Hawaii’s plantation legacy is preserved in Waipahu

Folks in the Deep South moan about the passing of the good ol' plantation days, but the only place in the United States where the buildings and legacies were actually preserved was here in Hawaii. One of the key sites is Hawaii's Plantation Village, located in Waipahu Cultural Garden Park.

If you go ... What: Waipahu Cultural Garden Park Where: 94-695 Waipahu St. Information: Call 677-0110 Tours: Guided tours are conducted for four hours midday, Mondays through Saturdays.

To call the place an oasis in a desert of suburban strip-mall architecture just about sums it up. When the green space opened up in 1976, a block away from the old Arakawa's store, there were conflicting ideas about what to do with it, but the vision of Waipahu community leader Hideo "Major" Okada was to preserve the legacy of Hawaii's sugar plantation workers. It was a real blue-collar, ethnically diverse, democratic kind of vision that seemed uniquely Hawaiian in texture.

The site features 32 buildings on 50 acres just below the Oahu Sugar Mill, some real, some painstakingly replicated, that reflect the varying cultural backgrounds of the workers. All of the furnishings were donated by plantation families. It's of interest also to architecture buffs and set designers.

Between 1852 and 1946, according to information provided by the park, nearly 400,000 workers were brought to Hawaii to work the fields and mills.

Not just the usual Japanese, Portuguese, Scots, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Koreans, Okinawans and Filipinos, but Gilbert Islanders, Norwegians, Germans, Galacians, Spanish, Hindus, African Americans and Russians. To use an American word -- chop suey.

Since the village opened in 1992, tens of thousands of Hawaii students have passed through the site, many understanding for the first time what life was like for their immediate ancestors. Something like 10,000 tourists a year also visit the site and discover that Hawaii is something more than hula girls and Japanese bombs.

The park has had to cut back on staff and programs, thanks to dwindling support from state government.

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