Visit to Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i Gallery Prompts Soul-Searching by Herald Intern
Kacie Yamamoto
Special to The Hawai‘i Herald
While I was growing up in Honolulu, lessons about the lives of the early immigrant plantation laborers were integrated into the curricula of all of my history classes. I remember taking field trips to Hawaii’s Plantation Village in Waipahu in elementary school and doing a cultural project on various immigrant groups in high school. With classmates of various descents, I was taught the significance of the pioneers who settled in Hawai‘i as laborers and about the prospect for a “better” life that they provided for young people like me. I was taught to appreciate them for all they had done for my generation and those beyond. And yet, I was never challenged to connect my own life with the lives of those who came before me. Their lives seemed so distant, so far away.