Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 27, Number 10, 1 October 2010 — Noelle Kahanu: 'KEEPING LOST STORIES ALIVE' [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Noelle Kahanu: 'KEEPING LOST STORIES ALIVE'

By Kathy Muneno Amuseum is at the top of its game when it celebrates community, says Noelle Kahanu, Project Manager at Bishop Museum. "We are the memory keepers, and it is our responsibility to be more than just passive repositories, but rather active participants in keeping lost stories alive," she says. Kahanu then, is museumpersonified: researching, revealing, interviewing, producing and writing a documentary catalyzed by ehanee, or some would say fate. Having been at Bishop Museum for only three years at the time, an archivist there asked if Kahanu was related to George Kahanu. "When I told her he was my grandfather, she brought forth f r o m

the closed stacks a faded green log book from 1936. Within its lined pages were the sto-

Under a Jarvis Moon Oct. 17 — 6 p.m. Dole Cannery E Oct. 22 - 8:15 p.m. Dole

Cannery E

Noelle Kahanu with her grandfather - Photos: Courtesy ofHoelle Kahanu/Bishop Museum

ries of my grandfather, then 18 years old, and three other young Hawaiian men, as they described daily life on a desert island in the middle of the equatorial Paeihe, nearly a thousand miles from home." George Kahanu was among 138 young men, many Hawaiian, sent to the uninhabited islands of Jarvis, Howland and Baker between 1935 and 1942, for months at a time, as part of a secret U.S. mission to colonize the islands. Kahanu quotes her grandfather's log entry from Jarvis, June 25, 1936: "When dinner was over, all the boys gathered in the sleeping quarter and began singing various numbers of songs. One of the boys suggested we try and compose a song for our island. The moon not yet in its fullest gave us an idea. . ." "These words of their journey began me on my joumey," Kahanu says. One that would culminate in the 2002 Bishop Museumexhibition "Hui Panalā'au: Hawaiian Colonists, Ameriean Citizens" and now ĪJnder a Jarvis Moon, a documentary showing at the Hawai'i Intemational FilmFestival on Oct. 17 at 6 p.m. and Oct. 22 at 8: 15 p.m. at Dole Cannery theater. "At the end of the day, it is about cultural identity," says Kahanu, who co-wrote the film with Steve Okino and Heather Giugni. Thousands of miles from home, in total isolation, these young men made surfboards out of shipwreck scraps. They rode canoes in the roiling surf and dried āholehole, packing them in saloon pilot tins for their families back home. They composed songs and made feather lei and searched for sea shells. They remained Hawaiian. . . . It gives me hope - that we ean be stripped of most everything - every facet of civilization - and yet the essence forever remains." Eight colonists were interviewed in 2002. Only two are still alive, one being Kahanu's grandfather. ■ Kathy Muneno is a Contributing Writerfor Ka Wai Ola. She is a weekenā weather anchor at KHON2.

Grandpa George Kahanu, ttien a young man, is kneeling, second from right.