General | Page 29 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

September 30, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Young Brothers Save Prince Kūhiō

On July 10, 1902, Prince Kūhiō left the Home Rule Party and, a few months later, on September 1, 1902, joined the Republican Party; he was nominated as their candidate for Congress and, on November 4, 1902, won the election to serve as Hawai‘i’s delegate to Congress.

“Prince Kūhiō, accompanied by a half dozen personal friends and the quartet club which sang Republican songs during the campaign just closed, left for Lihue, Kauai (November 14) in a special steamer.”

“They will return Sunday morning (November 16) and will at once proceed to Pearl Harbor where the Prince will sail his yacht Princess in the races on that day.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, November 15, 1902)

“Prince Kūhiō arrived at 4 o’clock Sunday morning from Kauai, and after breakfast and dressing at his home started for the harbor.”

“The two young men who make the crew were on hand when Prince Kūhiō and his friend Judge Mahaulu drove to the boathouse. There was little time lost in getting the boat away and with the Prince at the helm it stood out to sea.”

“The Princess is a staunch third-rater, and nothing less than a heavy blow makes the crew which sails the little craft think for a moment of reefing down or running for the harbor.”

“When the trip was arranged for yesterday morning there was nothing to suggest that there was any danger for such a boat and the four sailed out gaily as ever before they inaugurated as cruise.”

“The canvas was full and the crew was keeping a close watch for squalls as the wind was gusty and the prospect that there might be such a blow outside that some reefing would have to be done.”

“The little boat went off to the south east when approaching the outside reef, and was way between the spar buoy and the ball buoy when Prince Cupid saw a squall coming down upon them.”

“He ordered the main sheet slackened and was himself getting ready to bring the boat into the wind, when with lightning rapidity, before anything could be done to prevent it …”

“… the winds hit the little boat and over it went carrying every one of the men in the craft with it. Luckily the crew was in windward and all escaped being fouled in the lines as the boat went broadside into the sea.”

“They made themselves as secure as possible on the topside of the sailer’s hull and clung there while each wave broke over them and threatened to wash them away.”

“The minutes lengthened, and though their halloos might easily have been heard on the (nearby) battleship, the wind setting in that direction, there was no sign given that any one on board had seen the accident or noted the men struggling in the water.”

“For more than an hour … Prince Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole and the three companions with whom he started to make the sail from the harbor to Pearl River …”

“… battled for their lives in the waves which swept over their heads and threatened each moment to wash them from the hull of the overturned boat, to which they clung. They were without the bell buoy and within three quarters of a mile of the battleship Oregon.”

“It was left for some young men on the galleries of the Myrtle Boat house to see, without a glass, the accident and the position of the sailors, and to rush an order to Young Brothers to send their fastest launch to the rescue.”

“This order was given in such time that the schooner and attending launch were just passing Young’s island when the little boat went out to assist the castaways.”

“When the men were reached they were all in fair shape though they felt the effects of the battering of the waves and were considerably exhausted by the strain upon them.”

“They were taken into the launch and a line passed to the yacht and she was towed to her anchorage off the club house. Last evening all the members of the party were in the best of shape.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, November 17, 1902)

“The Delegate elect, Prince Kūhiō, came pretty close to a fatal accident yesterday. Apart from the of a brilliant young Hawaiian, a fatal accident to the Prince have necessitated a fresh election …”

“… and the Territory having passed through one election struggle is not prepared to start out for another. The Prince belongs to the people now and his life and breath are matters of public importance.” (Hawaiian Star, November 17, 1902)

This wasn’t the only rescue of the time by Young Brothers, less than 2-weeks before, “The small island schooner Kauikeaouli … was just putting to sea with a cargo of general merchandise which had been taken from the disabled schooner Concord, which had to return from sea a few days ago after springing a leak.”

“It seems that the schooner had a fair wind and sailed away from the wharf, but would not steer. Her skipper thought this was because of her foul bottom, but a moment later the vessel swung over against the bow of the Alameda and had a small hole punched in her by one of the steamer’s anchors which was hanging half out of the water.”

“One of Young Brothers’ launches got hold of the schooner and took her bark to the wharf, where carpenters found the damage, to be light and easily repaired It during the day.”

“The captain of the schooner says that he had a shipsmith repair his steering gear, and that the wheel was put on in such a way that It steered the vessel in just the opposite direction from what was intended.” (Hawaiian Gazette, November 7, 1902)

The image shows the Young Brothers’ boathouse (center – structure with open house for boats on its left (1910), on what is now about where Piers 1 and 2 are, in the background is what is now Kaka‘ako Makai).

Young_Brothers_Boathouse-center_structure_with_open_house_for_boats_on_its_left-1910

September 29, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pioneer Mill

The early Polynesians brought sugarcane with them to the Islands. Kō (sugarcane) was planted as a subsistence crop – with domestic, medicinal and spiritual uses.

In 1802, processed sugar was first made in the islands on the island of Lānaʻi by a native of China, who came here in one of the vessels trading for sandalwood and brought a stone mill and boilers. After grinding off a small crop and making it into sugar, he went back to China the next year.

It was not until ca. 1823 that several members of the Lāhainā Mission Station began to process sugar from native sugarcanes, for their tables. By the 1840s, efforts were underway in Lāhainā to develop a means for making sugar as a commodity. (Maly)

Sugar was being processed in small quantities in Lāhainā throughout the 1840s and 1850s; in 1849, it was reported that the finest sugar in the islands could be found in Lāhainā. (Maly)

James Campbell, who arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1850 – having served as a carpenter on a whaling ship and then operated a carpentry business in Lāhainā, started a sugar plantation there in 1860. The small mill, together with cane from Campbell’s fields, manufactured sugar on shares for small cane growers in the vicinity.

Soon after the establishment of the new plantation, Henry Turton and James Dunbar joined Campbell. Under the name of Campbell & Turton, the company grew cane and manufactured sugar.

The small sugar mill consisted of three wooden rollers set upright, with mules providing the power to turn the heavy rollers. The cane juice ran into a series of boiling kettles that originally had been used on whaling ships.

When the nearby Lāhainā Sugar Company, a small company founded by H Dickenson in 1861, went bankrupt in 1863, its assets were acquired by Campbell and his partners.

In 1865, the plantation became known as Pioneer Mill Company (that year Dunbar left the company.) By 1874, Campbell and Turton added the West Maui Sugar Company, a venture of Kamehameha V, to the holdings of Pioneer Mill Company.

The Pioneer Mill Company was extremely profitable, enabling Campbell to build a large home in Lāhainā and to acquire parcels of land on Maui and Oʻahu.

Campbell became known by the Hawaiians as “Kimo Ona-Milliona” (James the Millionaire). Despite his success in sugar, his interests turned to other matters, primarily ranching and real estate.

Over the years, Campbell acquired property in Kahuku, Honouliuli, Kahaualea and elsewhere, amassing the holdings that eventually became ‘The Estate of James Campbell.’

In 1877, James Campbell sold his half interest to partner Henry Turton for $500,000 with agents Hackfeld & Company holding a second mortgage of $250,000. The company’s charter was dated in 1882, but by 1885, Mr. Turton declared bankruptcy and sold the property back to James Campbell and to Paul Isenberg, who was associated with Hackfeld & Co. Mr. CF Horner was selected to manage the plantation.

With later acquisitions of additional West Maui lands, Pioneer Mill was incorporated on June 29, 1895. Horner sold his interest to American Factors, formerly Hackfeld & Co., and in 1960, Pioneer Mill Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Amfac.

Irrigation of Pioneer Mill Company’s fields, an area that eventually extended 14-miles long and 1 1/2-miles wide with altitudes between 10 and 700 feet, was accomplished with water drawn from artesian wells and water transported from the West Maui Mountains. The McCandless brothers drilled the first well on Maui for Pioneer Mill Company in 1883.

Pioneer Mill Company was one of the earliest plantations to use a steam tramway for transporting harvested cane from the fields to the mill. Cane from about 1000-acres was flumed directly to the mill cane carrier with the rest coming to the mill by rail. (The Sugar Cane Train is a remnant of that system.)

In 1937, mechanically harvested cane was bringing so much mud to the factory that Pioneer Mill Company began the development of a cane cleaner.

Between 1948 and 1951, a rock removal program rehabilitated 3,153 acres of Pioneer land to permit mechanical planting, cultivating, and harvesting. In 1952, the railroad was eliminated and a year later new feeder tables were conveying cane directly from cane trucks into the factory.

Lāhainā Light and Power Company, Lāhainā Ice Company, the Lāhainā and Puʻukoliʻi Stores, and the Pioneer Mill Hospital were associated with the plantation, providing services to employees as well to Lahaina residents.

Faced with international competition, Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry, including Pioneer Mill Company, found it increasingly difficult to economically survive.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000-workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar. That plummeted to 492,000-tons in 1995. A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

Seeing hard times ahead, Pioneer Mill Company took 2,000-acres out of cane during the 1960s to develop Kāʻanapali as a visitor resort destination.

By 1986, the plantation had reduced its acreage down to 4,000-acre (which at its height had 14,000-acres planted in cane.) After years of losing money, in 1999, Pioneer Mill closed its operations.

The Lāhainā Restoration Foundation and others worked to preserve the Pioneer Mill Smokestack. It remains tall above the Lāhainā Community as a reminder of the legacy of sugar in the West Maui community. (Lots of information here from the UH-Manoa, HSPA Plantation Archives.)

(One of our few locations that survived the Lahaina fire relatively unscathed is the Pioneer Mill Smokestack and Locomotives. (Lahaina Restoration Foundation))

September 26, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

1919 Alika Eruption

“Alika was a man and Hina was his wahine, and their occupation was farming. Before they would begin farming, they would vow that should their crops mature, they would consume it along with Pele, the god. But when the crops reached maturity, the two of them didn’t carry out their promise, and the day that they ate of their crops, that was when they soon died.”

“This is how it happened: Hina urged Alika to eat sweet potato, and so Alika went to dig up some, and after finding some, he baked it in the umu¹ until done and then they ate it all; then the forest began to speak as if it were a man, echoing all about them.”

“During which time, the man soon thought of their vow. Alika said to Hina, “We will die because of you,” and before he was done speaking, lava soon flamed forth and they perished.”

“And it is for this man that this land is called by that name until this day; if you look at the aftermath of the lava, in this area, the burnt homes of Kaupo stand jagged because of the spreading flames²; the land is horrid in appearance in every way; but the kamaaina love it here, and it is only the malihini who disparage it.” (Zalika, South Kona, Kuokoa, 8/7/1886)

“The greatest volcanic event in Hawaii for the year 1919 was the activity of Mauna Loa itself. It was no surprise to the unsleeping keeper of Kilauea and the Long Mountain.”

“That autumn, with its unruly flock of seismic disturbances, was a busy one for Professor Jaggar, who made more than one lofty ascent to the flaming pastures of his charge.”

“Back at Kilauea observatory, [Jaggar] noticed the fume and glow from Mauna Loa’s 13,675-foot crater, Mokuaweoweo, spreading to the southward along a route he knew well.”

“By telephone he warned Kapapala and the other districts in the course the flow would take. Many is the account I have listened to from residents of those sections who saw destruction looming far above, and who hurried to pack their belongings in preparation for flight.” (Charmian London)

On September 26, 1919, a vent high on Mauna Loa’s Southwest Rift Zone erupted for just a few hours. Three days later, a breakout lower on the rift zone erupted fountains of lava up to 400 ft high and sent a river of lava down the volcano’s forested slopes.

Within about 20 hours, an ‘a‘ā flow several hundred meters (yards) wide crossed the circle-island “Government Road” (predecessor of Highway 11), burying the small village of ‘Ālika (north of Miloli‘i). This flow can be seen today at Highway 11, mile markers 90–91. (USGS)

“Some thought they would go grey in a night, through the freaks played by the fluid avalanche, which would seem to skirmish in avoidance of an obviously doomed home. And I noticed a hesitance among these, as well as other island visitors who rushed to the ten-days’ wonder, about telling what they had seen.” (Charmian London)

“‘It’s like this,’ they faltered. ‘We saw things that nobody would believe. How do we know? We tried it out when we got home. The thing was too big, too terrible, to impress those who had not seen it – in spite of the great smoke and glare that hid Hawaii from the other islands for days and days.”

“Why, I stood on the hot bank of that burning cascade, and saw bowlders as big as houses, I tell you, perfectly incandescent, go rolling down to the sea; and-but there I go. I don’t think you’d believe the things I could tell you.’” (Charmian London)

“The lava is creeping very slowly, but it is wiping out the koa forests and the ohia in its path; and the fine grazing lands are being covered, and the ranch land where the animals of a Portuguese man of Keei are kept, and whose name is John Deniz, is half covered over by blazing lava; the land owned by Mrs. Carrie Robinson of Honolulu also is land greatly covered by blazing lava.”

“In the estimation of Tom White and those who went up with him, the branch flowing to the sea of Opihali is almost 13 miles from the government road, and the branch flowing to the sea of Kaapuna is about eight miles from the government road, and the branch flowing to the sea of Papa of Honomalino perhaps has not at all reached the area called Puu Keokeo.”

“Because of the branching of the lava flow into three branches is one of the reasons for the great weakening of the flow, even if the flow from the caldera from the mountain side is very powerful.” (Hoku o Hawaii, 10/23/1919)

When the flow reached the ocean, “Noises were heard underwater of seething and of tapping concussions. The uprush of steam where the lava made contact with the sea carried up rock fragments and sand and built a black sand cone.”

“The lava ‘rafts’ or blocks of bench magma which rolled down the live channel, were seen to bob up, make surface steam, and float out some distance from the shore without sinking at first, as though buoyed by the hot gas inflating them. Lightnings were seen in the steam column.”

“There was much muddying of the water and fish were killed in considerable number…. For 50 or more feet out to sea from the base of the great column of vapor which was rising opposite the lava channel somewhere beyond …”

“… the water was dotted with small jets and sometimes a swirling “steam spout” or tornado effect, a foot or two in diameter, would rise from the water a few feet away from the main steam column and join the cloud above.”

“Sometimes a shower of small rock fragments each two or three inches in diameter would be jetted up from a place in the water close to shore, each projectile followed by a tail of vapor, to heights 15 or 20 feet above the sea.” (Jaggar, Moore & Ault))

“… the high fountains of lava, the great detonations of explosions, the lake of fire on the mountain, and the final plunge of the melt over old lava bluffs into the sea in a river speeding five to ten miles an hour. This red torrent coursed for ten days.”

“The heat of the stilled lava was not yet gone when, four months afterward, I motored upon it where it had crossed, a hundred yards wide, the highway in Alika district – a waste of aa as upstanding as the wavelet of a tide-rip, kupikipikio.”

“It had swept everything in its path, causing suffering, fear and death among the herds.”

“A temporary restoration of the highway was begun as soon as the heat had sufficiently cooled; but it made one nervous, in an inflammable vehicle, to see how a light shower caused the lava to steam, and to feel warmth still rising from crevices. ….”

“During the eruption there was a succession of short-period, shallow tidal waves ranging from three to fourteen feet in height. These kept in trepidation the passengers on vessels of all classes that swarmed off shore.”

“An authentic tale is told of the wife of an islander being swept some distance off-shore by a subsiding tidal wave. Fortunately she was a swimmer.” (Charmian London)

The 1919 ‘Ālika lava flow advanced 11 mi in about 24 hours, reaching the sea north of Ho‘ōpūloa, where it poured into the ocean for 10 days. The eruption then slowly waned until November 5, when all activity ceased. (USGS)

September 23, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Tap

In 1960, Taylor Allderdice (“Tap”) Pryor formed the Makapuʻu Oceanic Center when the Pacific Foundation for Marine Research secured a lease from the State for land near Makapuʻu Point.

His goals were to develop an institution for marine education, marine science and ocean industry. The facility featured an aquarium and park for visitors (Sea Life Park,) a marine research facility (now known as Oceanic Institute (OI)) and a pier and undersea test range for vessels and submersibles (Makai Undersea Test Range (now Makai Ocean Engineering.))

“We envision Hawaiʻi as an ocean-oriented community that can serve as a focal point through which the nation will enter the sea. Once we establish underwater industry – mining, oil and gas recovery – there will be a need for thousands of people.” (Pryor quoted in Life, October 27, 1967)

“Besides being earth’s last frontier, the sea contains most of the world’s remaining mineral resources, the largest existing protein resource and probably most of the oil and gas resources left to us. (Pryor quoted in Life, October 27, 1967)

Tap Pryor was born in 1931; his father Sam Pryor was a Pan American Vice President and friend and supporter of Charles Lindbergh. The Pryor’s had a home near Hāna where Lindbergh was a frequent guest; Lindbergh later purchased land next to the Pryor’s and built a home there, too.

Tap Pryor graduated from Cornell University in 1954, then he joined the US Marine Corps, serving in Parris Island, Quantico, Pensacola and MCAS Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi – he flew helicopters and fixed-wing. After being discharged as Captain in 1957, he attended graduate school at the University of Hawaiʻi.

Sea Life Park, the popular marine attraction near Makapuʻu Point in East Oʻahu, opened in 1964. It was one of the early pioneers in marine animal exhibitions.

On the continent, the first large oceanarium was developed as part of the film industry. Marine Studios opened in 1938, to film movies under water; it later became Marineland of Florida. (pbs)

The oceanarium-studio was integrated into the Florida tourism industry; in 1949, it began featuring short dolphin performances. In the early-1950s, Marineland spun off Marineland of the Pacific, in Palos Verdes, California. (pbs)

Then, the Sea Life Park facility brought the oceanarium experience to Hawaiʻi – combining a dolphin research facility with a tourist attraction.

“From Hawaiʻi’s Sea Life Park, located at Makapuʻu Point, comes a message teeming with life and youthful vitality. There, Taylor Alderdice Pryor, known as ‘Tap,’ and his wife, the former Karen Wylie, are staking their all on “the world’s largest exhibit of marine life” opening this month.”

“Now she has a full-time job at Sea Life Park as chief porpoise trainer. … She has a staff of three for the porpoises and reports with pride that so far they can ‘hula on their tails in the air.'” (The Miami News, January 1, 1964)

At Sea Life Park, Karen Pryor began using marker-based teaching and training techniques, called ‘clicker training.’ Clicker training (also known as magazine training) is a method for training animals that uses positive reinforcement in conjunction with a clicker, or small mechanical noisemaker, to mark the behavior being reinforced (the marine mammal trainers used whistles.)

Karen Pryor was one of the first people to work in a concentrated and applied way to discover what dolphins in captivity could be trained to do. Her writings and lectures taught a generation of marine mammal trainers and researchers around the United States. (pbs)

In 1965, Pryor was appointed Senator to the Hawaiʻi State Senate. In 1966 (at age 35,) he was named by President Johnson as one of eleven Commissioners to the President’s Commission of Marine Science, Marine Engineering and Marine Conservation.

Ultimately called the “Stratton Commission”, the group’s report ‘Our Nation and the Sea’ was published in January 1969. This group was responsible for the formation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1970.

As part of the Makai Undersea Test Range, in 1968, Pryor and others developed ‘Aegir,’ an undersea habitat, which accommodated six people and was successfully tested at 600-foot depth for two weeks at ambient pressure off Makapuʻu Point. (whaleresearch-org)

Pryor and others later developed Kumukahi, the first plexiglass submersible also tested at the Makai Range (1968-69.) During that time the Oceanic Institute acquired Star II.

They also invented an inexpensive, diver-operated pontoon-platform for launching and recovering submersibles beneath the surface so that they could operate in all weather with only a vessel-of-opportunity towing the submersible and its launcher to and from the dive sites. Because of that, Star II subsequently logged more undersea work time than any submersible anywhere. (whaleresearch-org)

In 1970, Pryor was named Salesman of the Year for the State of Hawaiʻi in recognition of his promotion of Hawaiʻi and it opportunities for marine science and engineering development.

Following his work on the Stratton Commission, he developed and operated the System Culture Seafood Plantation at Kahuku on Oʻahu, principally the production of table oysters, using his own patented on-land technique for culturing phytoplankton in 32 quarter-acre ponds to feed the oysters on stacked trays in raceways and recycling the water. (whaleresearch-org)

But, dreams faded and the organization was financially-overextended in efforts to develop undersea mining and deep-sea fish farming and underwent bankruptcy reorganization.

According to a June 25, 1972 The Honolulu Advertiser story, The “TAP” Pryor Story: From Dreams to Debts, Pryor had briefly studied zoology at UH but had no other science credentials.

Nevertheless, he soon became a spokesman for oceanography and was even named to the prestigious Stratton Commission and to the state of Hawaiʻi commission on ocean resources. In 1970, Pryor was awarded the Neptune Award of the American Oceanic Organization – an award that was mischaracterized as “the highest honor in oceanography.” (SOEST)

As part of the bankruptcy reorganization in 1972, Sea Life Park, Makai Pier and Test Range, and Oceanic Institute were spun off into separate entities.

On Monday 30 April 1973 an editorial in The Honolulu Advertiser entitled “Our oceanographic dream” asked the rhetorical question, “Was the great dream of Hawaiʻi as a center for oceanographic research just that – a dream?” (SOEST)

Oceanic Institute is a not-for-profit research and development organization dedicated to marine aquaculture, biotechnology, and coastal resource management. Their mission is to develop and transfer economically responsible technologies to increase aquatic food production while promoting the sustainable use of ocean resources. OI works with community, industry, government and academic partners, and non-governmental organizations to benefit the state, the nation, and the world. (CTSA)

Later, in 1978, Oceanic Institute formed a cooperative agreement with Tufts University in Massachusetts for teaching and research in marine science, aquaculture, marine biology, marine medicine, and marine nutrition. Later (2003,) the OI facility became associated with Hawaiʻi Pacific University (HPU.)

September 21, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Puerto Ricans

The first inhabitants of Puerto Rico were the Taino, hunter-gatherers who lived in small villages led by a cacique, or chief. Despite their limited knowledge of agriculture, they grow pineapples, cassava, and sweet potatoes and supplement their diet with seafood. They called the island Boriken. (PBS)

On his second voyage to the Indies, Christopher Columbus arrived on November 19, 1493 on the island and claimed it for Spain, renaming it San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist.)

Juan Ponce de León, who had accompanied Columbus and worked to colonize nearby Hispaniola, was given permission by Queen Isabella to explore the island. On a well-protected bay on the north coast, he founds Caparra, where the island’s first mining and farming begins. (PBS)

Puerto Rico chasf three geological formations: a system of deeply ribbed mountains; lower hills and playa plains, consisting of alluvial soil and old estuaries.

It is roughly estimated that nine-tenths of the Island is mountainous and the remaining tenth is of the foothill and playa character. (Alvrez; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, June 25, 1901)

The brief Spanish-American War ended with the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) that resulted in Spain relinquishing its holdings in the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico.

The island was governed by a US military governor from October 1898 until May 1900; then it became an “organized but unincorporated” territory of the US. (President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status)

On August 7 and 8, 1899, the San Ciriaco hurricane swept through Puerto Rico with winds up to 100-miles per hour. Twenty-eight days of torrential rain caused approximately thirty-four hundred fatalities, massive flooding, and at least $7-million dollars in agricultural damage. (Poblete)

Tens of thousands of people lost their homes and means of livelihood. The 1899 coffee crop destroyed; it would take at least 5-years before coffee would be profitable again. (Poblete)

Besides no jobs, no homes and no education (as there was no system of compulsory public education,) the poor also had no money. (Souza)

At the same time, the booming Hawaiʻi sugar industry was looking for more workers. Puerto Ricans looked for alternatives and were drawn to another US territory, Hawaiʻi, and its sugar plantations.

Workers and their families left Puerto Rico with hopes that life in the Pacific Islands would be less bleak and provide more opportunity for stability and success.

The first group, that included 114 men, women and children, left San Juan by steamboat on November 22, 1900. The journey took them by ship to New Orleans, by train across the land to San Francisco. About fifty refused to continue their voyage to Hawaiʻi and founded the San Francisco Puerto Rican community. (Chapin; HHS)

The rest (families, young single men and women, and some underage boys who left without parents’ permission) were forced to board the steamship Rio de Janeiro and endured a harrowing trip to Hawaiʻi, arriving on December 24, 1900. (Vélez)

Between 1900 and 1901, eleven expeditions of men, women and children were recruited by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA) to work alongside Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Portuguese and Italians in the pineapple and sugar fields.

Contractual accords stipulated incentives – credit for transportation expenses, the availability of public education, opportunities to worship in Catholic Churches, decent wages and standard living accommodations. (Korrol, Center for Puerto Rican Studies) Eventually 5,100 settled on plantations in the Islands. (Chapin; HHS)

What did the Puerto Ricans find when they came to Hawaii? The early immigrant’s answer was usually, “trabajo y tristeza”—work and sorrow. (Souza)

Pay was $15.00 monthly for the men, 40¢ a day for the women, 50¢ a day for the boys, and 35¢ a day for the girls (for ten hours’ daily labor in the fields and twelve hours in the mills.) Later, for the men, pay included a bonus, usually 50¢ per week if they worked a full 26-day month. (Souza)

Unrest among the worker contingents surfaced almost immediately as reports describing the migrants’ horrendous ordeals appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times and newspapers in Puerto Rico.

Desertion was not uncommon, and tales of individuals who refused to board Hawaiʻi-bound vessels account for the emergence of the earliest Puerto Rican settlements in California. (Korrol, Center for Puerto Rican Studies)

Even in 1921, when several volatile years of labor organizing among Filipinos led the HSPA to negotiate with the Puerto Rican government to resume labor recruitment, the promises of increased wages, free medical care, and fair housing and work conditions again proved to be hollow for Puerto Rican laborers. (Gonzales)

Despite the fact that a small contingent of contracted workers was brought into Hawaii as late as 1926, labor recruitment virtually ended in the first decade of the century. (Korrol, Center for Puerto Rican Studies)