This blog is about Hawai‘i in the Territorial Era. We’ll be posting images and short essays based on research in the Romanzo Adams Social Research Laboratory (RASRL) Collection housed at the University of Hawai‘i archives. The papers and documents in RASRL were collected and saved by the members of the University of Hawaii’s Sociology Department. Beginning in the late 1920s, Romanzo Adams, Andrew Lind, Bernhard Hormann and Clarence Glick saved the work of their students and compiled it into an archive of qualitative research. The papers were written by undergraduates who, as local students, had access to and information about the social conditions of Hawaii’s many ethnic groups. They wrote about their homes, families, neighborhoods, and towns providing their professors and other researchers who were interested in race and race relations in Hawai‘i with a unique set of resources.

We would like this blog to be a place to talk story – to share ideas, memories, experiences and to ask questions. We would also like to encourage students and teachers to explore this site and be inspired to use the RASRL Collection. We believe that the student papers provide a chance to begin discussion about issues and problems that are overlooked in the larger historiography of Hawai‘i such as the Depression years, the role of the University of Hawai‘i in shaping local culture, and how students and other adolescents in this Era experienced what it meant to be “local.”

This blog will be dynamic. In addition to regular posts, we will be making changes as we get more information or find sources that supersede or undermine our speculation. And while we are interested in communicating with scholars and professional researchers, our posts are not intended to be polished research. If you find mistakes, help us fix them. If our information is wrong or incomplete, let us know. If you know something we don’t know, tell us. Please feel free to leave comments or email us:  lpierce3@depaul.edu or kirkkuwaye.chris@gmail.com

E komo mai!