Island Books
Timepieces Hawai'i

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Staff Writer

Koloa's White Church was completed in the mid-1850s. Life in Koloa in years past "had a worth that ours in America lacks today," writes Donald Donohugh. Advertiser library photo • May 31, 1972

Koloa, on the south shore of Kaua'i, is one of those island towns, like Hana on Maui or Hawi on the Big Island, that seem to exude a particular warmth, to convey a sense of history, to possess what in Hawaiian would be called mana, a spiritual power.

Although, like many special places in Hawai'i, Koloa has been profoundly changed by the transition from plantation life to an economy focused on tourism, writer Donald Donohugh makes clear in this well-written and wide-ranging history that that specialness has somehow survived — even if only in the memories of those who lived through the better days, or read about them here.

Donohugh tells Koloa's story Michener-style, from its geological birth up to the present day, summarized in a final chapter that takes the form of a short but detailed guide book to Koloa and nearby Po'ipu.

It is obvious, however, where his heart is, and it's not in post-'Iwa Koloa.

After that hurricane, an enterprising group called the Koloa Town Associates got a long-term lease from the town's owner to renovate the old structures and link them in a shopping center aimed at the Po'ipu resort area's tourists. But Donohugh argues that the renovation was really rebuilding in a faux period style. "There is," he writes indignantly, "not one original board in any of the buildings."

Donohugh's aloha is reserved for the town's earlier years; he writes with something like longing about the 1930s as they were described to him by Koloa elders. Koloa was a quiet plantation village then, but with a decent standard of living and a family feeling, according to the old-timers. Life then, he writes, "had a worth that ours in America lacks today."

Donohugh holds firm views on other matters as well. The spelling of the town's name, for example, with the macron over the first o, and its meaning: "tall cane." (Without the macron, koloa is a Hawaiian duck.) No less an authority than Mary Kawena Pukui supported his contention that the name is a reference to the head-high wild cane that grew along the edge of Koloa Marsh.

Koloa is interesting for a number of reasons: The first Hawaiians to paddle out and visit Capt. James Cook's ship Resolution were from Koloa. Later, it was a favored reprovisioning point for whalers. It is believed to have been the first place where sugar was made in the Islands.

Donohugh takes frequent side trips as he traces the Koloa story: to discuss the problems with the way that missionaries codified the Hawaiian language; to trace the generation gap in thinking, values and language between issei and nisei Japanese; to explain the plantation system and so on. These departures from Koloa proper are not bothersome, however, because, ultimately, they inform the story.

Donohugh has made a valuable addition to the Islands' history bookshelf and created a fine tribute to a place he clearly loves.

"Sugar Islands: The 165-year History of Sugar in Hawai'i" mixes painstaking research with memories of a life devoted to Hawai'i agriculture. Advertiser library photo

Regrettably, both the writers of this book are not with us anymore; Dorrance died soon after the publication of his "O'ahu's Hidden History," last year and "Frannie" Morgan, known as the man who tried to save Hamakua Sugar, died in 1999. This posthumous volume is the result of a friendship formed late in life between Dorrance, who lived here a relatively short time, and Morgan, a fifth-generation kama'aina with missionary roots.

Dorrance, a retired aeronautical engineer who became interested in the history of the Islands after he retired here in 1986, brought the detail orientation of a scientist to his work in documenting the rise and fall of every single sugar mill ever to operate in Hawai'i.

In the course of this project, he met Morgan, who had been contemplating writing a sugar history of his own, and the two agreed to collaborate, with Morgan providing the human touch in the form of memories of a life that was devoted to Hawai'i agriculture, from his family's ranching interests at Kualoa to his long career in the sugar industry.

Most of the book is Dorrance's work and, while his prose is unadorned and straightforward, it's clear he was the kind of researcher undaunted by obstacles. Much of the information he has gathered here is hard to come by, available only from widely divergent sources. His characteristically informative bibliography ranges from reports of interviews he personally conducted to letters, reports, contracts and documents he perused, along with several dozen books and manuals.

Morgan's contribution is to open the mind of a born and bred sugar planter, someone who really believed in his industry and literally put his money where his faith was when he tried, at a time when he should have been enjoying retirement, to keep a mill going and a community alive.

In addition to essays on every single plantation, mill, factor or sugar-related industry that ever operated in the Islands, Dorrance discusses the science of sugar making, economic issues and sugar price supports and the future of the industry. A helpful index explains how sugar is made.

It's strange to think that there are many in Hawai'i today who have never lived with the constant and somehow comforting rumble and the strange amalgam of sweet and sour scents that tell of a mill in operation, who don't know bagasse from barbecue sauce.

For them, and even for Islanders who grew up in the industry, this book is a revelation, tying together all the threads so that it becomes clear what a challenge it was in the first place to produce cane commercially in Hawai'i, and, despite Dorrance and Morgan's clear belief that sugar was a viable crop for Hawai'i, why the future of the industry is so bleak.