IT’S PARTY TIME, PLANTATION STYLE! Old Plantation Days, September 2015

The archives at our Papaikou vault are filled with photographs of mills, machinery, equipment, flumes, structures, tunnels and of course employees.  It is here that there is a defining element within the photographs…its nice to see the mountain capped in snow, the waterfalls cascading, or the mills and equipment working, but when coming to photographs of men, women, children, bosses and employees of the plantation there a certain primal connection that is made between the viewer and the people captured in the image.

When viewing the binders for this months issue I came across a group of celebration photos.  What struck me was the camaraderie and cohesive nature of many ethic races within the photos.  Just as the Paradise Post was started some seven years ago by editor David Bennett, the premise of the Post was connecting cultures and celebrating the unity and accepting the diversity of our island community.

Here in these photos we see a variety of races all bound in some sort of celebration of plantation life or the success of the plantation economy.  The photos are unmarked as to what they were together for, but look at the happy smiling faces of English, German, Portuguese, Filipinos, and Japanese together.  They were bound by the Plantation and the success of the Plantation.

This past summer our archives were visited by a student from William & Mary College who was doing research for his anthropology thesis on the “Enthogenesis” of plantation culture.  From early segregation at the importation of immigrant laborers in specific camps like “Spanish Camp”, “Hawaiian Camp”, “Puerto Rican Camp”, and so forth and so on, came a blending of cultures and races that we now call Hawaii a portion of Hawaii’s local culture the “Melting Pot”.  Camps went through a genesis into Mill Camp, Flume Camp, Skilled Housing Camp, Stable Camp.  The racial descriptions of the past lost to a blended plantation employee workforce.

Mr. Joshua Gastilo is not done with his research yet and will be returning to complete his thesis this winter from these walls as well as the other plantation museums and archives scattered across the Hamakua coast.  We look forward to his completed thesis.

During my tenure on the plantations I recall many wonderful parties and celebrations of yields being broken, safety records being maintained, Volleyball and Softball tournaments being feted and then Christmas parties ending the crop harvest season.  Every now and then the Manager would host a gambling party with craps table, black jack and poker stations. WOW! What good fun to have with $10,000 of cash handed to everyone as you walked through the door of the Managers house!  (Ohh, I think I better make it clear, that was “monopoly” money we were given!!).

Okole Maluna, Prost, Salute, and Happy Anniversary to the Paradise Post.