Hawaii’s Plantation Village Showcases Sugar
Hawaii’s Plantation Village, located in Waipahu, Hawaii, is a living history museum and botanical garden that showcases plantation life during the one hundred years when sugar production was Hawaii’s leading economic activity.
It all began in 1852, when some 200 Chinese laborers arrived from Hong Kong to work on the sugar plantations. Between 1852 and the end of World War II, nearly 395,000 workers came from different countries to work on the sugar plantations: China, Portugal, Japan, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Okinawa, Korea and more. They became the foundation of Hawaii’s multicultural society, and both original structures and replica homes of these groups are part of the museum. As commercial sugar production eclipsed subsistence farming as a way of life, sugar’s immigrant workforce changed the face and culture of Hawaii forever.
Hawaii’s Plantation Village, a non-profit educational organization, opened in 1992 about 18 miles from Waikiki on Oahu’s leeward coast. The museum, managed and operated by the Friends of Waipahu Cultural Garden Park, is situated on a 50-acre site just below the Oahu Sugar Mill.
