KOLOA — Old Koloa Town came to life Saturday morning with an annual ritual — the Koloa Plantation Days parade. What started as a one-day parade and luau has grown into a nine-day festival with 27 events and activities spanning
KOLOA — Old Koloa Town came to life Saturday morning with an annual ritual — the Koloa Plantation Days parade.
What started as a one-day parade and luau has grown into a nine-day festival with 27 events and activities spanning the sunny South Shore and encompassing the history, culture, natural resources of the area, as well as showcasing Po‘ipu’s resorts and businesses.
The parade for this year’s festival, which had a “Sweet Memories” theme, featured 67 entries including floats, mounted units, walking units and classic cars followed by a celebration in the Anne Knudsen Park, with a variety of ethnic foods, diverse entertainment, keiki activities and sugar memorabilia.
This year history was a major emphasis of the festival — remembering festival highlights over the years and the contributions of sugar, which itself moved into history last year with the closure of the Olokele Sugar Mill.
There was a historic film night earlier in the week following sugar’s beginning to its conclusion on Kaua‘i, a photographic exhibit by Tim Dela Vega showing the last generation of camp life in Kaumakani, as well as a “talk story” Friday with former Koloa Missionary Church Pastor Niles Kageyama, who grew up in a Japanese camp in Koloa.
The parade offered an opportunity to celebrate and share camp life, reminisce and also recognize the contributions of those who worked on the plantations. The grand marshall this year, instead of a single person or family, was a tribute to the plantation camp workers in an old camp truck, donated by Gay & Robinson for the occasion. The retired workers included Michael Callejo, Michael Carvalho, Walter Souza and Earl Smith.
The plantation camps were a place where many different nationalities and cultures came together to work. The mix of foods and traditions that emerged from camp life is today the basis for “local style” cuisine and culture. Contract laborers came from the Philippines, Japan, Okinawa, Puerto Rico, Portugal, China, Korea, and other countries to work on the sugar plantations, where they lived in camps.
In each camp, the people spoke their native languages, grew and cooked foods that they were used to, wore clothing adapted from traditional work clothes, played familiar games and sports, shared songs and stories from the old country, passed on family traditions and values to their children, and celebrated religious and special occasions as they had before.
While plantation camps have nearly disappeared and younger generations have moved to modern communities, lots of people remember getting together with grandparents in camps or spending their early years in a camp. Those memories are the inspiration for many of the parade entries this year.
Some of the original volunteers from 25 years ago are still involved in the Koloa Plantation Days events. Keith Smith remembers the first event, which consisted of a parade, followed by a seed cutting competition and a luau in Koloa Town, organized by the Hawai‘i Sugar Planters Association.
The occasion was the sesquicentennial of the Koloa Mill, marking 150 years of Hawai‘i’s first commercially successful sugar operation, which was on the wane but still operational at the time.
“Since we started Koloa Plantation Days 25 years ago, we started with plantations like Kekaha, G&R, Olokele, McBryde, Lihu‘e, and now we have none,” Smith said. “Koloa Plantation Days celebration serves a vital link to the past in that for most people, especially newcomers, they probably don’t know what these islands were like during the plantation era. They don’t realize that this whole island was almost 100,000 acres of sugar, green, and lush and waving. It connects us to our past, for a lot of us who have a long history in the islands and in sugar, for a lot of newcomers it introduces them to what life was like.”
Phyllis Kunimura got involved the second year of the festival, after residents approached then-Mayor Tony Kunimura and asked that this be a festival held every year. Today Phyllis Kunimura is president of the nonprofit that runs Koloa Plantation Days and still remembers riding in the carriage with Gov. Ariyoshi and Tony during the early years in the parade.
“Last year Gov. Ariyoshi and his wife participated in the parade, and he told us, ‘You need to keep doing this.’ We believe these kinds of festivals are important to keep history alive and share it with the community and visitors. There are so many memories of sugar and what life was like, it’s important to us not to lose that,” she said.
The festival wraps up today with the Tri Kaua‘i Triathalon and 5K Fun Run/Walk in Po‘ipu, followed by the 11th annual rodeo at CJM Stables. For information on these events, as well as video of events throughout the week and parade photos, visit www.koloaplantationdays.com. Koloa Plantation Days is made possible with support from the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, County of Kaua‘i as well as South Shore resorts, organizations and businesses.
For more information, contact Melissa McFerrin, event coordinator, at 652-3217 or mmcferri@yahoo.com.
