Since the early days of contact between foreigners and the people of Hawai‘i, there have been men hailing from faraway lands who married island girls and made their home in Hawai‘i.
I’m one of those people from Connecticut.
When I first arrived in Hawai‘i in 1966 as an 18-year-old Marine, I knew little more about Hawai‘i than the stories my father told me, and seeing the black and white snapshots he’d taken during World War II, when he worked as a civilian warehouseman at Pearl Harbor.
Then in 1968, I married my Kaua‘i-born and raised wife Ginger Beralas, and since then, I’ve integrated myself into the culture of Kaua‘i.
Ginger Beralas Soboleski’s grandparents were Filipinos, who’d immigrated to Hawai‘i in the mid-1920s and settled on Kaua‘i at Makee Sugar Co. and Lihu‘e Plantation, where her grandfathers were employed.
On her mother’s Esquirra side, her grandparents were Visayans from Cebu, and on her father’s Beralas side, they were Ilocanos from Abra Province.
The Beralas family resided in Lihu‘e Camp, while the Esquirras lived at Kapa‘a Stable Camp.
Their children, Ginger’s aunties, uncles, mother and father, were raised on Kaua‘i.
Hank and Ginger’s children, Brett and Michelle Soboleski, are hapa haole (half-White), and in their case, half-Filipino.
Brett married a Hawaiian girl and they had four children: Nalanimae, Nohealani, Brett Jr., and Bradshaw Soboleski, all Kaua‘i-born and raised, and of Hawaiian, Filipino and haole ancestry.
Nalanimae is the mother of a baby boy named Zyrus Ventura, our great grandson. His father, Justin, is of Filipino and Portuguese ancestry.
(Most Portuguese in Hawai‘i don’t consider themselves haole, despite being of European descent.)
So, Zyrus has Filipino, Hawaiian, Portuguese and haole ancestry.
Nalanimae’s brother, Brett Jr., and his wife have a daughter, Amelia, our great granddaughter, who is of Hawaiian, Filipino, Puerto Rican, haole and popolo (Black) ancestry.
We’re proud of them all.
As to my ancestry, my great grandparents, of mainly Polish ancestry, with some German descent, emigrated from Europe to America in 1895 and settled in Connecticut.
Their children, my grandparents, also originated from Europe.
My parents were born and raised Americans.
