Student Life, Casual Segregation, and Informal Prejudices

Hawaii’s public schools were unofficially segregated for most of the Territorial Era, from the 1920s to the 1950s. Under pressure from a growing number of White migrants, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) implemented a program of selective admissions based on English language abilities. English Standard Schools (ESS) were open to students who could pass…

Coast Haole

In a paper entitled “My Conception of the Haole,” F.T. describe her experiences interacting with Whites. Having grown up in a “Japanese camp” in the Pālama district of Honolulu, for most of her childhood she had no face-to-face contact with Haoles. With the exception of an “old-maid” and a Jewish peddler who walked the streets of…

Social Process in Hawai‘i

One of the most interesting aspects of the RASRL Collection is the seriousness the students brought to their work.  Most of their work was only ever seen or evaluated by their professors; some provided background and qualitative data for other researchers – other undergraduates, graduate students, and professional researchers.  The papers were sometimes rough drafts…

Community Forces in Hawai‘i

The University of Hawai‘i Romanzo Adams Social Research Laboratory (RASRL) Collection contains an extensive body of student papers on urban Honolulu and rural Hawai‘i communities during the Territorial Era and beyond. The best papers offer intimate and often vibrant portraits of life in communities – plantations on all islands, urban slum areas, middle-class neighborhoods, as…