OFFSHORE Honolulu Civil Beat

In 1881 — less than a week after King David Kalakaua left Hawaii for a yearlong tour around the world — a ship arrived in Honolulu carrying laborers sick with smallpox. The decisions that Hawaii’s future queen made to keep people safe – and the pushback she received from angry citizens and frustrated business owners […]

How do you practice Hawaiian culture when you’re thousands of miles from Hawaii? And what happens when Hawaiians abroad finally get a chance to go home?

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. And while many have cited Hawaii’s high cost of living as the main reason for leaving, it’s really just a piece of a much larger story.

After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, hundreds of disenfranchised Hawaiian musicians would journey to the continental U.S. in search of fame, fortune, or just a chance to make a decent living. Some would die in poverty and obscurity. Others would change American music forever.

Two decades after Hawaiians helped build a fort for John Sutter in California, another group of Hawaiians would find themselves stranded in Massachusetts. And take up arms in America’s bloodiest war.

In the mid-1800s, hundreds of Hawaiians lived in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10 percent of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.