Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Filipinos in Hawaiʻi

Filipinos were the first Asians to cross the Pacific Ocean, as early as 1587 – fifty years before the first English settlement of Jamestown was established on the continent.

From 1565 to 1815, during the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, Filipinos were forced to work as sailors and navigators on board Spanish Galleons.  (CSU-Chico)

In 1763, Filipinos made their first permanent settlement in the bayous and marshes of Louisiana. As sailors and navigators on board Spanish galleons, Filipinos – also known as “Manilamen” or Spanish-speaking Filipinos – jumped ship to escape the brutality of their Spanish masters.  (CSU-Chico)

During the War of 1812, Filipinos from Manila Village (near New Orleans) were among the “Batarians” who fought against the British with Jean Lafitte in the Battle of New Orleans.

Filipino’s Spanish connection came to an end after the Spanish-American War in 1898 when America wanted to control the Philippines. Unknown to Filipinos, through the Treaty of Paris (April 11, 1899,) Spain sold the Philippines to the US for $20-million, thus ending over 300 years of Spanish colonization.

In Hawaiʻi, shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge.

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.

Of the large level of plantation worker immigration, the Chinese were the first (1850,) followed by the Japanese (1885.)  After the turn of the century, the plantations started bringing in Filipinos.

Over the years in successive waves of immigration, the sugar planters brought to Hawaiʻi 46,000-Chinese, 180,000-Japanese, 126,000-Filipinos, as well as Portuguese, Puerto Ricans and other ethnic groups.

For the first 15-Filipino sakadas (probably derived from the Ilocano phrase “sakasakada amin”, meaning, barefoot workers struggling to earn a living) who got off the SS Doric on December 20, 1906, amid stares of curious onlookers, the world before them was one of foreboding.

The 15-pioneers would soon be joined by thousands of their compatriots, thanks to the relentless recruitment of the Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA). (Aquino)

Upon arrival in Hawaiʻi, Filipino contract laborers were assigned to the HSPA-affiliated plantations throughout the territory. Their lives would now come under the dictates of the plantation bosses.

They had no choice as to which plantation or island they would be assigned. Men from the same families, the same towns or provinces were often broken up and separated.  (Alegado)

Between 1906 and 1930, the HSPA brought in approximately 120,000-Filipinos to Hawaiʻi, dramatically altering the territory’s ethnic demographics.    (Aquino)

By the 1920s, Filipinos in Hawaiʻi were still largely male, men outnumbered women by nearly seven to one, and unmarried. They represented, at one point, half of the workers in the sugar industry. Initially the Filipinos tended to be “peasants” of lower education than other groups.  (Reinecke)

Comprising only 19-percent of the plantation workforce in 1917, the sakadas jumped to 70-percent by 1930, replacing the Japanese, who had dwindled to 19-percent as the 1930s approached.  (Aquino)

These Filipino pioneers were known as the “manong generation” since most of them came from Ilokos Sur, Iloilo, and Cavite in the Philippines (manong is an Ilokano term principally given to the first-born male in a Filipino nuclear family who serves as one of the leaders in the extended family.)

During this later time, particularly during the Great Depression, Filipinos had to compete against other ethnic groups to earn a living. Tensions grew.

This eventually led to the passing of the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, which officially provided for Philippine independence and self-government; it also limited Filipino immigration to the US to 50-per year.

The work was hard, it was dirty work (literally with soot  and mud) and monotonous and dangerous work; there was no future in it, in that as one grew older and weaker one earned less money, and that the work was tiring and thus the need to recuperate often.

Among Filipinos, when they got paid they would go to Honolulu by train and not come back for a week. Not to worry: “We could always get our jobs back because it was the worst job working in the fields and nobody else would do it.”  (Alcantara)

Working conditions and wage disparities lead to worker unrest, eventually leading to the formation of labor unions; they formed the Filipino Labor Union.

In 1924 and again in 1935 the Filipinos struck along racial lines; the Filipino workers and their families were evicted from their homes and left to fend for themselves, their leaders were jailed.

Then, in 1935, President Roosevelt, as part of his New Deal legislation, passed the Wagner Act giving workers the legal right to organize unions that could demand employer recognition.

Following WW II (May 21, 1945,) pro-labor legislature passed the landmark Hawaiʻi Employees Relations Act, popularly called the Little Wagner Act, which extended the rights of collective bargaining to agricultural workers. The legislature extended the provisions of the wage and hour law to cover agricultural workers and set minimum wages.

The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) proceeded to organize on all sugar plantations, and by the end of 1945, the ILWU had contracts industry-wide.

Bargaining on the employers’ side was conducted by the Hawaiʻi Employers Council (non-profit and voluntary,) formed to conduct the bargaining and negotiate contracts with unions – thus the ILWU bargained not with the plantations but with the Hawaiʻi Employers Council.

Over the years, the Filipino community has largely been working class; but there is now a growing number of management, professional and related occupations (including professionals such as doctors, nurses, therapists, teachers, lawyers, engineers and business executives.)  (hawaii-edu)

In 1959, the “First Annual Convention of Filipino Community Associations of Hawaiʻi” was held under the theme, “Statehood and the Filipinos in Hawaiʻi.”

Concurrent with the convention, a Fiesta Filipina celebration was held where Leticia Quintal, a UH history major, was crowned as “the first Miss Philippines-Hawaiʻi.” (That pageant award was later changed to Miss Hawaiʻi Filipina.)  Out of the convention and fiesta was born the United Filipino Council of Hawaiʻi.

In an editorial entitled “The Filipino Contribution,” the Honolulu Advertiser of June 19, 1959, noted: “There is a sense of urgency as able Consul General Juan C. Dionisio encourages Americans of Filipino ancestry – and Philippine nationals too – to organize and play a bigger part in Hawaiian affairs.”  (United Filipino Council of Hawaiʻi)

With a note of optimism, the editorial further pointed out: “The Filipinos, who have been doing right well under individual steam, now can be expected to progress even faster.”  (United Filipino Council of Hawaiʻi)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mānā, Kauai

Mānā is a coastal plain with an ancient sea cliff at its inner edge, which extends from Waimea in the south to Barking Sands in the north on the western shores of Kauai.

This region has been identified as a leina-a-ka-uhane (paths-for-leaping-by-the-spirit). These were almost always on bluffs looking westward over the ocean, from which the spirits of the dead were believed to plunge in order to enter the spiritual realm.

Throughout prehistory, large areas of the Mānā Plain were covered by the great Mānā swamp, allowing the ancients to canoe as far south as Waimea.

Up until the mid-1880s, the great Mānā swamp, east of the plain, covered large areas of the lowlands.  Approximately 1,700-acres of permanent, semi-permanent and seasonal wetlands were present on the Mānā Plain.

It is believed that these wet conditions encouraged the independent invention of aquaculture on Kauai and the construction of stone and earthen ponds for growing staples such as taro, yam and sweet potatoes.

Historically, native Hawaiians constructed four different types of fishponds – freshwater taro ponds, other freshwater ponds, brackish water ponds and seawater ponds.

Aquaculture was employed to supplement their other fishing activities, and permanent fishponds guaranteed a stable food supply for populations in lean times.  Tended ponds provided fish without requiring fishing expertise, and harvesting the pond, unlike fishing at sea, was not weather dependent.

Evidence suggests that Hawaiian fishponds were constructed as early as AD 1000, if not earlier, and continued to be built until the 1820s.

After the arrival of Europeans to the island, aquaculture transitioned to agriculture through the eventual draining of the swamp and the cultivation of sugar cane and rice.

One of the first successful sugar plantations to export from the islands was established at Kōloa in 1835, and by the 1930s, nearly all of the Mānā swamp had been filled to produce this crop.

Up until the mid-1880s, the great Mānā swamp covered large areas of the lowlands.  One of the first European settlers, Valdemar Knudsen, drained a portion of the Mānā swamp by excavating a ditch through to the ocean at Waiele.  The first sugarcane was planted in Kekaha in 1878.

Hans Peter (HP) Faye was a Norwegian immigrant (arriving in 1880) who started a small plantation at Mānā and eventually helped form Kekaha Sugar, incorporated 1898, and became its first manager.

It was his vision that created the Kekaha and Kokeʻe Ditch Systems and the intricate drainage canals that drain the large swamps of Mānā.

To keep the groundwater table below the root zone of the sugar cane, thousands of feet of canals were excavated to drain excess water from the soil.  The water is then pumped into canals such as the Nohili Ditch for release into the ocean.

The drainage system, with two pumps at the Kawaiele and Nohili pumping stations, was constantly running to lower the groundwater table, which made possible for sugarcane cultivation.

Rice was planted in the drained swamplands from the mid-1860s to 1922.  By the 1930s, nearly all of the Mānā swamp had been filled in and planted in sugarcane.

The need to keep the area drained continues today.  These pumping stations must continue running to keep the groundwater table from rising too high, which could result in root rots and hence low crop yields. During storm season, with five inches of rain in one day would result in flooding.

Nearby wetlands form the Kawaiele Sand Mine Sanctuary (a State Waterbird Refuge for Hawaii’s four endangered waterbird species – Hawaiian duck, coot, stilt and moorhen;) this was created during a sand removal program.

When I was at DLNR, we authorized the sale of sand licenses to allow contractors to remove sand for construction projects (golf courses, concrete mix and beach replenishment) within the waterbird sanctuary that, in turn, created a beneficial mixed terrain and expanded the waterbird habitat.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First Sugar Production

He keiki aloha nā mea kanu

Beloved children are the plants

(ʻŌlelo Noʻeau 684)

In the past two decades, significant advances in radiocarbon dating and the targeted re-dating of key Eastern Polynesian and Hawaiian sites has strongly supported a “short chronology” model of Eastern Polynesian settlement.

It is suggested that initial Polynesian discovery and colonization of the Hawaiian Islands occurred between approximately AD 1000 and 1200.  (Kirch)

Sugar was a canoe crop; the early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands.

In pre-contact times, sugarcane was not processed as we know sugar today, but was used by chewing the juicy stalks.  Its leaves were used for inside house thatching, or for outside (if pili grass wasn’t available.) The flower stalks of sugar cane were used to make a dart, sometimes used during the Makahiki games. (Canoe Crops)

The first written record of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi came from Captain James Cook, at the time he made initial contact with the Islands.  On January 19, 1778, off Kauai, he notes, “We saw no wood, but what was up in the interior part of the island, except a few trees about the villages; near which, also, we could observe several plantations of plantains and sugar-canes.”  (Cook)

Cook notes that sugar was cultivated, “The potatoe fields, and spots of sugar-canes, or plantains, in the higher grounds, are planted with the same regularity; and always in some determinate figure; generally as a square or oblong”.  (Cook)

It appears Cook was the first outsider to put sugarcane to use.  One of his tools in his fight against scurvy (severe lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in your diet) was beer.

On December 7, 1778 he notes, “Having procured a quantity of sugar cane; and having, upon a trial, made but a few days before, found that a strong decoction of it produced a very palatable beer, I ordered some more to be brewed, for our general use.”

“A few hops, of which we had some on board, improved it much. It has the taste of new malt beer; and I believe no one will doubt of its being very wholesome. And yet my inconsiderate crew alleged that it was injurious to their health.”  (Cook)

While the crew “would (not) even so much as taste it”, he “gave orders that no grog should be served … (he) and the officers, continued to make use of this sugarcane beer, whenever (they) could get materials for brewing it.”  (Cook) Others later made rum from the sugarcane.

But beer and rum were not a typical sugar use; “in 1802 sugar was first made at these islands, by a native of China, on the island of Lanai.”

“He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandal wood, and brought a stone mill, and boilers, and after grinding off one small crop and making it into sugar, went back the next year with his fixtures, to China.”  (Torbert; Polynesian, January 31, 1852)

While HSPA – HARC states, “The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauai in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200”, others suggest the first commercial production actually started on Maui.  (Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) (successor entity to Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA))

A couple guys named Ah Hung and Ah Tai, who combined their names in order to identify their company – a 1939 news ‘Short’ says Hungtai “is said to have been one of the earliest manufacturers of sugar in the islands, at Wailuku, Maui in 1823.” (Star Bulletin, April 6, 1939) Others say Hungtai started commercial sales in 1828; still, seven years before Koloa.

Hungtai had a plantation and a water-powered mill in Wailuku, and sold the sugar in their store at Merchant and Fort Streets in Honolulu. They were still selling that sugar as late as 1841, when they were advertising in local newspapers.  (TenBruggencate)

Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well.  Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.”  (Garvin)

Then, King Kamehameha III sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands.  In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:

“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”

“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880. These twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. Basic features of rural factory life were established.

This was a period of rapid growth for the sugar industry, building upon the momentum triggered by the Māhele of 1848, the Kuleana Act of 1850, and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875.  Likewise, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.  Sugar‐cane farming proved to be the only available crop that could be grown.  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.

There were three big waves of workforce immigration: Chinese 1852; Japanese 1885 and Filipinos 1905.  Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred: Portuguese 1877; Norwegians 1880; Germans 1881; Puerto Ricans 1900; Koreans 1902 and Spanish 1907.

It is not likely anyone then foresaw the impact this would have on the cultural and social structure of the islands; the sugar industry is at the center of Hawaiʻi’s modern diversity of races and ethnic cultures.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawaii’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.

With statehood in 1959 and the almost simultaneous introduction of passenger jet airplanes, the tourist industry began to grow rapidly.

A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

As sugar declined, tourism took its place – and far surpassed it.  Like many other societies, Hawaii underwent a profound transformation from an agrarian to a service economy.

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Charles Titcomb

Charles Titcomb was a practical Yankee of considerable ability (born in Boston, July 24, 1803), a watchmaker by trade, who had reached the Hawaiian Islands as a sailor on the bark Lyra that was wrecked in the ‘false passage’ (apparently around Maui) in 1830.  (Damon and PCA March 31, 1883) He lived/worked at various places on Kauai.

Koloa

He initially settled at Koloa, Kauai.  At the time, “Clusters of native dwellings are scattered on the plain, but the principal village is situated a mile from the beach, at a short distance from the missionary buildings.”

“Fields of sugar cane, taro, yams, and other vegetables, bespeak a more than usual attention to agriculture. The population of Koloa, which is about three thousand, is increasing rapidly by emigrations from other districts. But the principal attractions here are the estates of Messrs. Ladd & Co. and Messrs. Peck & Titcomb, American gentlemen.”

“From Ladd and Company Messrs. Peck and Titcomb subleased about 400 acres on which, from 1836 to 1840, they conducted careful experiments in raising cotton, coffee and silk.”

“Their mulberry trees throve so that one of the little hills on their land was soon called Mauna Kilika, or Silika, as it still is on old maps. …  Beset by one difficulty after another, such as drought, blight and failure of the silkworm eggs to hatch even when taken in bottles to the mountain tops for a lower temperature, silk culture was abandoned about 1840.”

“Mr. Titcomb then transferred his equipment across the island to Hanalei to begin similar attempts there. And sugar thus remained the one active commercial enterprise in Koloa.” (Damon)

Hanalei

“In the course of time other white settlers were attracted to the fertile and well-watered region of Hanalei and Waioli, among whom the first to undertake a business venture systematically was this same Charles Titcomb of Koloa.”

“While his interests were frankly commercial, and it was of course essential that his silk worms should be fed on Sunday, as on every other day, it is not true, as has sometimes been alleged, that the missionaries of Hanalei attempted to thwart his industrial efforts.”

“The refutation of this charge is made on the indisputable authority of Mr. G. N. Wilcox, who grew up in one of the two mission homes at Waioli and knows the history of Kauai as it is known to no other living person today.”

The missionaries at Hanalei, as at Koloa, rejoiced that Hawaiians had now some means of profitable labor by which they could free themselves from the restrictions of the konohiki, or overlord. And while the missionaries regretted that a certain amount of labor was necessary on the Sabbath, it came to be regarded as an inevitable accompaniment of economic change.”

“And when on, or even perhaps before, the blighting of his mulberry trees at Koloa, Mr. Titcomb started cuttings in the Hanalei river bottom, a prodigiously rapid growth was the result, even also as ratoons.”

“Mr. Jarves states that Mr. Titcomb had obtained his lease of Hanalei river lands from the king as early as 1838. A fairly good quality and quantity of silk was soon produced, the Hawaiian women proving skilful in the art of reeling the delicate threads from the tiny cocoons, and the first export was made in 1844, but profits were too slow to warrant the necessary outlay of capital.”

“Securing berries from the Kona fields of Messrs. Hall and Cummings, Mr. Titcomb gradually replaced his mulberry orchards with coffee plants, and thus opened direct competition with his immediate neighbors.”

“Another commercial venture, somewhat farther afield, was made by Mr. Wundenberg in company with Messrs. Titcomb and Widemann late in 1848, when the three gentlemen left their families on Kauai and proceeded to join the gold rush to California. The net result seems to have been chiefly in the realm of experience, for it was not long before all three had returned to their former agricultural pursuits. …”

“In 1853 [Robert Wyllie] bought the Crown lands at Hanalei which were leased by the Rhodes Coffee Plantation, and two years later Captain Rhodes sold out his financial interest in it to Mr. Wyllie.”

“After the visit of the royal personages at Hanalei in 1860, Mr. Titcomb’s plantation became known as Emmasville and Mr. Wyllie’s as Princeville Plantation, in honor of the event. And Princeville is the name which persists to this day as the title of the estate.”

“In 1862 the Princeville plantation, following Mr. Titcomb’s lead, was converted from coffee to sugar and the face of the river valley took on a materially different aspect. Mr. Wyllie added the two ahupuaas, land divisions, of Kalihikai and Kalihiwai, to his Princeville estate, and sent to Glasgow for his sugar mill.” (Damon)

“Foremost in enterprise, Mr. Titcomb was the prime mover in introducing the Tahitian variety of cane, which for so many years was the backbone of the industry.”

“The whaling captain entrusted with the importation of this new cane chanced to make port at Lahaina, whence the samples were distributed throughout the islands. Hence the name, Lahaina cane, for that staple variety which was in reality from Tahiti.”

“[T]he coffee plantation of Mr. Titcomb at Hanalei was reported, just before the drought, as in excellent order and always a model of good management and thrift.” (Damon)

Coffee was grown successfully at Hanalei during the 1840s and 1850s until a blight caused by aphids wiped out over 100,000 coffee trees.  (Soboleski, TGI)

“In 1852 Irish potatoes constituted the largest export from the islands to California, but two years later the Hawaiian planters ‘were eating potatoes from California of better quality and less price.’”

“By the process of the survival of the fittest, sugar was becoming Hawaii’s staple product. Yet even that finally proved unsuited to the cool, wet climate of Hanalei.”

“Mr. Titcomb, in the lead as usual, sold the Emmasville Plantation of over seven hundred acres to Mr. Wyllie in 1863 and moved to Kilauea, further to the eastward on the Kauai shore. Here he bought the Kilauea land grant from the king and established himself in cattle ranching.”  (Damon)

Kilauea

“He built himself a house, which until very recently was used as the Kilauea plantation hospital; and when Mr. Widemann came to Hanalei in 1864, Mr. Titcomb secured his herd of cattle from Grove Farm.”

“Capt. Dudoit and Mr. Titcomb of Hanalei also met with considerable success at Kilauea, but the former moved his family to Honolulu in 1862.”

“These two gentlemen had become discouraged with the struggles in sugar at Princeville and were attempting the somewhat drier climate to the eastward.”

“In 1877, when Titcomb sold his Kilauea ranch to English Capt. John Ross and Edward Adams for the purpose of growing sugar cane, Kilauea Sugar Plantation was founded, with Titcomb staying on to build the plantation’s first sugar mill.” (Damon)  Kilauea Plantation closed in 1971. (Soboleski, TGI)

“Having primitive works, his whole product was for many years put into syrup, during which time ‘Titcomb’s Golden Syrup’ was the choice article of our  groceries. … Titcomb was an industrious, law-abiding citizen; a neighbor to be desired, and an affectionate husband and father.” (Daily Honolulu Press, March 24, 1883)

Titcomb married Kanikele Kamalenui in 1841; they were the parents of at least 3 sons and 5 daughters.  Kanikele died January 16, 1881; Charles died March 21, 1883.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kohala Ditch

Central to Hawaiʻi’s use of water has been agriculture, sugar in particular.

Initially brought to the islands by early Polynesians, the first successful commercial sugar plantation started in 1835.  And, with it, Hawai`i’s environmental, social and economic fabric changed.  Hawaiʻi’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.

What encouraged the development of plantation centers?  For one, the American settlement of California opened lucrative avenues of trade in the Pacific.  In addition, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai’i to compete in a California market that paid elevated prices for sugar.

The Pacific whaling trade collapsed after 1860, pushing Honolulu merchants into the sugar trade.  About the same time, the closing of the Hawaiian mission left the previously supported missionaries in search of new means of income.

The 1876 Treaty of Reciprocity between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai`i’s closest and major market.  Through the treaty, the US received a station at Pearl Harbor and Hawaiʻi’s sugar planters received duty-free entry into US markets for their sugar.

For nearly a century, agriculture was the Island’s leading economic activity. It provided Hawai`i’s major sources of employment, tax revenues, and new capital through exports of raw sugar and other farm products.

Sugarcane requires a lot of water to grow. Pioneer sugar planters solved water shortages by diverting stream water and building irrigation systems that included aqueducts (the first in 1856), artesian wells (the first in 1879), and tunnels and mountain wells (the first in 1898).  These irrigation systems enabled the planters to expand their sugar production.

These irrigation systems were modeled largely after the elaborate and extensive diversion and ditches developed by the ancient Hawaiians.  Unlike the traditional Hawaiian system, which never diverted more than 50% of stream flow, the sugar plantations diverted large quantities of water from perennial streams and moved water from one ahupuaʻa to another.

Boston missionary Reverend Elias Bond sailed with the Ninth Company of Protestant Missionaries, arriving in the Islands in 1841. He was then assigned to Kohala.

As a means to provide employment to the people in the region and support his church and schools, in 1862, Reverend Bond founded Kohala Sugar Company, known as “The Missionary Plantation;” it produced its first sugar crop in 1865.  Bond gave all his dividends and profits beyond his living expenses to the Board of Missions.

Bond included the following in a letter: “So this was the ‘Missionary Plantation’, and the prophecies were many and loud that it would not live five years”. But in the goodness of God we came through.”  (Schweitzer)

From the mid-1800s, the sugar industry developed and commercial centers sprung up around the processing mills, especially in Kapaʻau and Hawi.  The construction of the railroad and the Kohala Ditch acted to encourage the further development of these more centrally-located communities.

Seven sugar mills operated in Kohala: Kohala, Union, Niuliʻi, Hawi, Halawa, Hōʻea and Star.  With the exception of Star, which existed for only a brief period of time, each was the nucleus of a community of plantation managers, supervisors, and laborers.  (In 1937, all of the mills were consolidated into Kohala Sugar Company.)

To water the crop, John Hind first conceived of an irrigation system tapping into the abundant, wild and inaccessible rivers that ribbon the Kohala Mountains.  In 1904, JS Low acquired a license from the Territory of Hawaiʻi to “enter upon, confine, conserve, collect, impound and divert all the running natural surface waters on the Kohala-Hāmākua Watershed;” he assigned the license to the Kohala Ditch Company.

Notable engineers and other professionals became involved in the construction of irrigation ditches that were the forerunners of large irrigation projects in the Western US.  Among the engineers was Michael Maurice O’Shaugnessy; he was both an investor in the Kohala Ditch Company and the Chief Engineer for the aqueduct.  (ASCE)

The Kohala Ditch, built by the Kohala Sugar Company, diverted water from the Honokāne Nui Stream to Hikapoloa, west of Hawi.  600-Japanese laborers worked on its construction; in the process, 17 lost their lives.

The laborers were housed under corrugated iron roofs. The raised floors “nearly always two-feet above the ground and higher if practicable” provided “a place for drying the men’s clothes in wet weather.” Additionally, “a hospital and medical department was also provided for the men, who were assessed 50-cents a month apiece for this object.”  (ASCE)

The Honokāne section of Kohala Ditch was opened on June 11, 1906; waters of Honokāne began flowing to the Kohala, Niuliʻi, Halawa, Hawi and Union mills.  The Awini section was finished in 1907; it started from the Waikoloa stream and traveled over 8-miles, mostly in tunnel, to the Awini weir where the water dropped 900-feet in a manmade waterfall into the Honokāne section.

The ditch carried the water for 23-miles northwest, mostly as tunnel, toward Hawi.  The capacity was originally 70-mgd, later reduced to 50-mgd, when the original flumes were replaced with smaller ones.

The ditch drops about 80-feet in elevation from 1,045-feet at the bottom of the intake at the first large stream (Honokāne) to 956-feet at the terminus in the plantation fields.

Prosperity came to Kohala. At the peak of its production, the Sugar Company had 600-employees; 13,000-acres of land produced 45,000-tons of raw sugar a year.

As with other sugar operations, it didn’t last.  1975 saw the last harvest at Kohala Sugar Company.  The district’s economy struggled.  Almost one-third of the workforce now commutes to South Kohala to work in the hotels and resorts located there.  However, the Ditch remained open for other agricultural needs.

Vulnerability and the risks associated with reliance on the Kohala Ditch were made evident on October 15, 2006, when two earthquakes struck off Kiholo and caused extensive damage to the Kohala Ditch.  In that instant, rockslides and other damage to the ditch stopped the water from flowing through the Ditch.

Two years later, on November 25, 2008, after extensive community involvement and public/private funding ($2-million in federal money, $500,000 from the state, $500,000 from Hawai`i County, $342,000 from Kamehameha Schools and $100,000 from AT&T), water was released back into the Kohala Ditch after repairs to the damage caused by the 2006 quakes.

Agricultural and hydroelectric users continue to benefit from the Ditch; in addition, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity for recreational/visitor industry uses of the ditch with kayak and raft rides through the flumes and tunnels of the Kohala Ditch.

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