A Study on the Formation of Sugar Plantation Towns in Hawaii

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25420684
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Architectural history/Design
• Research Institution: Okinawa University
• Principal Investigator: ONO Keiko 沖縄大学, 法経学部, 教授 (50369211)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): ANDO Tetsuya 琉球大学, 工学部環境建設工学科, 准教授 (60222783)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ハワイ / 移民 / 糖業 / プランテーション / 太平洋島嶼地域 / 都市史

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The sugar industry underwrote the colonial economy of Japanese mandated Micronesia before World War Two. Beginning in the 1920s, the industry eventually brought 96,000 Japanese migrants to the island region in the 1940s. Prior to that, the Japanese had developed a successful sugar industry in Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945) by establishing the Japanese model of plantation settlements. The origin of Japanese sugar plantation settlements in Colonial Taiwan can be linked to sugar plantation models in Hawaii at the beginning of the twentieth century. This study thus explores physical and social features of sugar plantation settlements across four Hawaiian islands, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century based on archival sources, historical maps, photographs, literature and interviews with residents who remember life in the sugar plantation towns of Hawaii prior to World War Two.

Free Research Field

都市史