The words “Koolau School 1888-1960” appear in gold on the green commemorative caps worn by some 106 students from the long-gone Koolau School at Moloa‘a. The all-classes reunion held Saturday at the Radission Kauai Beach Resort brought back memories and
The words “Koolau School 1888-1960” appear in gold on the green commemorative caps worn by some 106 students from the long-gone Koolau School at Moloa‘a.
The all-classes reunion held Saturday at the Radission Kauai Beach Resort brought back memories and drew out stories of a once active agricultural district of Kaua‘i that most Kauaians today know little or nothing about.
Native Hawaiians of old knew the moku of Ko‘olau well, and the area was apparently well populated along the web of taro lo‘i built along the fresh water streams that run through it.
The development of Kilauea Plantation in the 1880s drew immigrant workers to the area, as the small Native Hawaiian villages of the area seemingly faded away. The school was constructed to educate the children of the plantation workers and independent farmers and ranchers of the area. The coming of pineapple growing for Hawaiian Canneries in Kapa‘a in the early 1900s added more residents, and Ko‘olau took on a north-south orientation, with the sugar cane workers to the north and the pineapple workers to the south.
Those at the reunion together provided a nostalgic look at the once close-knit and thriving community at Ko‘olau, a community that came unraveled with the closing of Kilauea Plantation in the early 1970s and the decline of Hawaiian Canneries in the 1960s.
Chief organizer of the three reunions held since 1996 is Roland Fujimoto, a Ko‘olau boy whose life was forever changed by military duty in the Korean War. Fujimoto now lives in Sutherland, Va. and is retired from a career in the insurance industry in Hartford, Conn.
Fujimoto and James Silva, who was the son of a principal at Koolau School, said the most interesting aspect of the reunion was to see how their schoolmates had spent their lives following a childhood in the humble, rural surroundings of Ko‘olau.
Silva went on to become an agriculture professor at the University of Hawai‘i.
Takeo Tengan, Class of 1941, led an exciting construction career, starting with the Tanaka construction company on Kaua‘i, and going on to the dangerous work of digging the Pali Road tunnel mauka of Honolulu and other major highway projects on O‘ahu. His “retirement” is being spent partly in the restaurant business, including a family-run eatery at the popular Ala Moana Food Court, an interesting evolution from his memories of making deliveries of his father’s homemade tofu as a boy.
The reunion’s organizer is putting together a commemorative book on Koolau School, and is encouraging his schoolmates to write down their memories of the school that once stood near the cemetery along Ko‘olau Road in Moloa‘a. A good collection of photographs is already being gathered.
Those looking for the school would have found a Congregational church nearby the site, at least into the 1960s. Today the once active school’s yard is a quiet pasture, its buildings long ago torn down, while its memories live on in its students who live on Kaua‘i, and across Hawai‘i and the Mainland. The 106 who gathered Saturday remembered fondly a childhood made rich by the bonds of friendship that were perhaps enriched more than usual by their rural isolation in a well tucked away district of Kaua‘i.
TGI Editor Chris Cook can be reached at ccook@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 227).
