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Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi

Hawaii’s Back yard

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi



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DAVID FRANZEN
Gaylord Kubota's dedication to sugar's history led him to old camp houses and into ditches to preserve artifacts of the past.



Maui sugar museum
preserves sweet tales

Gaylord Kubota is sweet on sugar. The genial director of Maui's Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum not only possesses encyclopedic knowledge about the history of Hawaii's sugar industry, he nurtures a passion for it. There's a story behind every photo, artifact and model in the museum, and Kubota knows them all. It's a joy to listen as he brings the old plantation days to life.

Between 1835 and the early 1960s, cane was king in Hawaii. Large waves of immigrants from China, Japan, Portugal, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and other countries began arriving in 1852 to work on the sugar plantations sprouting up throughout the islands.

These plantations had stores, hospitals, schools, churches, theaters, tailor and barber shops and more -- everything you'd expect to find in a self-contained community.

Samuel Alexander and Henry Baldwin, sons of Lahaina missionaries, purchased 12 acres of cane land near Makawao in 1869, marking the birth of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., one of Hawaii's leading diversified corporations. Today, only two sugar plantations remain in Hawaii: Maui's Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. (a division of A&B) and Gay & Robinson Inc. on Kauai.

The private, nonprofit Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum is housed in the former residence of the superintendent of Puunene Sugar Mill, which HC&S has operated across the street since 1902. Its mission is "to preserve and present the history and heritage of (Hawaii's) sugar industry, and the multiethnic plantation life which it engendered."

Local, state and national recognition has been showered upon the museum, due in large part to Kubota's vision and dedication. He personally collected many of the items on display, saying, "This included scavenging in camp houses as soon as they were vacated, or sometimes even before that with the permission of the occupants who were moving out. I even removed old fixtures and hardware."

Kubota recalls gingerly descending a Maliko Gulch slope without ropes to obtain the museum's oldest artifact, an 1878 pipe collar from the original Hamakua Ditch (Maui's first irrigation ditch), which was built by Alexander & Baldwin between 1876 and 1878. This circular iron band overlapped the spot where two lengths of pipe met. It was riveted to the pipes on both sides of the meeting point, joining them together. Tar was applied to seal the connection.

"Getting the pipe collar was an adventure," Kubota smiles, "but it was worth it -- this is really a rare and unique artifact!"

Along with consultant John McLaughlin, Kubota also supervised the design, construction and installation of the museum's exhibits.

"Everything was carefully thought out," he proudly notes, and the effort shows.

Outside, visitors can get close-up looks at plantation equipment, including a cane hauler, trench digger and cane grab, which picked up and loaded cane during the harvest. Inside, six rooms showcase an intriguing variety of artifacts, photo murals, audiovisual presentations, interactive displays and authentic scale models.

The model of a 1930s camp house is, according to Kubota, "accurate in every detail. There are real hinges on the doors and real glass in the windows. We even found a painter who started working for HC&S in 1925, and he had a paint catalog from those days, so we were able to match the exact color of the house as well. Many old-timers have exclaimed, 'That's the house I grew up in!'"

ONE OF KUBOTA'S favorite exhibits is a working model of factory cane-crushing machinery, built by the late David Dargie, who served as chief machinist and shop superintendent at Kaiwiki Sugar Co. on the Big Island. At the press of a button, the intricate model is set in motion along with a narrative that explains the harvested cane's journey through the mill.

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DAVID FRANZEN




Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum

Address: 3957 Hansen Road, 10 minutes from Kahului Airport
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Also open Sundays in July, August, February, March and sometimes April.
Admission: $5 for adults, $2 for children ages 6 through 17
Call: 808-871-8058
Web site: www.sugarmuseum.com


The treasures in the 2,800-square-foot museum captivate even those who aren't history buffs. There are labor contracts written in Hawaiian and Chinese; bango, small metal discs or squares that served as ID cards on the plantation; and 34 early- to mid-1900s bottles that contained everything from soda, beer and medicine to ink, milk of magnesia and Singer sewing machine oil.

Even the smallest, most mundane household items provide fascinating glimpses of plantation life -- a charcoal iron, a coconut grater carved from a guava branch, a mint-condition sushi bako (box) and an American-made crock that was used by a Korean family to marinate kim chee.

The kau kau tin (lunch pail) always draws delighted responses. Observes Kubota, "People look at it and say, 'My father had one!' or 'My grandfather used that!' This is how the plate lunch came to be; workers from different ethnic groups shared food from their kau kau tins."

As it is, the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum does a wonderful job of sharing sugar's story, but Kubota sees potential for growth. There are artifacts in storage that he would eventually like to display, and along with them, stories that he, ever the raconteur, would no doubt love to tell.

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DAVID FRANZEN PHOTO
Displays of machinery used in the harvesting and processing of sugar are part of the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum's anniversary festivities Saturday.



Sugar Museum celebration commemorates anniversaries

The Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum will hold a free celebration on Saturday to commemorate several anniversaries this year, including the 15th anniversary of the museum's opening, the 100th anniversary of the building in which the museum is housed, the 100th anniversary of cane grinding at Puunene Sugar Mill and the 100th anniversary of Puunene Post Office.

Visitors that day can enjoy:

>> A new exhibit of photographs and historical documents related to Puunene Post Office, the museum building and Makawao resident Ann Gusman, whose family was the last to have resided in the former plantation house.

>> A showing of the "Plantation Heritage Series" segment featuring Gusman. Produced by the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, this oral history series is aired on Akaku: Maui Community Television.

>> A 10-minute video produced by award-winning filmmaker Edgy Lee that shows viewers how cane is processed.

>> A living display of approximately 15 varieties of Hawaiian sugar cane, which are being preserved for their historical significance (they are not the type of cane currently under commercial cultivation).

Call 808-871-8058 for more information.





Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based free-lance writer
and Society of American Travel Writers award winner.



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