Hawai’i’s Plantation Village

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

To look at, Hawai’i is the perfect place for leisure – golden sands kissed by aquamarine waves, lush mountains and vivid tropical vegetation. But for immigrant sugar plantation laborers a century ago, it was a place of daily toil, poverty and isolation from home and family.

Back then, sugar was king and so lucrative that plantation owners imported cheap labor from around the world to build the work force they needed. Today, the cane fields are gone; labor having been priced out of the global market. The industry also suffered diminished demand as high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in soft drinks. Sugar plantations began to close in the 1970s and in 1995 the last operation was shuttered. Of what was a way of life for thousands of laborers, only an open-air ethnographic museum remains.

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Hawai’i: Food as a Bridge to Harmony

Congrats to Serena C. from Boston, MA, who wins a copy of Melissa’s 50 Best Plants on the Planet.

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

A century ago, a simple, two-tiered metal lunch bucket became a catalyst for helping polyglot immigrant workers find common ground in the sugarcane fields of Hawai’i. It nurtured the harmonious culture and cuisine enjoyed in the Islands to this day.

Last week, I sat down with Arnold Hiura, journalist, author and historian, in our plantation-style vacation rental built on former sugarcane fields on the Big Island of Hawai’i, to hear this fascinating story. It’s especially significant for me, because all four of my grandparents emigrated from Japan to become sugar plantation field hands. After their work contracts expired, the Honda side of the family moved on to coffee farming, while the Matsukawas continued to raise sugarcane.

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