Hawai‘i History, Literature and Science—All At Your Fingertips

It’s important to keep the mind stimulated. That’s especially true now that most everyone is being encouraged to stay in. Sure, it’s also the perfect time to binge a season or five of that Netflix show you’ve been meaning to get to, but when you grow weary of just vegging out and want to expand your horizons with some local history, literature or marine science, we’ve got the list for you. Knowledge-seekers and students of all ages will appreciate something here.

Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum has a wealth of online resources to engage you for hours. Their blog contains informative articles covering everything from airplane specs to major battles, from World War II and beyond. How fast was the Zero? Want to read about the Battle of the Coral Sea? This is the site for you.

If you want a visual on what air combat was like, the museum has a WWII in the Pacific  photo collection that’s viewable on their Flickr page. This collection displays images of the war that are at times brutal and other times heartwarming, but persistently authentic.

For history that’s a bit more grounded, the Kona Historical Society had made their digital resources freely available online. View online exhibits, videos of storytellers recounting Kona’s history or listen to oral history recordings. You can even access the digital version of their member newsletter, which contains even more rich information to absorb.

If you want to expand your horizons along literary avenues, Kapiolani Community College has started an online archive of Bamboo Ridge. Bamboo Ridge is a local literary journal that’s been in publication since 1978, providing a venue for local authors to make their work public for readers far and wide. Through the years, their pages have included the likes of Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of “The Descendents” which became a major motion picture starring George Clooney, author Lee Tonuchi, the “Pidgin Guerilla” and advocate for Hawaiian pidgin, and playwright and columnist Lee Cataluna. 

As of this writing, the online archive contains only a handful of issues from the journal’s four-decade publishing history, more is soon to follow. Even at this early stage, there’s no better way to enjoy this material, much of it out of print or otherwise hard to come by.

And if you’re feeling creative yourself, Bamboo Ridge has been posting daily writing prompts to help us cope with the stay-at-home blues!

For the keiki (children), Maui Ocean Center  has an online educational series that’s fun and informative, geared to kids in grades K-5. Though the center’s doors are closed to the public, kids can still learn about Hawai‘i’s marine life, make crafts, and engage with story readings, a Hawaiian word of the week, and more.

If your kids are getting restless being cooped up, or you need to give them something to do while you work from home, have them start in with the  Ocean Classroom  now! 

  Further Reading: