A Photograph of Every House Old Plantation Days, March 2015
The Plantations had employee housing all across the landscape. In the earliest days of plantation days the camps were spread out in geographic work locations. In the days of horseback, mules, carts and wagons, it was not feasible to have the employee housing in large group settings like you see now, (or more accurately what remnants of camp housing you see now). Section camps had a Luna, (supervisor) and then several houses for the section employees that would care for the cultivation of cane up until harvest. Some camps were only set up for flume tenders, who would care for the flumes and water intake systems way up in the forest or down in the bottom of a valley.
The earliest camp arrangements had communal laundry, bath and toilet houses at the corners of a four or six house back to back configuration. Quite often these bath houses would discharge their effluent into a nearby gulch or river! Yikes, that certainly would not pass Dept. of Health or EPA standards of now-a-days!! Need I mention the associated pig-sty’s, chicken coops, and livestock stables and discharges, Nah, I think you got it. For those of us who now use the rivers for harvesting of Opae, Prawns, and Watabe, I think the passing of these far flung Plantation camps is a good thing.
So what of our title for this month’s article. In the archives of the UH Hamilton library, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, and those of the private collections like the Edmund C. Olson Trust there are photographic records of each and every plantation house that existed on the plantations. Done for insurance purposes, the Human Resource department took a single photograph, labeled when the house was built, what wood was used, and what ethnic or labor sector camp the house was located in. For example: “Filipino Mill Camp” or “Kalaoa Stable Camp”. This record of plantation structures actually shows a slice of plantation life. For example, hedges and picket fences surround some houses, laundry hangs in the air, the family dog poses at the gate, or the tenant stands on the porch looking at the camera man. It’s a snapshot of life, with only one photo it does not tell much, but with hundreds of photos a more complete scene is envisioned.
One of the more unique things I have seen in the photos is the workmanship of the plantation carpenter shop. Specifically the railing designs on the front porch or veranda. It is quite obvious that they did not keep the same design throughout the camps. Some houses had vertical rails, others horizontal, some diagonal, some complex, some showing artistic flare. Maybe there’s a “Coffee Table” book that could be published showing “Porches and Lanai’s of Hawaii Sugarcane Camps”. That book will be right next to my landmark “Outhouses of Hawaii” book, (again proposed and in my dreams of retired life!)
In the log of house photos every now and then, in handwritten pencil, it may denote who the current resident of the house was. My wife’s mother (as a child) and her family lived in a house along Wainaku Street just above the Hilo Sugar Mill. We looked in the photo log and sure enough under “Mill Camp – Skilled Housing” we noted the penciled in name “Fleenor”, being her familes’ (maiden) name. Charles Fleenor (my wife’s Grandfather), was Hilo Sugar Mill’s Boiling House Superintendent. Sadly, He died of mesothelioma (asbestos exposure), a common ailment of men in the mill’s boiling house and centrifugals.
