 ThinkTek is back. Welcome back. And today we're doing Community Matters. We're going to talk about a book that was written about our community, a special slice, actually many slices of, you know, the history of Hawaii. And I'll talk more about this. We'll talk more about it with Shane Marshall Goodsill, who's an author who wrote a book just coming out, Voices of Hawaii. We're going to listen to those voices through Jane. It's a very interesting way of looking at Hawaii. Hawaii is a special place, special culture, special history, different from other places, and that's one of the great strengths of the state. And Shane has analyzed that one-on-one. She's done interviews of, oh, gee, it looks like hundreds of people for hundreds of hours. And then she's capsized that into a book covering, you know, a lot of subjects that define Hawaii. What made you do this, Jane? You know, Jane, before I answer that question, I want to say something else. I want to say this is my second interview with you. And I loved it so much, it was so easy to talk to you. And, you know, since I've taken hundreds of hours of interviews, it was so nice to be on the other end and to be the one interview. So a lot of that. Yeah, well, it was a great discussion. And as I recall, you were just getting around to, you know, putting that book together, you know, binding it up, so to speak. And now it's bound. Now it's ready. Now it's out there. And I wanted to come back. I wanted to circle back with you because I think the, you know, the lessons of the last, what, six or eight months since we spoke are, you know, really profound. And I'm sure you have coalesced your thinking. That's what I want to capture today. Well, the collecting of the data was really fun because you never knew from moment to moment, who'd you be talking to and what story they'd be telling you. And that was really thrilling. Then after that, I had to get every interview transcribed. And then I had to go through and edit them and make them readable. Then I had to share them with the people to see if they liked what I had come up with. And unanimously they did and they all participated and responded. Can you imagine 75 people all responding via email and mail mail to the back and forth. So it was a cooperative effort between me and every single person who participated in this. Well, you know, we favor we extoll the virtues of citizen journalists. And I think that you have those virtues you are a citizen journalist you start out of curiosity and, and then you reach out to people and, and they respond because they know you're genuine. And then you find the truth in what they have to say you find value in kind of everyone you talk to and, and then you go to the trouble of putting it all together that is quite remarkable. I would wear that as a badge of honor to be a citizen journalist. I love that idea. Yeah, we do. We love our citizen. In the last interview you said when I was talking about how I would go and talk to people and then amazing things would come out that I hadn't preplanned you said that's what we do. That's what we do all day and I thought, yes, same same. Yeah, really if you have a nice relationship and the course of discussion amazing things surprises profundities to showered upon you. I agree. And I did not start this project expecting to write a book that was not my goal. It's just that the tidbits of information archival information about Hawaii and the things that happened during the formative years from about 1941 to about 2000. I just couldn't not use them. And everybody was happy for me to use them. They said they gave me full legal authorization please use this yes please I'd send them my chapter and say this is what I want your chapter to look like. Oh fine great. You are you suggesting that in that period. There was a special transformation of the islands that you know that is worth studying. And if so what what if you could say now what it is what it was. What was that transformation. Why is this such an interesting period in history, not only Hawaiian history but the history of humanity why here in that period was this so interesting. Well, see now you're requiring me to be probably wiser than I am, but I'll give that a shot. It was a period before World War two, when things were quite different the jets have not started coming yet. So Hawaii had not become as multicultural as it has become. And it was more as somebody described it Gary Gill used to always say it was like a beautiful tropical flower, and everybody wanted to come and everybody wanted to pick the flower. Because who live there wanted to keep them from picking the flower. Come smell it but don't pick it right. So that's one of those one of the themes preserving the beauty of what we have the Carol Cox talked a lot about that when she talked about preserving the rivers the Humley River from having from becoming hydroelectric. Anyway, there was that element and then with statehood occurred, and then the jets came, and then technology has changed all this time. And I'm talking to the people who live through all those days, and have stories to tell me to go back to their ancestors. And remember, I told you that Oz standard told me a story that he had some, his grandfather had some property out in the whole. And do you remember how long I said the lease on that property was 999 years. Oh wow. I said, I've never heard of a lease that long are you sure he said yes. So was that comedy say it was back then. He's an amazing man and he's one of the hundreds of people that you interviewed on this and he has so much to offer. I don't want you I don't want you to go too far. I interviewed 75 people it felt like hundreds, but it was 75 but it was a very, 75 goes on for pages and pages. It's a who's who of, you know, in Hawaii. And, you know, it has to me a certain, you know, a certain resonance because I know a lot of them. And I've read about a lot of them and they've, they form our world here at least in my generation and your generation to they, they are, they are the statues along the passage. I wanted to do the people who are in the older generation, just in case they wouldn't be with us and sure enough, Mr. Matsuda has died since then and Carol, not Carol. Lois Taylor Clark has died since then. But the others are still with us but I started with the older generation and then people kept telling me who I should interview and so I would follow the lead and interviewed them and I interviewed a couple people who are my own age. I told them you know you don't really fit in here you're not old enough, but they done such remarkable things that they fit in. But there it is I mean it's, it's what I was describing to you before the show it's spelunking. It's spelunking you're discovering. You don't know what's at the end of the passage in the cave. But you know you, you have to keep a rope, a thread to know where you're going and keep your bearings. There's a lot of nostalgia involved. There's a lot of trying to find familiar pieces that you can recognize threads if you will, but you can recognize so it's it's a journey of discovery. Put it all together once I had all these interviews and I have hundreds of pages of transcripts. And each I could have written a book on each person's story because they're all wonderful. But what I had to do is pull out the parts that were the most salient, the parts that somehow spoke to me and I thought might speak to my audience. And then I would put that in one part of a chapter and somebody else's information in another part of that same chapter and build a chapter on those themes. That was fun to do it took a lot of creativity. And work you said that somewhere you have reproduced the verbatim transcripts of these and where is that work and I find that I have all the verbatim transcripts but I'm not posting them on the people who are still alive until after my book comes out. Call me mercenary but first of all I don't know I don't know who's going to read other than you I don't know who's going to sit down and read a long life transcription. But if you go to my website voices of Hawaii calm, you'll learn a lot about my project a lot about me wonderful pictures lists of everybody that I've interviewed. And then there's a picture at the end of everybody that I've interviewed, and a few of them who are deceased, have the entire transcription already posted. One of them, I did audio clips of things they said Jimmy Greenwell is in there if you click on Jimmy Greenwell you won't see his transcript, but you'll hear a little story about taking a horseback ride with his grandfather. One of the funniest parts of that he said you know the kids can't put down the street unless they have a flask of water. And my grandmother would make us these cheese sandwiches. Oh he said you try to eat a cheese sandwich when your mouth is dry. It was hysterical so his grandfather would pick a McWalla and say here you go son. You've memorialized something and as the years go by those interviews and transcripts, and this book will be more and more valuable it's so sort of like the Steven Spielberg show a project of the survivors of the Holocaust where he filmed them. Hundreds, thousands of them. And he doesn't release the movie until they die when it becomes, you know, more valuable somehow. And it's the same thing here. As these people died this book will become more valuable, your transcripts will become more valuable. It touches you now, but in the future to the inquiring mind and student. It will be incredibly valuable to understand exactly how the state has come about. I'm going to release all of my transcripts at some point in time I don't feel proprietary about it. And as long as the people I've interviewed are okay, and they've, they've approved, they've read over and approved every single transcript. So, I feel okay with that and my goal is to make them available to researchers in the future. What I like is, is that spelunking thing about one one person sort of connects you with the next person and your curiosity takes over. And you're, you know, you're, it never stops you, you keep on going and whatever touches you go in that direction and then that direction. It was fun. So I'll give you an example of that. Duncan McNaughton is a family friend of my family, my, his father and my father were friends together. So I go up and I talk to Duncan and Duncan's, you know, I have a generation older than I am and so, you know, we were never we never sat down and had a conversation before but we sat and talked for a couple of hours, and it was so much fun. He can tell a great story. And then he said, you know, I said, well, should I interview Duncan? He was, he was like number 10 on my list. And he said, well, maybe you should talk to Jeff Watanabe and I say, okay, so I said, you know, when you make the introduction, he went, sure. So, then I go talk to Jeff, and he gave me a completely different perspective on, you know, I don't know if you know Jeff, but he has a different view on the world. And then the one that I grew up with so it was so interesting. I love that interview just sitting in the room with him was exciting. And thus it was with everybody I spoke to. I told you I spoke to Judge Padgett. And the reason I spoke with him is that he had a professor at Harvard Law School that my father had also. And so I said to him, tell me what brought you to Hawaii and how it relates to this trust lawyer, professor that you had. He said, well, that's how it all began. There are a lot of trust in Hawaii personal trust, and elite trust, and property and trust. And he said this is how the elite preserved their heritage for their people. So, that's what brought him trust law. And you and I talked before the show about the role that law and lawyers, you know, have had in the years that you've covered one or the development of why 19th century 20th century and now. And some would argue that they've had too much, too much, you know, to do with the development of the state. But that's the reality. I mean, I was there for part of it. I can tell you that lawyers had a lot to do with developing the state after statehood. They had a lot to do with, you know, the controversies, the resolution of those controversies. Well, you know, Jay, being the daughter of a lawyer, I probably have a little bit more rose colored glasses view of what lawyers do. I didn't know as much when I started as I did when I finished and, for example, I interviewed Willie Moore, and he was the aviation lawyer involved with getting the first in Rogers airport set up in Honolulu. There, when Hawaii became a destination for jets, there was a lot of legal work that needed to be done. Am I right? Yes. And he's spoken that on our show together, right, right here. And then, of course, he became the lawyer who represented the resting of Aloha Stadium. It's a chapter in my book. The way he tells it. So much you learn by talking to people just talking story oral history, if you will. That's what this is. This is, you know, the reduction of the oral history to writing and, and then, you know, I want to talk about this a little bit. You've you've analyzed it. So out of these, say, 75 interview interview, you did you, you came up with a number of subjects. I have them listed here somewhere. And these subjects are really the most interesting list of subjects. And there are not as many of them. So I surmise that what you did is you, you took the stories out of the interviews, and you organize them into a short list of subjects. So now you have different voices of Hawaii, talking about these subjects. And you know what it reminds me of, and I'll stop in a minute. You know, Pupu Dinner at Oahu Cemetery put on by the Mission Houses. Yes, yes. These voices are coming from the past and they research everything people said in that cemetery. And then they, they provide an analysis, a play of it, and a discussion afterward. And the result is you, you meet the real people, but then you see you have a kind of a, it's Proustian, you're looking through the keyhole. Yeah, into the dynamic of the development of the state through these this evidentiary based kind of analysis. That's what you've done. That's a really great description, Jay. You have got it. You got it. That's that's what it's been. So let me read some of them. And we can strike some of them that you would talk about plantation stories. We want to know about that. The days of speaking Hawaiian is really part of the, it's still a live issue. Let me stop you right there. That was very interesting to me because I did not know the Hawaiian language had been outlawed at one point in time after the overthrow. And so I talked to people who told me that their grandparents spoke Hawaiian, but never spoke it to them and always spoke it behind closed doors and when they didn't want the kids to know what they were talking about. And so many people talked about their experience of not knowing their own language. It broke my heart, but it was such an interesting story. And now alive and well, you know, now alive and well and of course, the resurgence of that is captured in some of my parts in my book where I capture Pua Kanova Meyer and other people who are teaching and promoting Hawaiian culture and language and dance and the whole thing. But here's one I'm just skipping around your list, but here's one called glass ceilings. You know we did a program of what they call the three digit lawyers. You know, these are the fellows who and girls who were assigned numbers before the number 1000 and you know they that that's a long time ago, the three digit lawyers really built the state after statehood. And when you talk about glass ceilings a lot of these lawyers were racially barred from participating in some of the big firms. Is that what you were talking about here in this analysis of glass. Exactly right. My father was a three digit lawyer, by the way, but of course I don't think he faced the same kind of discrimination because he was Caucasian and had a different life story but I want the one of the people who told that story really beautiful to him and Tam, who's a three digit lawyer, and he said, he had an experience of working for a company before law school and they said come back you're a talented guy we want you. And he came back after law school and said here I am, give me the hardest cases, give me whatever you want I'll prove myself and they said you know we really like you you're a really great guy but we can't hire you because we don't hire agents. He told that story on think tech. Same story. And it was something like, you know, we like you very much but our clients, our clients wouldn't go along with it. Yeah. Can you imagine. You know he said well turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because I went into a totally different aspect of law. People who wouldn't hire me and it worked out great. Every problem is an opportunity. And here's one called island music and that's always a favor of mine because you know there's such a tremendous value in Hawaiian music and it's been a sine curve up and down, you know it's just like the language. What did you cover in there. Oh, I interviewed Luana McKinney, who is part of Pumana and, and her husband and they told charming stories so her story is in there. This really started because Steve Siegfried is a friend of mine, and I called Steve one day about four years ago and said Steve, your story of panini records has never been told. And will you tell it now. And he said yes. And so I sat with him over a series of three days, and he told me his entire story. And he said I think I want to write my own book and I went great here I'll transcribe all this I'll give it to you all. Here you go. And what I learned about Hawaiian music about panini records, starting out with nothing but a dream turning into being huge blockbuster. And then there's kind of a sad part of the story, but this part where they were, where they were at the apex. Oh, was so inspiring. And I was watching it happen at the time. And it was so exciting in which single who was part of panini records was my brother's best friend so we kind of rode that journey with him but the difference that Hawaiian music made to the entire Hawaiian Renaissance is, in my opinion, invaluable and I capture a little bit of that story in the book. So you have it you know it's, it's interesting you pick the kind of the best parts of the traditions of Hawaii that have present themselves that have evolved in our lifetimes. But there are other things that that your discovery did not touch. It didn't take you there. You know, you know, the people who are really poor homeless Pacific Islanders. This is part of the story to the differences though that you learn what you learn from people that were larger than life. They were known to the community they were in the media they, they had an active role in one enterprise or another. What I find is that a lot of people never have that active role, hard to reach them. It's the spelunking experience doesn't take you there. What about them, you're going to write another one about you know, it was sort of easy for me to reach the people at the higher echelon because I kept asking and kept getting referrals. When you think about going down to the other end of the spectrum. He would take a lot of help for me to get to the people who had stories to tell. And I would be very interested in doing that. I would, I would love that. If that, if that happens, I will follow that path. One, one person who I respect a lot. I don't think I'll use his name but I really came to love him a lot. He said, I don't think voices of what is a good name. I said really, because out of my heart set on it and then thinking about it visualizing it. He said no because it doesn't capture all the voices of Hawaii. And I said tell me more. And he said, there are people at the other end of the spectrum and you're not speaking for them. So these are not all the voices of Hawaii and I went. This is not all the voices of Hawaii, which is what you're addressing. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah, that's my point. My inquiry anyway. There's so many other, you know, touching topics here. How about agriculture and tourism. Interesting that you should lump that up in one in one topic. But certainly, both of them individually and taken collectively have had an enormous effect on us and still do. And maybe in some ways now these days in COVID and chaos. They are, you know, a vacuum for us. But what was the story. Can you kind of take us down that road. Thank you for asking that story started with Jim case who grew up on a plantation and then became a lawyer later in his life and very active in the community. He was so sad about the demise of the sugar industry. He wanted it to continue in Hawaii, but found that it couldn't. And so he told his story about that and that is one of the things I capture in there. And then it turned out other people talked about the value of tourism and the declining productivity of agriculture and they seem to find a way to fit together. I put them together and say I told you it was creative trying to figure out what my topics were. So I did a combination there. Well, the totally related all that. And they and they lead to, you know, the examination of the diversification of the economy and what are we going to do now and I mean this opens all kinds of you know you can't. You can't go into the future without knowing where you are now. And a lot of it has to do with with simple factors of productivity and trade and so on. The sugar was no longer prosperous as it had been and it was so labor intensive and required such the meaning conditions for some people that it no longer was an appealing industry to be in. In my opinion, I'm speculating there. I mean the reality has shown. But then you have one called the philanthropy, which I think is interesting it goes back to the question of the trusts. You mentioned before the show that trust is such a big part of Hawaii and and still are and philanthropy is related to the trust and and that that movie we talked about it. The descendants was part of that with the valley that was held in trust under the rule against perpetuities only somebody. Oh, that's that's what it was the man who wrote perpetuities in a nutshell is the one who was my father and Frank gadgets instructor at Harvard. Small world. Yeah, coast to coast. Yeah. Anyway, so what was the what was the thing there you have philanthropy as a special animal in Hawaii. I started as in my paying homage to Dwayne steel who who was very dear to our family. When my father was sick. And would be on the line I just resting. He was dying. Dwayne would show up every day at two o'clock. Sometimes he'd have his ukulele sometimes he just bring his voice, and he would just sit and be with my father and we all got to go go rest. And I can't speak highly enough of Dwayne and then I began to find out some of his story and all the things he did, and his passion and ways that he contributed to the community. And it was such a beautiful philanthropic story that I had about him that that's where it started. And then there's many other people who have been generous in our community, and I was able to capture them to that strikes me Jane. We didn't talk about this last time, but you did know, and you do know a lot of the witnesses so to speak, in this book and you're, you know, you you shared parts of Hawaii history and nostalgia they go hand in hand with them. And here you are chatting with them talking story with them writing it down, analyzing it making a book out of it. You know, you've had as as I have had the experience of having your own personal memories, you know, flood through your mind. While you were doing this, your whole life really is touched by these various stories it is, it is not only their stories or our stories it is your story you were there. How do you feel about that. What was your emotional experience about that. It's such a good question, you know that my profession is as a licensed psychotherapist. And so, maybe the difference in how I interviewed when I was a little bit what you do is I would go down to a deeper level I didn't just want to know what they did what they did next. Tell me about it tell me how you felt about it and as I drew out their impassioned responses to my questions. My heart being touched. It was, it was a growth experience for me because my memories you can imagine my memories are encapsulated like this. Somebody gives me more data or more context in how this event happened, and my memory and my experience begins to grow. And I try and put that in the book so the book is sort of an expanding experience. I'm reminded of the great books that have been written to connect the threads you know the great history book that I read when I was flying out here. Well, 1965 was Mitchner Hawaii. It was Hawaii Pono. There was land and power member of these books. And frankly Jane I would put your book right in there. It is a very heartfelt and personal story. But it also, you know puts puts things together and it gives some, you know a picture of touchy touchy feely picture of how we behaved and how we behave now. It really matters to me. I'm so glad that you see that that you mentioned that because I read stories you know people try and talk about Hawaii and they use all the words and they use the common descriptors and the poly and this and that but the feel of the people who lived it is is is so important to give context and meaning. It's more personal. Yeah, it is. Some of these topics. I really have to ask you about because I really don't know. I don't know about some of these things. You know, for example, well I know this only at distance voices of the ranchers. Now, if you said voices of the plantation Luna. I could, I could relate to that but which is the ranchers were a special breed entirely. Well, you know, will the cowboys and the ranchers be friends or whatever that song was. Oklahoma. But what do you know about ranchers here and why should we care about what happened to the ranchers. I did not know very much about ranchers, but I have a soft spot in my heart because part of my family in Montana. They are ranchers so I know about it in person I've been there I've worked on the ranch with them. So, when I get a chance to interview the ranchers in Hawaii they tell me about how the land was used, how they inherited the land, how they preserved it, how they kept it profitable, how they honored the wishes of the generation that gave it to them, and keeping it prosperous for the generation that would inherit it a fascinating story. And so I'm not only learning about cows and horses. I'm learning about land use best land use practices. And I'm not only learning about that but quirky Brian was one of my favorite interviewees and he said, you know we had trouble at Parker ranch trying to figure out how to make everybody work together because these guys, you know, the panillo structure was very hierarchical. The guys at the top had better conditions than the guys at the bottom, but we wanted to make it more horizontal. So what we did is we gave each guy a little Kuliana to take care of. And it was their responsibility and if they needed help they had to go to these guys. And so they need to be available when these guys came to them for help. And so the whole story of how they got a Hawaiian man to come and talk story with the with with all the panillos to teach them how to do it the Hawaiian way, which is more horizontal than hierarchical. Oh, God it was an awesome story. Oh, it's an awesome topic. So I wanted to you know this is a hard one can I ask you a hard question. You know you have how many stories here and 75 witnesses to bear the stories. And you're talking about that same historic period. What was the most significant thread. What was the most significant driver. It took us to where we are today. You know I said in the last interview, you know, I'm, I'm just a story collector. I'm not the sage. I'm not the biggest no at all. I don't know if I, I don't know if I'm smart enough to answer that question but certainly the cultural integration was part of it, the blending of mixed cultures was part of it. And then the hierarchical thing that I'm talking about the people at the top and the people at the bottom, how they all fit in, and where. Oh, one of the story, one of the themes that I love the most I don't know if this answers your question was I talked to many people came over as immigrants their grandparents parents came over as immigrants, and then three generations later, their sons or daughters are the head CEOs of Hawaiian corporations. It just touches your heart. And I have so many stories of what I call upward ascension. Oh, that was so interesting to me. I just couldn't get enough of it. It's very important. And it's something you wouldn't know unless you studied it. And you'd have to find people who would be willing to tell you about it. There's a lot of these people why these people opened up to me. I have no idea. But it was spectacular I will tell you. Honestly, the barrier of the sacred cow in Hawaii we have sacred cows. And there was some things that you really have to work to learn about you know. So I think people people would be interested in, in putting your book on their table of taking a look at it of seeing the stories and, and, you know, appreciate it. Let me say, let me say one final thing we're doing a soft opening into December, in case anybody wants it for the holidays. Let us know either watermark publishing or myself, if they will let us know by November 30, we can get it to them by the holidays. The big openings in January and everybody can have as many as they want in January. It's a great gift. But here. So it'll be on Amazon, I take it. It will be in January. Right now it's available with watermark or you can do it on my website, Voices of Hawaii.com. In making in making the decision to buy this book to give this book as a gift. I think it's really important for people to understand your poetry. And therefore I mean they they have heard you speak today as, and if they go back and look at what we talked about I think in April. I wonder if you could read the last paragraph of the book for us. The last paragraph. Yes, give people the idea of what your poetry sounds like. I will say one caveat that the words in this book are primarily the words of the people who spoke them. I just put them together, but the epilogue is mine is that what you're talking about the epilogue. Yes, whatever whatever you choose really. I know somebody is interviewing me and it says since I already have approval from my interviews I could put them all together and make these interview transcripts available. And then they say and, and did I hear you say that you do it again. Does that mean we might look forward to Voices of Hawaii part two, and Jane Goodsill says, I would love that. Think of how many stories are still out there to be told. And how many people for me yet to meet. I'm convinced that when people talk heart to heart, there is a bond created and we become part of the same tribe. I want more of this in my life, and more of this in the world. I'm so fine. I'm so glad I asked you. That was a great question you should have told me ahead of time to be prepared though. Sorry about that Jane, but maybe sometimes surprises are good for you. Thanks for asking. Jane Marshall Goodsill author. It's a it's a stories of Hawaii and today we've been listening to the stories of Hawaii and we know more about them and we look forward to your, when your book comes out and we wish you well in promoting it. Thank you very much.