Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hilo High School

“The American Public School system comprises in most of the states twelve grades, occupying the children between the ages of 6 and 12. These grades are thus denominated: First to Fourth Primary, Fifth to Eighth Grammar, Ninth to Twelfth High.”

“A slight departure from this scheme of classification is made in the Territory.  Here, though maintaining the same twelve grades, as in the states, they are divided in six grades in the Primary School, and six grades in the High School.”

“The curriculum of the grades nine to twelve inclusive corresponds to that of the same grades in the schools on the mainland.”  (Hilo Tribune, Sep 10, 1907)

Without a high school on the Island of Hawai‘i, “It has been the habit of solicitous parents of this island during the past century to send their children to the schools of Honolulu, for whatever education they received beyond the grammar grades. It is needless to say that this necessity has entailed both anxiety and expense.”

“Thus it became an object with the teachers and parents of Hilo to secure in their midst sufficient advantages to return their children at home.” (Hilo Tribune, Sep 10, 1907)

A High School in Hilo had a shaky start.  After passage in 1903, but failing to receive the Governor’s signature, in a February, 1905 session of the legislature, “Under suspension of the rules, Senator [John T] Brown introduced a bill (S. B. No. 23) entitled ‘An Act to Provide for a High School in Hilo, Island and Territory of Hawaii, under the Department of Public Instruction of the Territory.’”

The proposed legislation, again, passed through the legislature.  When presented to Governor Carter and Carter stated, “I am unable to approve”, citing that “This bill falls within that class of absolutely unnecessary legislation.”  On April 18, 1905, the legislature overrode the Governor’s veto.

“A special committee of the Board of Education … held a conference with Superintendent Davis and Normal Inspector King when the plans for putting the high school in operation were discussed.”

“The problem before the Commissioners was whether they should start the High School work of Hilo at the beginning of the next school year as a separate organization or wait until the new High School building was erected and then begin the independent organization.”  (Hilo Tribune, July 18, 1905) It was decided to start sooner than later.

“In Sept. 1905 a class of twenty pupils was excellently fitted to begin their secondary studies.  … Room for its reception was made in the Union School, where, despite much painful crowding, very efficient work was accomplished.”  (Hilo Tribune, Sep 10, 1907)

“The Hilo High School began its career under that apellation on Sept. 6, 1905, under the direction of Mr. FA Richmond (‘a Stanford graduate and has been vice principal of the Honolulu High School’), CO Smith and Miss MP Potter.”

A site was needed.  “At a meeting of the Board of Trade … it was decided to recommend the Riverside school site for the new Hilo High School, and to remove the present Riverside school to the Masonic Hall lot opposite”. (Hilo Tribune, July 18, 1905)

“There were in the schools of Hilo nine grades – the beginning with Ninth being the only grade entitled by usage in the States to be called High School. However, grades Seven, Eight and Nine were assembled under the High School teachers, and proceeded to work in two of the upstairs rooms of the Hilo Union School.”

“Since that time two new grades have entered the High School, and the original students no constitute grades Nine, Ten and Eleven. One year from now the present eleventh grade will graduate as the 1908 Twelfth Grade. And the curriculum of the school will be completely taught.” (Hilo Tribune, Sep 10, 1907)

“The first class will be given (1) what is known as ‘first year Latin,’ to prepare the students to read Caesar; (2) English, comprehending correct composition, rather than criticism; (3) History-Ancient Greek and Roman; (4) Physical Geography; (5) Algebra, through quadratics, and (6), the study of some language, either French or German.” (Hilo Tribune, Aug 29, 1905)

“The work of the High School has been shaped to fit carefully local needs. Such students as feel the need of immediately getting into business will be given a Commercial Course in book keeping, typewriting, shorthand, commercial arithmetic, court reporting, etc.”

“Such students as have expectations of colleges will be given careful preparation for entrance to the best American colleges and Universities.” (Hilo Tribune, Sep 10, 1907)

The new school building opened September 9, 1907.  “The Hilo high school has four good, well-lighted and ventilated rooms downstairs, capable of accommodating 160 pupils.  There are six rooms upstairs there 100 additional pupils can receive instruction … The room for the commercial class is well equipped.”  (Advertiser, September 7, 1907)

Hilo High’s first graduating class consisted of seven students in 1909: Richard Kekoa, Amy Williams, Eliza Desha, Frank Arakawa, John Kennedy, Annie Napier and Herbert Westerbelt. (Mangiboyat)

Hilo High Auditorium was built in 1928. It was donated to the school by the Alumni Association. It was designed by a former student (and part of the first graduates) of Hilo High School, Frank Arakawa.

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Mun Lun School

Shortly after the arrival of Captain James Cook and his crews in 1778, the Chinese found their way to Hawaiʻi.  Some suggest Cook’s crew gave information about the “Sandwich Islands” when they stopped in Macao in December 1779, near the end of the third voyage. 

In 1788, British Captain John Meares commanded two vessels, the Iphigenia and the Felice, with crews of Europeans and 50-Chinese.  Shortly thereafter, in 1790, the American schooner Eleanora, with Simon Metcalf as master, reached Maui from Macao using a crew of 10-Americans and 45-Chinese.  (Nordyke & Lee)

Crewmen from China were employed as cooks, carpenters and artisans, and Chinese businessmen sailed as passengers to America. Some of these men disembarked in Hawai’i and remained as new settlers.

The growth of the Sandalwood trade with the Chinese market (where mainland merchants brought cotton, cloth and other goods for trade with the Hawaiians for their sandalwood – who would then trade the sandalwood in China) opened the eyes and doors to Hawaiʻi.

Although ancient Hawaiians brought sugar with them to the Islands centuries before (it was a canoe crop,) in 1802, Wong Tze-Chun brought a sugar mill and boilers to Hawaiʻi and is credited with the first production of sugar.  Later, Ahung and Atai built a sugar mill on Maui.

Sugar gradually replaced sandalwood and whaling in the mid-19th century and became the principal industry in the islands.

However, a shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge.  The only answer was imported labor.

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 were the Chinese (1852.)

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)

Most Chinese plantation workers did not renew their five-year contracts, opting instead to return home or to work on smaller private farms or for other Chinese as clerks, as domestics in haole households, or they started their own businesses.

Chinatown reached its peak in the 1930s. In the days before air travel, visitors arrived here by cruise ship. Just a block up the street was the pier where they disembarked — and they often headed straight for the shops and restaurants of Chinatown, which mainlanders considered an exotic treat.

Because of excellent employment opportunities in Hawai‘i, as well as the high value placed by Chinese on education (even though most immigrants had little formal schooling), Chinese parents encouraged their sons to get as much education as possible.  (Glick)

When Chinese immigrants established communities and began raising families in America, many still maintained ties, personal and otherwise, with individuals and groups in their former homeland.

They also tended to continue to speak the language and to practice Chinese traditions and customs.

As they raised families, they were concerned that their progeny retain this heritage. Chinese schools came into being to fulfill at least part of this need, especially with respect to the language. (Lai)

In 1904 a group of activists concerned with China’s weakness in the international community and sympathetic to the political ideals of the Chinese Empire Reform Association formed the Qingnian Quluobu (Ching Nin Ke Lok Bo, or Youth Club).

Convinced that an educated citizenry was a prerequisite to a strong China, the club started classes in the Chinese language and military drills.

The same year it merged with the Qingnian Wuxuehui (Ching Nin Mo Hock Wui, or Youth Engaged in Study Association), a group with similar objectives-and some members who also belonged to the Youth Club-that had formed in 1901 to study Chinese and Confucianism.

The reorganized Ching Nin Mo Hock Ke Lok Bo (Youth Engaged in Study Club) began thrice-weekly Chinese classes. In 1907, club members combined their resources to purchase the site for a school, and by 1908 the group had received a permit from the territorial government to operate such an institution.

In 1909 Chen Yi’an (Yee Um Chun), chief editor of the Reform Association organ Sun Chung Kwack (New China), persuaded the group to open a school for children from the Chinese community. The club voted to tum over all its funds to the project.

The Chinese consul general also signified his intention to appropriate part of a proposed registration fee from each Chinese to support the school. Mun Lun School officially opened on February 4, 1911 with two teachers and 104 students, using the Ching Nin Mo Hock Ke Lok Bo clubhouse. (Lai)

Mun Lun is composed of two words, meaning “illuminating and enlightening” and “human relationships.”

It was the first school in Honolulu supported by Chinese; the building being finished in 1908, but the school has waited funds for maintenance.  (Thrum 1911)

Mun Lun School had begun with four teachers and an enrollment of 147.  It became an outstanding school with high standards.

The school began by offering only the elementary grades, but by 1931 it had added junior-middle-school-level classes, and by 1936 offered first-year senior-middle-school-level classes. (Lai)

By 1936 the school had expanded greatly, with 28 teachers and 1,348 students, the largest enrollment of any Chinese school in North America up to that time.

Then came WWII, and the school was closed. Re-opening ceremonies didn’t occur until March 1, 1948, when 289 students answered roll call.

Mun Lun School continues in Chinatown in Honolulu as an after-school school. It holds weekday classes Monday through Friday from 3 to 5 pm. There are Saturday classes as well.

Today (in year 2020), student enrollment stands at 267 (weekday and weekend classes combined), with twelve teachers, plus the principal who also teaches.  Mun Lun is the oldest Chinese language school in Hawaii, offering a Mandarin language national standards-based curriculum & a variety of cultural classes.

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Charles Reed Bishop

Born January 25, 1822 in Glens Falls, New York, Charles Reed Bishop was an orphan at an early age and went to live with his grandparents on their 120-acre farm learning to care for sheep, cattle and horses and repairing wagons, buggies and stage coaches. Academically, he only attended the 7th and 8th grades at Glens Falls Academy, his only years of formal schooling.

After leaving school, he becomes a clerk for Nelson J. Warren, the largest business in Warrensburgh, New York. He learned bartering, bookkeeping, taking inventory, maintenance and janitorial duties.  Bishop became an expert in barter, and ran the post office, lumber yard and farm. He becomes a capable businessman.

By January 1846, Bishop was ready to broaden his horizons. He and a friend, William Little Lee, planned to travel to the Oregon territory, Lee to practice law and Bishop to survey land.  They sailed aboard the ‘Henry’ from Newburyport, Massachusetts, around Cape Horn on the way to Oregon.

The vessel made a stop in Honolulu on October 12, 1846; both decided to stay.  (Lee later became the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.)

Bishop soon found work, first at Ladd and Company, a mercantile and trading establishment, then at the US Consulate in Honolulu. In 1849, Bishop signed an oath to “support the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands” and was appointed collector of customs for the kingdom.

Bishop met Bernice Pauahi while she was still a student at the Chiefs’ Children’s School (they probably met during the early half of 1847,) and despite the opposition of Pauahi’s parents who wanted her to marry Lot Kapuāiwa (later, Kamehameha V,) Bishop courted and married Pauahi in 1850.  (His letters that mention Pauahi reveal a deep respect and affection for his wife and suggest she was a major source of his happiness throughout their 34-year marriage.)

Their home, Haleakala, became the “greatest centre of hospitality in Honolulu.” They graciously hosted royalty, visiting dignitaries, friends and neighbors as well as engaged in civic activities such as organizing aid to the sick and destitute and providing clothing for the poor.

Bishop was primarily a banker (he has been referred to as “Hawaiʻi’s First Banker.”)  An astute financial businessman, he became one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom from banking, agriculture, real estate and other investments.

However, his industrious nature and good counsel in many fields were also highly valued by Hawaiian and foreign residents alike. He was made a lifetime member of the House of Nobles and appointed to the Privy Council. He served Kings Kamehameha IV, Kamehameha V, Lunalilo and Kalākaua in a variety of positions such as: foreign minister; president of the board of education; and chairman of the legislative finance committee.

Bishop believed in the transforming power of education and supported a number of schools: Punahou, Mills Institute (now known as Mid–Pacific Institute), St Andrews Priory and Sacred Hearts Academy.  He not only contributed money to his causes, he provided sound advice and financial expertise.

He even sent presents of food or clothing to schools like Kawaiahaʻo Seminary at Christmas, “It is my wish that Mr. Raupp should send them plenty of mutton…also that they should have two turkeys or some ducks, some oranges and cakes…”

Next to her royal lineage, no other aspect of Pauahi’s life was as important to her fulfillment as a woman – and as the founder of the Kamehameha Schools – as her marriage to Charles Reed Bishop. He brought her the love and esteem she needed as a woman and the organizational and financial acumen she needed to ensure the successful founding of her estate.  (Kanahele)

Soon after Pauahi’s death in 1884 he wrote: “I know you all loved her, for nobody could know her at all well and not love her. For myself I will only say that I am trying to bear my loss and my loneliness as reasonably as I can looking forward hopefully to the time when I shall find my loved one again.”

Immediately after Pauahi’s death, Bishop, as one of first five trustees she selected to manage her estate and co-executor of her will, set in motion the process that resulted in the establishment of the Kamehameha Schools in 1887.  (The other initial trustees were Charles Montague, Samuel Mills Damon, Charles McEwen Hyde and William Owen Smith.)

Because Pauahi’s estate was basically land rich and cash poor, Bishop contributed his own funds for the construction of several of the schools’ initial buildings on the original Kalihi campus: the Preparatory Department facilities (1888,) Bishop Hall (1891) and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Memorial Chapel (1897.)

Bishop is best known for his generous contributions to his wife’s legacy, the Kamehameha Schools (when he died, he left most of his estate to hers,) and the founding of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (1889.)

In a letter to Samuel Damon, 1911, he noted, “Being interested in her plans…I decided to carry out her wishes regarding the schools and promised to do something toward a museum of Hawaiian and other Polynesian objects…in order to accomplish something quickly … I soon reconveyed to her estate the life interests given by her will and added a considerable amount of my own property…”

In 1894, Bishop left Hawai`i to make a new life in San Francisco, California. Until he died, he continued, through correspondence with the schools’ trustees, to guide the fiscal and educational policy-making of the institution in directions that reinforced Pauahi’s vision of a perpetual educational institution that would assist scholars to become “good and industrious men and women.” (Bernice Pauahi Bishop’s Will, 1883)

In 1895, Bishop established the Charles Reed Bishop Trust.  The beneficiaries of the Trust consist of 8-designated entities: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Maunaʻala, Central Union Church, Kaumakapili Church, Kawaiahaʻo Church, Kamehameha Schools, Mid-Pacific Institute (his original beneficiaries, Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary and Mills Institute merged in 1907 to form Mid-Pac) and Lunalilo Trust.

By the time Pauahi died in 1884, Maunaʻala, the Royal Mausoleum in Nuʻuanu was crowded with caskets. Bishop built an underground vault for Pauahi and members of the Kamehameha dynasty.

Charles Reed Bishop died June 7, 1915; his remains rest beside his wife in the Kamehameha Tomb.  A separate monument to Charles Reed Bishop was built at Maunaʻala in 1916.   (Lots of information here is from KSBE.)

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Edward LaVaun Clissold

Edward LaVaun Clissold was born in Salt Lake City April 11, 1898.  He grew up in Salt Lake City and attended East High School. After high school he received at least some education from the University of Utah. World War I apparently cut short his education.

Clissold served in the Navy along with his brother Albert aboard the battleship USS Arkansas in the Atlantic. Returning from the Navy at age 22, he married Irene Picknell.

While still barely a newlywed, he made a monumental decision that would affect the rest of his life. At age 23, a war veteran, a husband and soon to be father, he chose to serve a Mormon mission in a time when only a few served missions.

As a brand new missionary, he sailed for Hawaii on the S.S. Manoa alone. When he arrived in Honolulu a week later on July 27, 1921, there was no one to meet him.

He sat alone with his trunk on the dock not knowing what he should do next. A baggage man approached him, asking if he were a Mormon Missionary. He replied yes and asked how he knew.

The man replied “Well, we have a forlorn-looking group come in here every once in awhile. I take their baggage up to the mission home.” And so the baggage man took Elder Clissold to the mission home.

Elder Clissold was assigned to the Oahu Conference (zone) and two months later to Laie where he would serve from August to November of 1921. The Temple in Laie, which was less than two years old.

He left on November 15, 1921 for Kona (Big Island) where he would spend the next 13 months.   It was there that he learned to speak Hawaiian.

Elder Clissold spent the remainder of his mission in the Honolulu area, serving in leadership positions for the Sunday Schools, as was often the practice for missionaries in those days.

Clissold returned to Salt Lake City in 1924 following his mission. When he returned home to his wife, he met a two-and-a-half year old daughter he had never seen before.

Clissold started working for American Savings in Salt Lake City; they wanted to open a branch in Honolulu and Clissold was offered the job of running the Honolulu Branch.

Clissold arrived in Hawaii in January 1925, with Irene following a few months later. In August of 1926 he moved to State Savings and remained there until 1970.

During the 1920s and 30s, he was involved with the Lions Club; in addition to his other responsibilities, becoming the president at age 33 and District President at age 42.

Associated with his business activities at the time was his desire to learn to speak Japanese. He had observed that approximately half of Hawai‘i’s population at the time was first and second generation Japanese.

He thought it made good business sense to learn their language and hired a tutor to teach him the language from 1926-34. His Japanese apparently was not as good as his Hawaiian.

However, the fact that a haole businessman could speak both Hawaiian and Japanese was most unusual, and earned him respect from the speakers of these languages. Additionally, the Clissold children attended the Makiki Japanese School from 1934 to 1936.

Ten years after he moved to Honolulu, the Oahu Stake was created, and Clissold was called as 1st counselor to Stake President and served as such for 9-years.  In 1936, Clissold became the Hawai‘i Temple President; he served as the president until 1938.

Clissold resumed his association with Navy in 1936 by joining the Navy reserve as a Lieutenant. He soon went on a shakedown cruise to the South Pacific on the destroyer USS Maori, DD-401.  Then came war.

1942 found him serving as the Hawai‘i Temple President again due to the departure of the former president and the lack of replacements to serve because of the war.

At the same time, he became the acting president of the Japanese Mission. It was during this time that the mission name was changed to the Central Pacific Mission.

In 1943 the war finally carried him away from Hawai‘i as he was sent to the Mainland, first to Charlottesville, Virginia and then to the University of Chicago, to teach the US occupational forces who were preparing for post-war Japan.

His military service overseas saw him participating in the military government in Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. While in Japan, he surveyed the situation in anticipation for reopening missionary work there. He finally returned home to Hawai‘i in 1946.

He became the Oahu Stake President, from 1951 until 1963; his responsibilities included forming a school, the Church College of Hawai‘i (now known as Brigham Young University – Hawaii), which opened in 1955. 

In addition, Clissold became the manager and then chairman of Zions Securities (now known as of Hawai‘i Reserves) during the years 1953 to 1970.  He also served on the Hawaiian Homes Commission from 1954 to 1958.

Simultaneous with these activities, he was also laying out the foundation of what would become the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).  (It opened on October 12, 1963.)  He served a third term as Hawai‘i Temple President from 1962 to 1965.

Clissold’s personality has been described by himself and numerous others as quiet, humble, private, self-effacing, with a tendency to detail. He held an unprecedented number of callings and responsibilities, simultaneously.

Because of his multiple responsibilities, he has been referred to as ‘Mr. Everything,’ or in the words of one Hawaiian man,  ‘the second most powerful man in the Church’ (Church President David O. McKay being the single most powerful). (All here is from a summary by Brian O’Brien)

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Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility

American and English heritage found those members of society who either cannot care for themselves or who do not fit societal expectations have been the subject of ‘parens patriae’ (parent of the nation,) whereby the state acts as the parent of any child or individual who is in need of protection (i.e., destitute widows, orphans, abused and neglected children and law violators of minority age.)

In 1850, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi passed its first legislation towards the care and training of Hawaiʻi’s delinquent youth.

Then, the legislature, on December 30, 1864, approved “An act authorizing the board of education to establish an industrial and reformatory school for the care and education of helpless and neglected children, as also for the reformation of juvenile offenders”.

“The only object of the said industrial and reformatory schools shall be the detention, management, education, employment, reformation, and maintenance of such children as shall be committed thereto as orphans, vagrants, truants, living an idle or dissolute life, who shall be duly convicted of any crime or misdemeanor”.  (Hawaiian Commission, Annexation Report, 1898)

In 1864, Kamehameha V created, and placed administratively under the Kingdom’s Board of Education, the Keoneʻula Reformatory School, an industrial and reformatory school for boys and girls in Kapālama.  The first juvenile facility of its kind in the Islands. (The site is now home to the Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani Elementary School on King Street.)

The Board had authority to establish other industrial schools across the Islands. (Jurisdiction shifted from the Board of Education to the Board of Industrial Schools in 1915, then to the Territorial Department of Institutions in 1939.)

The Industrial School model was in response to the belief that segregation in an institutional setting was the most effective way to address the needs of neglected and delinquent youth. Major characteristics of this congregate-care facility included strict regimentation, harsh punishment, unequal treatment for boys and girls, a poor education system and an emphasis on work.

Initially, the board leased nine-acres in Kapālama, initially for 15-boys and 2-girls, and had them grow taro, vegetables and bananas.  In 1903, with the growing population, 75-boys were relocated from Keoneʻula to farmland in Waialeʻe on the North Shore, where wards could learn “habits of industry.”

Farming activities were intended as much to make this facility self-supporting as to provide therapy and training for the wards. Reports about the Waialeʻe institution refer to conditions as always overcrowded.

Meanwhile, female wards moved from Kapālama to Mōʻiliʻili, then in the 1920s to the Maunawili Training School on the mauka side of Kalanianaʻole Highway in Kailua, Koʻolaupoko.

The girls’ Maunawili complex included five major buildings sited on approximately 430-acres on the slopes of Olomana.  All the buildings (primarily designed by CW Dickey) were constructed between 1927 and the opening of the school in February 1929, with the exception of the gymnasium which was built in 1938.

According to an early Honolulu Star-Bulletin report, “the buildings are scattered about over the hillside, each different from the other in architectural detail. The effect is pleasing; there is no air of the reform school about the place.”  (NPS)

In 1931, the boys’ facility underwent a name change from Waialeʻe Industrial School to the Waialeʻe Training School for Boys; that year, the girls’ Maunawili complex became known as the Kawailoa Training School.

These were Territorial institutions, in rural Oʻahu, formerly under the Department of Public Instruction but from 1915 were under a Board of Industrial Schools.  (Report of Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime, 1931)

Delinquent or dependent children under 18 years of age may be committed to these schools by the juvenile courts in proceedings not to be deemed criminal in nature; no child under 14 may be confined in any jail or police station either before, during or after trial, and no child under 18 may be confined with any adult who shall be under arrest, confinement or conviction for any offense.  (Report of Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime, 1931)

Then, in succeeding decades, various types of facilities and locales were used to house, train and educate the youths.

In 1950, three “cottages” for boys (named, Olomana, Kaʻala and Maunawili) were built on the makai side of Kalanianaʻole Highway from the girls’ Kawailoa Training School in Kailua.  Then, all operations at the Waialeʻe Training School for Boys (111-boys and 45-staff members – the entire population from Waialeʻe) transferred to the new facility and the name changed to the Koʻolau Boys Home.

In 1961, all operations came under a combined administrative unit (including housing both male and female youths) with a new name, the Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF,) a branch of the Corrections Division of the reorganized Department of Social Services and Housing.

HYCF is the state’s sole juvenile facility. It’s comprised of two separate facilities with three housing units: two boys’ housing units and a girls’ housing unit (with certain exceptions, HYCF houses boys confined for long terms at the main secure custody facility (“SCF.”)

The SCF is comprised of a central courtyard surrounded by three housing modules, with ten cells and a common area in each module, a school, a gymnasium, kitchen facilities, offices for administrative and medical staff, and two isolation cells.

The Olomana School, Olomana Hale Hoʻomalu and Olomana Youth Center were established since 1985 and provide support services to alienated students throughout the State of Hawaiʻi.

Olomana School (operated by the DOE) offers three main educational programs:  incarcerated youth are served at HYCF; the Olomana Hale Hoʻomalu program is to provide educational and support services to students who are temporarily confined to the juvenile detention facility; and The Olomana Youth Center serves at-risk students from Windward Oahu’s secondary schools and also HYCF students who are in transit.

Due to the pending litigation in 1991 against the State regarding conditions of confinement for women, the temporary Women’s Community Correctional Center (in what was the Koʻolau Boys Home on the makai side of the highway) was remodeled and completed in 1994 as the State’s primary women’s all-custody facility.

Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC) is the only women’s prison in Hawaii. It also serves the needs of pre-trial and sentenced female offenders. The facility houses female offenders who are of maximum, medium and minimum custody levels.

The facility is comprised of four (4) structures; Olomana, Kaala, Maunawili and Ahiki Cottages. Every cottage operates in accordance with specific programs and classification levels.  WCCC also offers a 50-bed gender responsive, substance abuse therapeutic community called Ke Alaula.  (Lots of information here from reports from the Auditor, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Office of Youth Services and NPS.)

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