During our last trip to Maui we ran across a cemetery just off one of the major beaches. The land of the cemetery was completely barren for some reason. The cemetery was devided into two sections, one large section that was all Japanese and a much smaller section in the back that was all Italian. All of the graves were from the early 1900's.
It was a wierd site to see with it being barren and segregated.
wow. that is rather stark.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the Italian were a group of the immigrant in Hawaii. I do know that the first sugar cane plant came to the Hawaiian Islands with the Polynesian settlers.
ReplyDeleteWhen sugar was king, there was not sufficient manpower in Hawaii to work the fields and factories, so contract laborers were imported into the Kingdom, beginning with the Chinese as early as 1852, and followed by waves of Japanese, Norwegians, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, Portuguese, Germans, Koreans and Spaniards. Truly a United Nations gathering of workers until the importation of plantation labor came to an end about 1946!
Wow, that sure is interesting. Great photos, Ron!
ReplyDeleteStark and barren. Very strange! Seems this is a place of forgotten souls!
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting find Ron and good information by Q about the early workers to the area! I wonder what the story is behind the figure on the gravestone in the bottom photo?
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I found an old graveyard in Honolulu... Many of the names on the headstones there were the same as the local street names which were obviously named after these people.
Paul, almost all of the Japanese headstones had some type of figure like this carved into them. I'm not sure what the significance is. I may have to try to look that up.
Delete