KOLOA — The sugar monument is still there — sans one of the bronze sculptures. “As a 10-time visitor to your island, and with an interest in your history and culture, I am at a loss to understand what happened
KOLOA — The sugar monument is still there — sans one of the bronze sculptures.
“As a 10-time visitor to your island, and with an interest in your history and culture, I am at a loss to understand what happened with the sugar industry monument in Koloa,” said Jeff Pignona of Virginia, in a letter to the editor. “To make a long story shorter, one of the sculptures has been removed, the overseer on the horse is no longer part of the memorial.”
Louis Abrams, president of the Koloa Business Association, said he was not aware that anything from the monument had been removed.
“I have not seen the monument, recently,” Abrams said in a phone conversation. “But to my knowledge, nothing has been removed from the monument. There is some repair work which needs to be done on it, but it is supposed to take place without removing anything.”
Teddy Blake of Malama Koloa said he just visited the monument last week and everything was there.
“We’ve been in Hanalei on Friday and through the weekend. When I stopped to check the monument, everything was there,” he said.
He said there is work which needs to be done on parts of the monument and he has already contacted a contractor to do the work.
“This is not just everyday work,” Blake said. “It involves welding on bronze. That requires special skills and I’m already talking to a contractor about the work which needs to be done.”
He said normally, the Boy Scouts do the painting and major cleanup work on the monument.
“But we don’t have anything to pay for this kind of work,” Blake said. “The estimate came in at $1,500, and now, I’m tasked with trying to raise the money for this — by myself.”
One of the areas needing work is the separation of one of the informational panels from its concrete base.
“We can’t figure out how this came about,” Blake said. “But the separation is natural. We’re still trying to figure out the phenomenon which caused it to pop off the concrete. And, we still need to come up with the cost of repair.”
The monument was built in 1985 under direction of artist Jan Gordon Fisher during the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Hawaiian sugar industry. It was erected in Koloa because the town had one of the most extensive sugar mills in Hawaii, including a dam which powered the mill, a boiling house, a sugar house, cart house and stable.
The statues represent the Hawaiian, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Portuguese — all playing a role in the formation of contemporary Hawaii.
