Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, SS.CC. or Saint Damien De Veuster, born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to people with leprosy, who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi.
Punahou School is a private, co-educational, college preparatory school in Honolulu, Hawaii. More than 3,700 students attend the school from kindergarten through 12th grade. Protestant missionaries established Punahou in 1841.
Hawaiian literature has its origins in Polynesian mythology. It was originally preserved and expanded solely through oral traditions, as the ancient Hawaiians never developed a writing system. Written literature in the Hawaiian language and literary works in other languages by authors resident in Hawaii did not appear until the nineteenth century, when the arrival of American missionaries introduced the English language, the Latin alphabet, and Western notions of composition to the kingdom.
Lois-Ann Yamanaka is an American poet and novelist from Hawaiʻi. Many of her literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confront themes of Asian American families and the local culture of Hawaiʻi.
Lawrence McCully Judd was a politician of the Territory of Hawaii, serving as the territorial governor. Judd is most well-known for his role in the Massie Affair, in which he commuted the sentence of three people convicted of manslaughter in the killing of Josef Kahahawai.
Kalaupapa is a small unincorporated community on the island of Molokaʻi, within Kalawao County in the U.S. state of Hawaii. In 1866, during the reign of Kamehameha V, the Hawaii legislature passed a law that resulted in the designation of Molokaʻi as the site for a leper colony, where patients who were seriously affected by leprosy could be quarantined, to prevent them from infecting others. At the time, the disease was little understood: it was believed to be highly contagious and was incurable until the advent of antibiotics. The communities where people with leprosy lived were under the administration of the Board of Health, which appointed superintendents on the island.
Marc R. Alexander is a Roman Catholic priest of the diocese of Honolulu. Prior to February 1, 2006, he served the diocese as diocesan theologian and pastor of a clustered parish known as the Manoa-Punahou Catholic Community.
Gavan Daws is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes about Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. He is a retired professor of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Alan Brennert is an American author, television producer, and screenwriter. Brennert has lived in Southern California since 1973 and completed graduate work in screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Patrick Vinton Kirch is an American archaeologist and Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology and the Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the former Curator of Oceanic Archaeology in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and director of that museum from 1999 to 2002. Currently, he is professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i Manoa, and a member of the board of directors of the Bishop Museum.
The Whiskeyhill Singers were an American folk revival group formed in early 1961 by Dave Guard after he left The Kingston Trio. Guard formed the Singers as an attempt to return to the Trio's earlier roots in folk music. The Singers lasted about six months before disbanding. During that short period the group released one album, Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers, and recorded a number of songs for the soundtrack of How the West Was Won, but only four of these were used in the movie.
Pam Chun is a writer and marketing consultant, most notable as the author of the book The Money Dragon.
Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawānanakoa, also known as Princess Abigail Kawānanakoa and sometimes called Kekau, was a Native Hawaiian-American heiress, equestrian, philanthropist and supporter of Native Hawaiian heritage, culture and arts, who was born during the Territorial Period of Hawaii as a descendent of the Hawaiian royal family from the House of Kawānanakoa.
Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer (1826–1897) was a German who managed an early agricultural business in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Yasutaro (Keiho) Soga was a Hawaiian Issei journalist, poet and activist. He was a community leader among Hawaii's Japanese residents, serving as chief editor of the Nippu Jiji, then the largest Japanese-language newspaper in Hawaii and the mainland United States, and organizing efforts to foster positive Japan-U.S. relations and address discriminatory legislation, labor rights and other issues facing Japanese Americans. An accomplished news writer and tanka poet before the war, during his time in camp Soga authored one of the earliest memoirs of the wartime detention of Japanese Americans, Tessaku Seikatsu or Life Behind Barbed Wire.
Nora Okja Keller is a Korean American author. Her 1997 breakthrough work of fiction, Comfort Woman, and her second book (2002), Fox Girl, focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Korean women's experiences as sex slaves, euphemistically called comfort women, for Japanese and American troops during World War II and the ongoing Korean War.
Rodney Morales is an American fiction writer, editor, literary scholar, musician, and Professor in the Creative Writing Program of the Department of English at the University of Hawaii. In both his creative and critical writing, he is concerned with contemporary multi-ethnic Hawaii society, particularly social relations between its residents of Native Hawaiian, Japanese, Caucasian, and Puerto Rican descent; the 1970s "Hawaiian Renaissance" movement and the disappearance of its legendary cultural icon George Helm of Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana (PKO); and the postmodern juxtaposition of popular artistic forms with high literature. Shaped by genre fiction of the postwar period, his regional stories influenced that of Generation X/millennial authors such as Chris McKinney and Alexei Melnick, "urban Honolulu" novelists known for their gritty, realistic approaches to depicting crime, drugs, and lower-class life in the islands.
William DeWitt Alexander was an educator, author and linguist in the Kingdom of Hawaii and Republic of Hawaii. He then constructed maps for the Territory of Hawaii.
Alapaʻi was a Chief of Hawaiʻi in ancient Hawaii. He was an usurper to the throne, but was considered a good ruler, one who loved the common people, although there is a story that he was responsible for the death of High Chief Keōua. Alapaʻi's title in Hawaiian was Aliʻi.
Marybeth Yuen Maul was the first Asian-American female magistrate in Hawaii. She also served as a Molokai District Court judge for the County of Maui. Maul died on April 23, 2010, in Eugene, Oregon, at 85 years old.
