Hawaii’s Back Yard Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi

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Family preserves history through tours of rice mill

Lyndsey Haraguchi-Nakayama remembers visiting the Haraguchi Rice Mill on school excursions as a child. Those trips to her family's historic mill recapped familiar stories she had heard about their experiences as farmers in Kauai's beautiful Hanalei Valley for more than 80 years.

If you go ... What: Hoopulapula Haraguchi Rice Mill Tour Meet at: Haraguchi Rice Mill kiosk near the entrance to Hanalei town on Kauai. Follow the orange cones to the parking area. Time: 10 a.m. on Thursdays, rain or shine. Advance reservations are required. Cost: $65 per person, $55 for kamaaina and $50 for a group of 14. Price includes a fruit smoothie, sandwich (choice of turkey, ham, turkey/ham, roast beef or taro hummus veggie), juice or bottled water, luau rolls and taro coconut mochi. Couples who donate $150 or more receive a full tax deduction and a private tour (does not include transportation, lunch or refreshments). Call: 808-651-3399 E-mail: haraguchiricemill@yahoo.com Web site: www.haraguchiricemill.org Notes: Wear casual, comfortable clothes and sturdy walking shoes. Bring a hat, umbrella, sunscreen and insect repellent. You can support the rice mill by making a tax-deductible monetary donation, volunteering as a tour guide, sharing your stories and old photographs of rice farming, staffing the mill's visitor center and/or providing goods and services. The mill's mailing address is P.O. Box 427, Hanalei, HI 96714.

Today, Haraguchi-Nakayama leads tours as the volunteer interim education coordinator and docent for the Hoopulapula Haraguchi Rice Mill, a nonprofit organization formed by her parents, Rodney and Karol Haraguchi, in 1983 to preserve and perpetuate the mill's history (it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places) and rice farming in Hawaii.

Hoopulapula means "to start the seedlings," a fitting description for the Haraguchis' efforts. "In essence, we are planting the seeds for the rice mill project," Haraguchi-Nakayama says. "As far as research and restoration are concerned, we're just beginning; there's so much left to do."

Giving the tours is "comfortable, natural for me," she says. "It's just 'talking story' about my family's history. I share things I learned from my parents and grandparents from the time I was small."

From what her family can deduce, the 3,500-square-foot mill was built in the late 1880s by a Chinese entrepreneur named Chu Lum. As settlement in a payment dispute, he turned it over to the Man Sing Co., which operated it until 1924. That was the year Haraguchi-Nakayama's great-great-grandfather, Tomejiro Haraguchi, and his four sons assumed the lease to grow and process rice on 75 acres.

One of the sons was Kahyohei, Haraguchi-Nakayama's great-grandfather. His brothers eventually left the farm to pursue other ventures, so he became the sole operator.

From Kahyohei the business passed to his son William, Haraguchi-Nakayama's grandfather, then to her father. When Kauai's rice industry collapsed in 1960, her family stopped operating the mill and began growing tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages and other vegetables.

Today, the Haraguchis cultivate wetland taro on about 50 acres of the 917-acre Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge. Established by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1972, the sanctuary harbors endangered native waterbirds such as the aeo, or stilt; alae keokeo (coot); alae ula (gallinule); koloa, or duck; and some translocated nene (Hawaiian goose), Hawaii's state bird.

THE REFUGE normally is open only to those who farm there and to personnel from the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, but the Haraguchis have received special permission to conduct a limited number of public tours of the rice mill, the only one of its kind remaining in Hawaii.

The three-hour tours were launched in September to help support the free tours for students and teachers that the family has offered for more than 20 years. They include stops at the Haraguchis' taro fields and their mill, where participants can see how rice was threshed, hulled, polished, separated, graded and bagged. The "finish rice room," where processed rice was stored before being shipped out, was built last year.

Haraguchi-Nakayama tailors the tours to visitors' interest.

"Farmers want to know about the growing and milling processes," she says. "Other people are more interested in the mill's history. Kids want to know what farm kids in the old days did for fun."

She likes telling stories about the "yagura," 10-foot-tall sentry towers that were built in the middle of 5-acre sections of the fields to help control birds that would suck the milk out of developing rice kernels (left untouched, the milk would mature into the "meat" of the kernels). Farmers wouldn't find the empty kernels until the milling process -- a costly discovery that meant their efforts had been wasted.

Cloth rags and tin cans were strung on ropes tied to bamboo poles that extended from the yagura across the rice plantings. Whenever birds alighted in the fields, boys would tug on the ropes, which made the flags flutter and the cans clatter, scaring the birds away.

"The boys were there from dawn to dusk," Haraguchi-Nakayama says. "It was a tedious but very important job."

THE TOURS probably wouldn't be happening were it not for Karol Haraguchi, who has spearheaded research and restoration efforts for the mill.

"It was a place I never went to because I thought it was just a storage facility for fertilizer and other supplies," she says. "But I was there one day in 1975 when my husband needed help driving the truck. While I was waiting for the truck to be loaded, I started walking around and asked him about the old machinery I saw in one section of the mill."

As she listened to his response, Haraguchi realized the equipment could be of great value from a historical standpoint, and urged him to ask members of the Kauai Historical Society to take a look at it.

"They were really surprised to see the machinery still existed and were enthusiastic about saving it," Haraguchi recalls.

"One of them, Dr. Barnes Riznik, the former curator for Grove Farm in Lihue, became our mentor. He encouraged us to restore and preserve the mill and to document its history."

The family faced major challenges. The mill had been given preliminary approval for placement on the National Register of Historic Places when Hurricane Iwa destroyed it on Nov. 23, 1982. To obtain the coveted designation, the Haraguchis were told they had to build a structure that was identical to the one that had gone down.

Fortunately, they had the blueprints for the mill, which were completed prior to the hurricane by the Historic American Engineering Record Office, but construction required extra effort and expense, from paying a higher sum for specially cut lumber to scouring salvage yards for square bolts that no longer were being manufactured.

With the help of grants, donations and the good will of the community, the mill was rebuilt in 1985. "Everybody got involved," Haraguchi says. "It was akin to raising a barn."

The family established the mill as an educational resource. Then Hurricane Iniki struck on Sept. 11, 1992, and reduced it to rubble again.

The Haraguchis rebuilt the mill once more, this time reinforcing it with steel cables and braces in the walls and rafters.

Restoration and research efforts for the mill continue as they find time and funding. "We're always discovering things we didn't know," Haraguchi says.

"When we hear about someone whose friends or family grew rice in Hawaii, we pursue the lead. That's the only way we can glean information because not much has been documented about it, and it's a colorful piece in the fabric of our islands' history that needs to be preserved."