Remnants of abandoned buildings from Hawaiʻi’s first reformatory – the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys – still stand on Oʻahu’s North Shore just 5 miles north of Kahuku.
Uncovering the history of this institution and the ramifications of its work on the generations that follow is part of a larger community effort to reconnect people to this place and its stories.
Dozens of volunteers filed into the loʻi to plant kalo during a Community Work Day at Waialeʻe Lako Pono, a restoration site that’s been stewarded by the North Shore Community Land Trust for the past three years.
Kawelakai Farrant is the coastal community resilience specialist with the trust.
“Along the edge of the wetlands, there’s a 20-acre freshwater marsh that was historically loʻi kalo as well as loko iʻa or fishponds,” Farrant said. “We’re trying to bring back those traditional systems.”
Farrant said this area was largely a fishing and farming community. There are records of dozens of kuleana landowners who resided in the area up until the turn of the 20th century, after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
In 1901, Waialeʻe became the home to Hawaiʻi’s first reformatory – the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys, the equivalent of our modern-day juvenile detention facility.
Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys
Boys were sent to Waialeʻe mostly for skipping school or for stealing. The idea was that they were being trained to take up a trade and provide low-cost labor to the surrounding plantations.
They were trained in topics like carpentry and metal fabrication. They also built their own furniture and buildings. The schools themselves were self-sustaining with extensive farms and livestock.
“There are records of them producing up to 800 to 1,000 pounds of poi each and every week. They also had vegetable farms, they had animals. They would keep cattle, sheep, poultry, and other animals as well,” Farrant said. “Like for all of its flaws, there’s also an element of sustainability.”
Poliʻahu Dulay, whose 90-year-old hānai grandfather was sent to Waialeʻe as a teenager, came to the Community Work Day with her daughter. She had heard stories from her grandfather but had never visited Waialeʻe.
“This is actually where he learned to plant and to grow kalo,” Dulay said. “And so they would come out here, plant, harvest, and take back to the school in Kawailoa, and then the kitchen staff would prepare the food for everybody. If they were in trouble, they were not able to eat.”
Records in the Hawaiʻi State Archives reported instances of physical abuse, lashings and beatings at the school. In at least one case, a boy died from the abuse. Riots and runaways were also a common occurrence, Farrant said.
“We really have a lot of questions about how that history unfolded. There are people who may still be alive and others who attended the school, who might have fond memories of the school. Cause you get 200 boys together, they’re going to have fun, they’re going to be kolohe,” Farrant said.
“There’s lots of accounts of them running away into the mountains. And I'm sure that was a good time. But you have to ask yourself, why were they running away? Was it good conditions? Were they being treated well? And maybe at times they were, maybe at times they weren’t. but that’s the importance of learning this history so that we can learn more.”
But Dulay said the school shaped her hānai grandfather into who he is today. The experience taught him to farm, and many of his long-lasting friendships come from his time at the school.
“That’s so Hawaiian. That we’re just going to be like, ‘Oh yeah, but we’re super grateful cause I learned all that kind of stuff,’” Dulay told HPR. “I think it’s easy to forget the people who live it. As researchers, you’re looking from the outside in, so it’s easy to say, ‘No, we cannot have (the school). No, we cannot have (the school),’ And then the people who live it, like my grandfather doesn’t regret it. It was an important part of his life, it’s an important part of his story and what made him who he is today and being a great grandfather.”
The Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys operated for about 50 years. But a lot of its history has yet to be uncovered.
Nā Lei Poina ʻOle – A Beloved Child is a Lei Never Forgotten
The North Shore Community Land Trust received a federal grant in partnership with Dr. Maile Arvin of the University of Utah to conduct oral history research and story mapping around the history of the Waialeʻe school, which kept predominantly Native Hawaiian boys, and the ramifications of that history on the generations that follow.
“We’re still trying to determine what exactly happened at these institutions. There might have been children that experienced these institutions as positive,” Arvin said.
“Whether or not children experienced a good environment at these institutions, it's important to remember too that they weren’t only punishing the child, they were punishing the whole family, and they were really targeting Hawaiians as a nation.”
The research is part of a wider federal initiative following the publication of the U.S. Interior Department’s Report on Federal Indian Boarding Schools.
Waiale’e is one of seven schools listed in the report. A key difference with Hawaiʻi is that kids technically had to have committed a crime, Arvin said.
“Certainly there are a lot of similarities with Native American boarding schools in the sense that the children that were placed at these institutions during the territorial period were subject to forced assimilation practices,” she said. “In Hawaiʻi, there just hasn’t been the same amount of research done or kind of like public reckoning as there has been in Native American communities.”
Arvin and Farrant are building out the project’s website. Community engagement is being planned for this summer.
"This project is really important because it's not just people who have connections to Waialeʻe or the North Shore of Oʻahu, but boys from all over the island and even the other islands were sent here. So there could be people with connections all over that have family history in this area and they may not even realize," Farrant said.
"So, hopefully through this research we can connect more with those people and give them an opportunity to learn more about the history, to reflect upon it, think about how it might have impacted their family for better or for worse. And if thereʻs any healing that needs to occur, then you know, with the ʻāina restoration, we feel that that’s a very powerful element of that and so that they’re more than welcome to participate in this restoration and feel that connection to a place where their kupuna once walked."
Dulay said she's grateful to have been able to hear her hānai grandfather's stories of Waialeʻe.
"His stories brought me back here," Dulay said. "My daughter, this was her first time planting kalo and she got to plant kalo in the same place as my (hānai grandfather), where he learned. Just continuing sharing ‘ohana experiences in these important places."
Arvin said the group is aware that they are digging into really heavy history.
“And it can be really painful to talk about especially if your kupuna experienced some of that more tragic abuse at some of these institutions,” she said. “But I think we’re just looking to connect more with people and see what feels appropriate and needed in terms of further research or public awareness.”
The research project is called Nā Lei Poina ʻOle — a reference to a Hawaiian proverb or ʻōlelo noʻeau, meaning a beloved child is a lei never forgotten, which Arvin said helps frame the group’s approach to the research.
“None of this is a natural thing to do to children from Hawaiian worldviews. I think the title of our project helps us remember just how beloved children are to Hawaiians and keeping that in mind as we do this work is really helpful,” Arvin said.
“I think it centers us in the belief that like no children should have been treated like this, families should not have been treated like this. We hope the work we do helps ensure that this doesn’t keep happening.”
