmissions at a power of 10,000-watts and over an 8,000-mile radius.

The OMEGA antenna system reaches 7,200-feet across Haiku Valley and is 1,250-feet above the ground. The anchors weigh over 180,000-pounds. Unlike the original construction for the Alexanderson Alternator (climbing the cliff,) a helicopter, helium balloons and hot air balloons were used in erecting the anchors and placing the wires.

OMEGA was the first truly-global radio navigation system and had the ability to achieve a four-mile accuracy when fixing a position for aircraft.

Using receiver units, it enabled ships and aircraft to determine their position by receiving very low frequency radio signals transmitted by a network of fixed terrestrial radio beacons. The Haiku OMEGA facility became operational around 1971 and was shut down in 1997.

Initially, the system was to be used for navigating nuclear bombers across the North Pole to Russia. Later, it was found useful for submarines and aircraft.

With the Global Positioning System (GPS) being declared fully operational, the use of OMEGA had dwindled to a point where continued operation was not economically justified; it ended on September 30, 1997.

Obviously, all of this ultimately leads us to a discussion on the Haiku Ladder, Haiku Stairs – the Stairway to Heaven.

The Stairway is a 3,922-step ladder/stairway ascending the summit of the Koʻolau mountain range. First built by the Navy in 1942 to access transmission facilities at the top of the ridge, the wooden stairs were replaced in 1955 with ones built of galvanized metal.

In 1997, after the OMEGA facility was abandoned and plans were underway to remove the Stairs, Mayor Harris requested that the Coast Guard transfer the Stairs to the City. The City then spent $875,000 to repair the Haiku Stairs.

The City had planned to reopen the Haiku Stairs in October 2002. But from 2002 to 2003, the popular hiking attraction became a point of contention with area residents.

They complained that as many as 200-hikers a day were trespassing through their property, parking on their streets, blocking mail delivery and trash pickup and arriving early in the morning, causing dogs to bark and waking residents.

Then, in 2005, Mayor Hannemann tried to transfer the Stairs to DLNR. I was DLNR Director then. While I believe the stairs are an excellent climbing (and vertigo) experience, I do not believe its ownership and operation is a state concern. (It is certainly not a natural trail, that’s the kind of stuff DLNR deals with.)

We recommended that a private entity step forward and manage the stairs – for the City or lease it from them. We believed that an operator could charge a fee for hikers to climb the stairs and use the revenue for operations and insurance.

The Stairs remain closed.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Junction of Haiku Road and Kamehameha Highway.-(DavidJessup)-

Black arrow points out the 60 foot tower on the North cliff. The white arrow indicates the lower hoist A frame-(DavidJessup)-

Bomb proof transmitter building - view east-(DavidJessup)-

CCL house at the peak showing the upper hoist house-(DavidJessup)-

Cement headed for the top of the South cliff-(DavidJessup)-

View West. Cage for the South hoist.