"20th Century Hawaiʻi: Moving Images from Territory to Statehood" Final NEH Project Update

As ʻUluʻulu’s 20th Century Hawaiʻi: Moving Images from Territory to Statehood project comes to a close, I wanted to take some time to share my perspective of some of the accomplishments, challenges, and highlights that were encountered during my time as the NEH Project Archivist. This project has been full of heartwarming, heartbreaking, and inspirational stories from a wide variety of perspectives. While it is satisfying to complete one project, we know that there are more projects on the horizon that will challenge us in different ways and provide new highlights to share with everyone.

Background

In 2022, ʻUluʻulu was awarded a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize and make accessible, 890 films, videotapes, and audio recordings for the “20th Century Hawaiʻi: Moving Images from Territory to Statehood” project. By highlighting the stories of Hawai‘i’s citizens who witnessed and participated in the road to statehood and the consequences of being admitted into the union, this project shed light on how the path to statehood took on varying degrees of reactions and repercussions for the Native Hawaiian and Japanese American populations in Hawai‘i. Spanning across ten different collections dating from the 1920s to the 2000s, we were able to digitize over 655 hours of footage from 986 digitized items. 

Accomplishments

Following up from our last update in July 2024, all of the files from our first batch of materials have been uploaded and made available on ʻUluʻulu’s website in April of 2025. While we were creating the descriptions for those materials we found a few items that had already been digitized. Out of the original 577 assets that were digitized, we ended up with 556 unique assets being made available. 

We have also completed the description and clip selection process for the three remaining collections from the second batch of materials that was sent out. Those collections were: The First Battle: The Battle for Equality in War-time Hawaiʻi(2007), from the Tom Coffman collection, the 100th Infantry Battalion Legacy Organization collection, and the Hawaiʻi Congressional Media collection. These three collections offer distinct perspectives of life in Hawaiʻi before, during, and after the Second World War. Of the initial 433 assets that went out for digitization, 402 unique assets were digitized. As with the precious batch, we again ran into duplicated items.  

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in processing the second batch of materials was duplicated items. The presence of duplicated items in a large project such as this, is often difficult to avoid. When items are being selected for digitization, we only have the information that appears on the label of the asset to make determinations about its content. People usually write labels that make sense in the moment, but can be a little difficult for us to decipher down the road. Since label information varies from one tape to another, it is not until we have received the digital files and are reviewing the footage that we become aware that duplications are present. The challenge comes in trying to review two files simultaneously in order to spot any differences between the two assets. When tapes contain multiple advertisements or there are multiple tapes that contain the same interview from different camera angles, reviewing the entire contents of a digitized file becomes even more important. Sometimes there may be hidden gems of information in those extra seconds that one tape has that the other does not.  

Highlights

A few of the highlights from the second batch of materials came from the 100th Infantry Battalion oral history interviews. Aside from the heavy nature of the war time experiences shared in these interviews, there were some lighter moments as well. Some may remember a series of commercials for Bank of Hawaiʻi, that ran from the mid 1980s into the 1990s, of an older couple named Harry and Myra. It turned out that 100th Infantry Battalion member Ben Tamashiro (1917-2004) and his real-life wife Gloria (1924-2022), were the actors in those commercials. Even though many of us only knew of them through their work on television, learning of Tamashiro’s involvement with the 100th and listening to his experiences during the war, really added extra weight to what the Battalion and other Nisei soldiers had experienced during the war. 

One surprising thing about a lot of the men that were interviewed from the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was how many of them utilized their G.I. Bills and became doctors, lawyers, judges, and politicians. As it was mentioned in a few of the interviews, these soldiers were fighting two very different wars almost simultaneously. The obvious war was on the European front, and the war that many people have not really heard about was the war on injustice and racism at home. A lot of these soldiers were able to overcome those injustices and went on to become very influential people that helped shape the daily life and the political landscape in Hawaiʻi. 

Now that this project nears completion, we cannot wait to introduce the full collection of materials to everyone. A huge thank you must first be given to the National Endowment of the Humanities for providing us this opportunity to showcase our unique history in relation to their A More Perfect Union initiative. This project could not have been completed without the dedication of all of the ʻUluʻulu staff, past and present: Janel Quirante, Robert Omura, Hōkū Kaʻahaʻaina, Koa Luke, Tisha Aragaki, Maile Morrell, Jon Snyder, Kate Larsen, Haunani Haia, and Tyler Shipley. We look forward to making more collections available to the communities we serve and help to demonstrate what makes Hawaiʻi the truly unique place that it is.  

The corresponding theme page can be found here.

For the Project Page click here.

The 20th Century Hawaiʻi: Moving Images from Territory to Statehood project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. www.neh.gov