Hawai'i Tech
Finding family online

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Marsha Sakamaki has to smile when she sees genealogical software boasting that it contains ships' manifests, those lists of passengers so precious to people building family trees and trying to trace their immigrant forebears.

The photo, taken about 1924, is one of the results of Marsha Sakamaki's research into her family tree (her dad is the smallest boy, center, in the sailor suit). Sakamaki has found it a struggle to find information about her family even though the Internet's resources have made the hunt easier.

"It doesn't help," she said with a laugh. "Wrong coast."

This is the same rude awakening that many Hawai'i residents face when they begin reconstructing a family tree. The Web, software and other technological assists have been a boon to amateur genealogists, but not as much for Islanders, especially those whose families have Pacific or Asian origins.

"It's a hard time in Hawai'i to do genealogy research," Sakamaki said. "Much of (the Web information) was East Coast-oriented. There's very little Asian or Polynesian."

Sakamaki, who lives in Kahala, knows her paternal grandfather came to America from Japan, settling first in California and then on the Big Island when, en route to the Mainland from a visit in Japan, he was recruited by managers of the 'Ola'a sugar plantation because he was bilingual.

She found some information from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family research site, because some of her family members are members and had filed information with the church. But it's his life in Japan that's a mystery, one she hopes can be cracked with information from ship's records. Sakamaki says she has narrowed the list of possible ships to three, and the manifests are available online for a fee.

On her mother's side, the search is even harder. There is no link this time, and Sakamaki finds herself searching through Japanese personal and genealogical Web sites. Because people in Japan keep detailed family records, these genealogy sites often assume you have more information than an American descendent of immigrants normally would, she said.

	Genealogy resources on Internet
	Here are some Net resources that can help in genealogical research:
•	Rootsweb.com hosts several free regional e-mail lists, including one for Hawai'i. To unsubscribe, send a message that contains (in the body of the message) the word unsubscribe and no additional text.
•	It also hosts various GenWeb projects. The Hawai'i site rounds up genealogical resources from around the state.
•	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides a popular family research site.
•	Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet is a categorized and cross-referenced index to genealogical resources on the Web.
•	Ancestry.com offers some services with free registration but charges a premium for others.

"The Internet impact on genealogical research is very significant because it makes available to an ever-increasing number of people, from their homes, information on how to find information about their families," Davis said via e-mail. "It has started to provide some indexes of information. It has started to bring copies of some original information."

However, he said, it will be some time before real research can take place online, rather than in the brick-and-mortar buildings such as the state Archives (where ship's manifests for Hawai'i's contract-labor immigrants can be found) or other paper or microfilm files (such as the libraries of the Mission Houses Museum, the Chinese History Center and others) — a hassle because the information can only be accessed in person, and these resources often keep limited business hours.

Among the improvements: Daphne Lowe, a volunteer family history consultant for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints here, said the church family service centers soon will have direct Internet access so visitors can pair their online searches with what is available on microfilm.

Also, paid-subscription sites such as Ancestry.com have begun to post images from census documents that can provide information about household members. It's one of the few examples of original documents broadly available through the Web; and original documents are still necessary to compile an accurate genealogy, said Jill Ching of Kihei, Maui.

"One still needs to find the birth, death, marital, military, diary, journal or other document that connects the dots," she said. "Beginners should begin with their own birth certificate and work back in time, connecting each generation.

"This cannot be done online except to find out where to send for to get their certified birth certificate. They still must mail a check to the county and/or state office for proof."

At the very least, the computer and popular software titles such as Family Tree Maker and Master Genealogist for Windows have helped amateurs keep things organized and then print out a presentable record, said Dave Luehring, who recently presented a program, "Genealogical Computing," for the Sandwich Islands Genealogical Society.

"If you don't do that, you're dealing with dog-eared pieces of paper and index cards and who knows what all," he said.

Bruce Harrison of Kohala, Hawai'i, authored his own program, "Family Forest," the latest edition of which was recently released. His product is aimed more at those with an interest in understanding where America's founders and patriots connect in history, but it's also a good genealogical tool because it weeds out duplicate references to the same individual.

"Information available in software and the Web is expanding, but the expansion is in the wrong direction," he said. "Most of the big companies online are in a more-is-better race. They don't point out generally that a lot of those people listed are repetition. The way I see it, giving someone thousands of repetitions is doing them a disservice."

For most genealogists, technology has its limitations. Patti Connors Ihori of Kailua despaired at weeding through all the Connors on the Web before finding her own family.

Ultimately, the Web helped her, once she'd narrowed down the California hometown of her great-great-grandparents. She searched for the same surname in that area and then wrote letters, the old-fashioned way, to those people, some of whom had information to share.

But essentially, she said, searching for ancestors will remain a tedious process for the foreseeable future.

"People are under the misconception they can just type in a name and get all the information," she said. "I don't see that type of technology coming into existence for a long, long time ... wherever there's information, somebody has to put it there."