It is the 140 year anniversary of the first Portuguese contract laborers arriving in Hawaii to work on sugar plantations. After reading Portuguese celebrate 140 years since first immigrants arrive I realized that there’s a couple of things that they got wrong. In fact, these misrepresentations are things many people believe about their Portuguese immigrant…
Tag: Hawaii History
We Shouldn’t Judge Our Ancestors By Today’s Standards: The Reality of Work Discipline in the Late 1800s
An interesting conversation broke out in the Portuguese Hawaiian group on Facebook over the role foremen and lunas played on plantations in Hawaii. Lunas and foremen were the ones who kept workers in line and kept work flowing. Although I’m concentrating on the Hawaiian Sugar Plantation system, my thoughts could apply to any authority figure…
Remembering Pearl Harbor: One Man’s Quest
We remember the attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, every year. While many of us have looked over the official casualty lists from that horrific day, we may not be aware that some of the remains have never been identified. 25% of the 2,400 remains, to be exact. Ray Emory has made it his…