(Waves crashing) I go to a group of young kids and I ask them are you Filipino?

And three years ago, the response I'd get this: “I am Hawaiian, Chinese, Spanish, Filipino.” But now it's like, “Yeah, I'm 100% Filipino.” Yes, yes, like that.

So there is a readiness of putting out their identity Throughout the years, this is what we have told our young people who have joined us: Be proud that you're a Filipino.

Be proud of the culture because you have a very beautiful culture, and our purpose is to continue to perpetuate the culture.

(Instrumental music) NARRATOR: The first Filipinos were recruited in 1906 from a rural area of the Philippines called Ilocos Norte.

Hired as unskilled laborers for the sugar plantations, they work 10 hours a day for $14 a month.

Though many of them returned to the Philippines or moved to the mainland at the end of their contracts, Hawaiʻi was now open for successive waves of immigration.

During the 1930s and 40s, men began raising families in Hawaiʻi, or bringing their wives and children over from the Philippines.

The plantation Filipino camps continued to grow with people primarily from Ilocos Norte, but also from other regions such as Visayas, and Pangasinan.

They brought with them varying languages and cultural traditions and dreams of a better life for their families.

The children and grandchildren of Filipino laborers became artists, teachers, businessmen, and some of Hawaiʻi's prominent leaders.

Daniel Kihano/Speaker of the House: I remember coming home from school and we used to have this old Rizal Day-type programs out at Waipahu ballpark.

And so he used to be proud because he used to volunteer his grandson, which was me, to give a speech in Tagalog.

I mean, you know, and so I used to have to come home from school and he used to put me on this big steamer trunk, you know that he came from the Philippines with.

He used to put me on the on this on the trunk and he'd used to rehearse me every day for at least an hour.

So I don't know maybe this was a destiny for me.

I you know, those days, I couldn't see it.

But maybe today now that I'm in office, and I'm the speaker of the house, maybe that was the destiny that was was, you know, bound for me.

NARRATOR: Growing up in Waipahu’s Filipino camp, Dan Kihano’s love for his community has its roots in plantation life and family commitment.

Daniel Kihano/Speaker of the House: You know, we became a very close knit community because of knowing all the, all of the people in Waipahu, you know.

When I was growing up, everybody knew everybody's family's in Waipahu, even when we went to school.

There wasn't a day that I was absent in school that my parents didn't know because the principal at the school knew all the parents.

NARRATOR: Hilo’s Mayor Lorraine Inouye also has special memories of her plantation childhood.

Lorraine Inouye/Hawaiʻi Island Mayor: My brother lived across here and as youngsters we used to go and visit him and sometimes bring his children over to our house so we could babysit.

I loved the life I grew up in, in the plantation community.

One person in my life that I've always looked up to and matter of fact, I've been carrying that story throughout my career now when I speak to groups, is that in the plantation, they used to have an industrial relations position.

And this position was held by a Filipino man.

He was Mr. Anastacio Luis, and he used to encourage us a lot, the kids in the plantation camp.

And basically he used to talk to me a lot, you know, you have to, you know, try to do good for yourself, you have eight in your family.

And so I used to do a lot of reading and you know, because of his encouragement and, and so I tried to be a good student.

This is the home where I was raised.

And it looks smaller now though, we had a family of eight.

What was nice about this community, though, that I remember vividly is the holiday singing during Christmas time.

And we used to go caroling door to door and the men used to bring their guitars the kids used to follow that was that was really nice.

NARRATOR: Holidays such as Christmas and Rizal Day, and family events were an important means for maintaining cultural traditions in music and dance.

The Filipino rondalla band became a popular form of entertainment, not only with Filipinos, but also with other plantation ethnic groups.

The band, composed of four stringed instruments, could be found at all major social events and holidays to family reunions.

George Camarillo and his three sons carry on the tradition of the rondalla band.

George Camarillo, Sr.: For the Camarillo family music has been passed on to us for, for a long time, from my parents down.

And then my wife has a great part, plays a great role in the music education of our children, also.

I have to give her credit because she's the one who teach them the different melody of the different ethnic songs like the Ilocano songs, the Visayan songs, and all I do is put them together and see that we're playing in tune and we’re playing together like a family, in harmony.

Iʻd to see someone, maybe one of my son's keep this tradition of playing rondalla alive.

(Instrumental music) NARRATOR: Keeping traditions alive in dance, as well as music is a goal of Pat and Orlando Valentin.

After doing intensive research in the Philippines, they were eager to share their knowledge with young people.

Orlando Valentin/Pearl of the Orient Director: The first reaction was why not within the family.

So we got our three daughters interested.

Their eight cousins, that's all on my wife's side.

And because I didn't have any immediate relatives here, we chose young people from close family friends.

The Dance Company was formed to perpetuate the culture through Philippine dances, not only to perpetuate it, but to present it in the best possible manner.

That would be befitting of the culture.

So with that in mind, we train the young people to know and learn the dances as authentically as possible.

This dance originates during the time of the Spanish era in the Philippines.

And there were many students, especially female students who attend private colleges in Manila.

And when they go back to their hometown, they present this dance at fiestas.

And the costume that wear, of course, relates to that period, which includes a very beautiful Maria Clara gown and all the accessories, the comb, the earrings, and the necklace.

Regina Manlic: I remember seeing them in the 60s and I always thought the way that they performed was what I would have liked, what I would like to do in the future.

Also the way that they imparted knowledge through mano Orlando’s narration of the dances, I think, inform the public that the Philippine dance, dances are not just the so called national dance, which is tinikling, but that it has a lot of other areas of Philippine dance such as the Muslim, the Igorots, which is the mountain tribal people.

They reflect the Spanish era of Philippine dance, as well as the typical countryside dances of the Philippines.

(Instrumental folk music) Orlando Valentin/Pearl of the Orient Director: In the dance Maglalatik which depicts a combat between the Christian and the Muslim Filipinos, the dance movements themselves are similar to some of the movements used in escrima.

Especially when the dancers converge together and tap each other on the shoulder or on the sides or on the back.

(Instrumental folk music) (Kalis sticks knocking together) Narrator: Escrima, the native Filipino martial art, was so lethal that it was banned by the Spanish when they invaded the Philippines in the 16th century.

Master Teacher/Dan Inosanto Academt of Martial Arts: A lot of this art was saved because when the Spanish went to the Philippines, they of course wanted to outlaw this art, because a lot of the Spaniards were being wiped out.

So the way it was saved, it was put into a lot of the dances.

Those of you familiar with the Filipino dances like sakuting, you've seen sakuting.

Sakuting is a dance that goes like this.

Click, click, click like that.

Okay.

Very nice dance.

You see that came from this sort of emote and it came from that into a nice dance.

Same thing, there's a dance called the Maglalatik, which is coconut dance where the guys go (slapping) like this and see this.

Now what happens in one part, the guys come in and they go, hit each other they go dun, dun, dun, dun..

Okay, but what they used to be was going like this.

See.

Eduardo Pedoy/High Chief Aguila, Pedoy School of Escrima: The true tradition was that it was handed down to the familia, the family.

It was a secret simply because if you thought somebody else, that person could come back and challenge you to the death.

Now we try to bring it back and try to say that through our martial arts and through our background, we're trying to let the children be aware that be happy be proud if you're a Filipino.

(Drum beating) NARRATOR: The Pedoy School of Escrima was started in 1961 by Eduardo's father, Master Braulio Pedoy.

Eduardo Pedoy/High Chief Aguila, Pedoy School of Escrima: It's not only in the islands, but it's in the mainland.

Hopefully we get it all over the world.

Just to let the people know that the Filipinos are a proud people.

And that we have a martial arts.

We have good instructors, we have demonstrating teams, we have fighting teams, tournament fighting teams.

And then the Pedoy style is holding their own.

So I feel like we have a very good future, a proud future.

NARRATOR: Master Pedoy was recently inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame.

Braulio Pedoy: I've been glad myself because you know, the knowledge my knowledge is spread already all over, not only in Hawaiʻi, all over in America.

NARRATOR: Another art that came to Hawaiʻi was the art of Filipino kite making, first introduced to the Filipinos by the Chinese, kites were used as signal devices in warfare.

Alfred Chang: When the Filipino kite first came out its made to fight, not stable flight.

So what do we do we stabilize the kite, change a few things here and there.

Most of the time you think the kite dives and stuff, you would think putting weight on the tail section, right?

For stabilize.

No!

Put weight on the top section, you know where have a stick sticking out.

Just put piece of little something, stabilize, put the weight on top.

And another thing is a lot of people don't know or balancing or symmetry, these two main items.

Okay, most of the people use a razor blade or a knife to balance a stick.

Naturally, the sticks will fly one way or the other.

You don't have a perfect center balance.

But if you put it center on a string, a string won't move on that stick.

So if you have it shaved and she balance straight up, you know its balanced.

If it's not, keep shaving ‘em, should even up, level by the balance.

Now it takes something like 12 to 15 hours to construct a kite.

Okay, then you have to take it out to fly, call it tuning up a kite.

Okay to fly, right?

The first Filipino kite I made, hit the ground and shattered.

So you go home and start all over again, right?

And I noticed, kiting, you cannot push it onto a person.

The people have to like to learn how to make kites is perfect.

Like anything else it gets, a person had to be interested.

I usually make kites for the kids.

And when I used to give it away, I don't make a penny on it.

But I like it.

I enjoy it as a hobby.

NARRATOR: In his paintings, Tom Vinluan captures images of Waipahu’s plantation history Tom Vinluan: What inspires me about the plantation life is again, it's back to the people.

What they have, you know, gone through, the hardship they have gone through.

It’s also the warmth that they project.

When I start to talk to a subject, lets say an old timer that I want to do a portrait of, I just don't get just a surface, but I do get the inside, I get more than what I went in there to get.

Not only the painting that I get afterwards, but what I learned from, from the individual.

NARRATOR: As the most recent group of laborers in the agricultural industry, the Filipinos are the most affected by Hawaiʻi's economic transition from agriculture to tourism.

Viewed as a microcosm of the changes occurring throughout Hawaiʻi, Lānaʻi clearly illustrates the impact of this transition.

Virginia Sumagit/Lānaʻi Filipino Communuty Council Vice President: I'm been glad that we have this, some new hotels as of now.

I am so glad to see this…our children from Lānaʻi going back going to school or Oʻahu or to the mainland and we see them coming back here which has not, which has never happened before.

Because once they finish high school, they go to pursue their education in different cities.

And they don't come back at all because there's no job opportunity.

But now we can see all these kids coming back and how, and we're really glad to see our kids our children working for Lānaʻi.

NARRATOR: A small rural community, Lānaʻi City has about 2,500 residents, mostly Filipinos.

With the opening of the islands, luxury resorts, job opportunities are luring their young people back.

But those same opportunities bring with them inevitable change.

Virginia Sumagit/Lānaʻi Filipino Communuty Council Vice President: When I came here in 1971, most of the people, the population of Filipinos here are mostly the older generation, the Sakadas and their immediate families who came here in 19, in the 70s.

And at the time, you could tell that the Filipinas in there are more involved in activities at that time, because there was only one job, job here in Lānaʻi which is picking pineapples, without working with plantation.

And so there's more time for socializing and do, do the cultural presentations or cultural activities that we have for Filipinos.

I'm not saying that we don't have now, but then with more jobs and more opportunities here on Lānaʻi now, the generations that we have now don't have that really enough time to really get involved.

Cameron Camero: Kids my age?

Well, many were for the hotel building.

But a lot, a lot of people were against it as well, because that meant more tourists and more people on the island.

And many are afraid that they will lose the privilege of going to the beach and stuff.

Virginia Sumagit/Lānaʻi Filipino Communuty Council Vice President: It was hard especially we have all these some workers.

Pineapple pickers who had been working more than 10 years of their life, picking pineapples and they transferred to the hotel industry.

They had hard time adjusting and getting used to the work at the hotel, but Lānaʻi company, Dole company, the union and Rock resorts have been really good in giving job service to trainings to all these people, especially the Filipinos.

Rosita Camero: Definitely pineapple is phasing out.

So the lifestyle is changing.

And where you see pineapple, where you used to see pineapple fields, you'll see hay fields now and fenced in grazing land for cows and horses.

And I guess we, we have to depend - I mean, the future is for our young kids.

So we have, they have to learn to grow in adjust to this new change in lifestyle.

Cameron Camero: Before it was so friendly.

I mean, you’d be driving along the road and just know everybody, just wave at everybody and everything.

But now I've, after I've come back from college, I've noticed that a lot of different cultures here.

A lot of new people, new faces, and it's hard to get used to, because Lānaʻi’s changing, Lānaʻi’s moving up status.

I guess that's the most significant thing I’ve seen.

Kurt Matsumoto/Lodge at Koele General Manager: It’s to our advantage for the resorts that the island and the community maintain it’s really small, rural feeling.

As far as how to promote it, though, that's a real difficult question.

As we bring in more people, obviously, the character will change.

The owners are trying to establish a cultural center on the island, also trying to preserve some of the things that are here today that we may lose in the next few years.

Sol Kahoohalahala/Lodge at Koele Director of Cultural Resources: What we're trying to do is take some of our historical plantation spaces that exist today, and re-utilize them as cultural and heritage spaces and recreate art studio or working place for ceramics, working place for arts, for painting, really trying to perpetuate what's already ongoing at the hotel in an arts program, and still give all of our different ethnic groups of Lānaʻi a place to display and continue to perpetuate their own cultural heritage.

The plantation area presents a lot of really nice spaces for them.

Kurt Matsumoto/Lodge at Koele General Manager: There will be a shift, dramatic shift from agriculture over to the resort industry.

And I know the hotel can absorb any of the residents who want to work in this business.

In terms of the guest response to date, the most outstanding thing that I get from the people is the comment about the staff.

By and large, that is the number one positive comment that we get from everybody.

Whether they're coming from Europe, New York, California, or even from other parts of Hawaiʻi, they always comment about how wonderful the staff is, how sincere they are.

That you just can't find people like this or service like this anywhere.

The thing I would like Cameron Camero: The thing I would like to keep the same about Lānaʻi is I would want to keep the peace and quiet.

I want to keep that coziness of Lānaʻi.

The real aloha in Lānaʻi.

NARRATOR: Today's families are faced with a paradox.

While parents may need to work two or three jobs in order to survive Hawaiʻi's high cost of living, reduced family involvement threatens their children.

Jes Guillermo/Kalihi YMCA Program Director: Most times, the reason for these kids getting in trouble is that they have a lot of idle times in their hands.

So they begin by hanging out in the streets and next thing you know, they get bored and just start doing illegal things.

The Kalihi YMCA people all wanted to do was to provide the kids with a place, safe place to hang out.

They realized that there was a problem with the youth gangs in Kalihi- Palama.and instead of just talking about it decided to do something about it.

We started out with I think less than a dozen kids that were into dancing.

And with them, they went out on the streets where they saw kids gathering among themselves in the sidewalks or doing their dancing.

And so they went out and told these kids that, “Hey, we've got a safe place to go.

That we can do our thing.

We can do our dances, and feel comfortable and be safe.” Irwin Nardo: I had a friend here at the Y and he told me about the dance program.

And I really enjoyed dancing.

So he brought me over and I started.

Sandra Platero: It keeps you real busy.

You're on your board.

You have something to do down here.

Some of my friends come down here.

I encourage them to come down.

Josephine Baloran: Instead of staying home or going places spending money, you can, you can just learn things over here.

You can make friends, you can learn lots of things, we even do sports like that.

So it's better than just going out, going to a mall spending money, and going out on the streets doing drugs like that.

Over here, you're safe.

Jes Guillermo/Kalihi YMCA Program Director: Right now we have about 260 kids registered in the program.

And most of them are very active.

Although the breakdown is about 95% Filipinos, because that's what this program was intended for, anyway.

Nevertheless, I do not discourage any other kids from joining, as long as they want to get away from the youth gang problems and the drug problems, they're welcome here.

The older kids that were original members, some of them are now members of the staff.

Which is good because it, it gives the kids, the younger kids a sense of someone who knows what they're talking about.

Because these kids have gone through it and they know the pain, the troubles of the gangs and the drugs and the impact that it has.

I guess you could call it stereotype among Filipino kids.

That is a problem that we see right now.

With two, three Filipino youths just hanging around, or just riding in a car and being stopped by the police officers on suspicions that they might be the people that they are looking for.

NARRATOR: Fulfilling very necessary roles.

Staff counselors are always on hand to help with problems or to just listen.

Josephine Baloran: We're like all family here.

So we all help each other.

We’re all friendly to each other.

26:48 I like to show the, the more upbeat side of our youth.

I don't think all of them are gang members, by all means we have a lot of students who excel in high school.

We want to project the Filipinos of today, of the 90s at this time.

There's a lot of second, third generation Filipinos who don't understand or speak the language anymore, but who really want to identify with the ancestry.

In its earliest tradition, barrio fiestas bring out the best of Philippine customs and rituals, as we now see on Maui.

I guess, that's how I started this show, I wanted to present a Filipino community that's not limited in scope, but that has a lot of faces to it, and we want to show those faces.

So we have to build the self-esteem, self image, and I feel that that's already happening to some degree.

Not a large degree, but I think we're making a dent in that score.

Daniel Kihano/Speaker of the House: I used to give the speeches out at result a programs in Waipahu and you know, we still have a lot of Filipino laborers and boy you know the applause and people just clap and you know, here's a small you know, eight year old you know giving the speeches you know that made them feel proud that will Filipinos.

Until today you know I'm not afraid to say that I'm Filipino.

(Traditional music)