(instrumental music) Kalaʻi Miller: Aloha, I’m Kalaʻi Miller and welcome to  Home is Here.

For more than half a century, railroads helped shape life across our islands.

While much has changed since then, a dedicated group of volunteers is keeping that history  alive.

All aboard for a trip into Hawaiʻi’s past.

(train horn) (instrumental music) Jeff Livingston/Hawaiian  Railway Society Historian: The common carrier railroads actually  started on Maui and that was in 1881.

Oʻahu followed a little bit later with  the Oahu Railway & Land Company founded by Benjamin Franklin Dillingham and  that occurred in 1889.

His idea was to connect the various portions of the  island and the various plantations.

The OR&L hauled fresh pineapple  from the fields to the canneries and then from the canneries to the  warehouses for further shipment.

Initially, the Navy did not have  any railroad of their own.

So, everything was handled by the OR&L  from Honolulu to Pearl Harbor.

All of this well prior to the second World  War, which is when the OR&L actually hit his full stride.

During the war, the OR&L ran 24  hours a day, seven days a week, continually.

They were hauling troops.

They were hauling  material to and from all the various ports.

One of the downsides, the military built a  significant road system on the island of Oʻahu.

So, at the end of the war, the OR&L, with  their tired equipment, were forced to raise their tariffs significantly.

And the shippers  that remained, primarily the plantations, decided that they could haul  by truck and save money.

So, the OR&L abandoned their main line on  December 31, 1947, and the line was torn up.

The OR&L, although it had abandoned their  main line, continued in existence as a terminal railroad, serving primarily Downtown  Honolulu.

It handled pineapple from off island that arrived on barges and handled cattle  to the slaughterhouse.

It existed as such, up until its very end, and that  was about 1972.

That's when the final abandonment occurred and the  OR&L as a railroad ceased to exist.

So, from, from his heyday of 73 miles, 72 miles  of mainline, the OR&L has been reduced now to about seven miles of usable track that  the society maintains and operates on.

The Hawaiian Railway Society had started  in the late 70s.

We have a mission vision statement.

Essentially, it is for the  restoration, preservation and operation of the historic railroad equipment, and the  remaining portions of the OR&L main line.

We have restored and rebuilt a  number of pieces of equipment.

This is a locomotive that started at all, Kauila  6.

This was the first locomotive used on the OR&L Dillingham had ordered two Baldwin locomotives  for delivery for the opening up his railroad.

They failed to arrive on time.

The Hawaiian  government had actually purchased this locomotive for use in a quarry.

Now the stories vary, but  either it was too big for the quarry or the quarry turns were too tight for the locomotive.

This locomotive was sitting on the pier unused, Dillingham needed a locomotive and he  bought it.

It was named Kauila – lightning.

All of our passenger cars started  out life as Army flatcars and have had extensive maintenance and we  have added roofs and benches.

Now, those particular cars may look rather  crude, but they are actually fairly decent replicas of the third-class cars  that the OR&L originally ordered in 1889.

We try to teach, we try to be an  educational experience, as well as a recreational experience.

And to expose as  many people as possible to what used to be.

Our rides are fully narrated, about 90 minutes, and explain the history of the railroad,  the history of the surrounding area.

It seems that very few people that are born and  raised here in Hawaiʻi, because of the lapse of time, aren't really aware of how important and  what a major player the railroads were in the development of the islands, of the economy,  of the state.

We would love to improve that.

We are slowly seeing people  becoming aware, little by little.

And the more history you learn, the  more the more important these pieces of that history become.

Right down to  the little, the little tiny things.

It's a testament to everyone who went before  us and should be respected and honored.

Kalaʻi Miller: Jana Lam always loved art.

But she didn’t  always view herself as an artist.

Now, that may sound surprising, considering all  the different ways her designs are on display, from murals to clothes to her collection  of handmade bags and accessories.

Her path wasn’t always clear, but once she  figured it out, she never looked back.

Jana Lam / Jana Lam Hawaiʻi Owner: My favorite color is yellow.

I love yellow.

It's just the most sunshiny, bright, happy color.

But I love all colors.

I  really do, so.

But yellow is my favorite.

I grew up in Nuʻuanu.

I moved into my dad's  childhood home when I was 11 months old, so I've lived there all my life.

I  attended Punahou School since the time I was in kindergarten all  the way up through 12th grade.

As a kid, I loved art.

I was always doodling.

I was always drawing.

I think a lot of kids want to be artists when they're little.

I was one of those kids.

I loved it, but I never, I never viewed it as something  I could do until much, much later.

I attended Davidson College in North Carolina.

I  went there with no idea of what I wanted to do, what I wanted to study.

I graduated from Davidson, and then I moved to New York  City for a couple years.

Then I moved to San Francisco.

On a whim, I went back to school to study interior design.

And then I  just happened upon screen printing.

So, the class was applied textiles, and I didn't  have any idea what I was getting into, but that's kind of where I learned everything,  and that's where I fell in love with printing.

I moved back to Oʻahu in 2010.

So of course,  I was thinking go into interior design, but there were no jobs.

So, I just was  like, alright, I'm gonna build a table and start screen printing.

So, my dad built  me a table in his garage.

It's actually the table right back there.

And I just started  making stuff and kind of learning the ropes.

My mom knew how to sew.

She taught me how to sew  a couple things, and I would screen print fabrics, turn it into kind of what you see here, a  little bit, but not as good.

And that was it.

(instrumental music) My design process is pretty, pretty simple.

I  get inspiration from everywhere, and a lot of it comes to me late at night and when I'm supposed  to be asleep.

So, I'll go and get up and sit down at my desk and sketch something.

A lot of it,  obviously, is inspired by nature, by Hawaiʻi.

I learned from school to never throw  anything away, because you will get ideas from it.

I look at a lot of old sketches,  and oftentimes I'll think something is terrible, or, I don't know, you just don't  see the potential right away.

But then you go back and you're like,  oh, this is actually a cool idea.

What I love about screen printing  is that you can take one design, one pattern, and it changes so drastically  depending on what colors you use, like, how many layers you have.

You have, like,  a darker print on top of a lighter print, or a lighter print on top of a darker  print, it just looks completely different.

So, when I started out, it wasn't  necessarily a goal of mine to make things locally.

It's more come over the years, just because the very basis of what I love is  the screen printing, is the art part of it, and so that's what's really unique and special  to me.

So, it was always going to be handmade.

And then I wanted to bring in people that were  really experts, you know, at sewing and crafting, and so it's just kind of all come together that  way, but now it is like the more I think the emphasis has been on locally made products.

I  think that there's been, a real, movement into that, and it's become very important to people.

So, it became more important to me as well.

That's one of the things that it's kind of  made us different, I think, is that we're able, because we do it by hand, we're able to put so  much color and unique variety.

And you know, nothing is the same, and it's not just  like mass produced in just one, color way.

My team, they all wear many hats.

We're always all together making decisions  because we're so tight knit.

And everyone here is really ultra creative  in their own way.

And it really creates, a good synergy of, you know, just  creating really beautiful products.

And I'm really proud of that.

They have  so much to offer that I want to see what they can make.

And that's where some  of the greatest ideas have come from.

(instrumental music) It's an amazing experience to have someone  actually buy your stuff.

Because actually, it was very slow in the beginning, it was terrible.

And I look back at the old pieces and I'm like, ugh, I can't believe, I can't believe we pushed  past that and, like, made it so much better.

I've always said that, like, we're not the  coolest brand, I've never felt like the cool kid, but I just, I was like, I don't really care.

I  just want people to love it and to feel happy.

And because it's handmade, because everything is  done here locally, it does bring a higher cost to it, so it's, it is not like your typical  thing that you can just buy every day.

So, I love seeing people with their like old pieces,  and they're really treasured, and, you know, it's a really big deal to them.

It's something that,  like you actually really, really love, and that's important to me.

I don't want it to be something  that you just buy and then just cast aside.

I think I kind of go into things and I just  kind of like, I'm gonna do it, you know, not even really thinking about it.

I've just always  had an amazing support system.

And my family, my parents, my dad, he recently passed away like  but having having an Asian father who, you know, like growing up, you always want to do the best  for them.

They always expect a lot out of you.

He was never a tyrant about grades or  like anything, but there was always this expectation to do well, to be successful, have  a great career.

But he didn't push that on me, and he didn't push that on my brother.

He  wanted us to do something we were good at.

I'm very grateful that I had that, because a lot  of people don't, really don't have that support.

And I've, you know, I've taken, I've taken  it for granted a lot of my life, but it's a really big part of my journey.

And yeah, to have  both of them, to have my mom sew my products in the beginning, and, you know, teach me what she  knew.

Yeah, it's just, just been an amazing thing.

(instrumental music) The part I love the most is making  new things and new prints and new designs and coming up with stuff.

I wish I  didn't have to do any of the other parts, like the emailing and like whatever.

But when it  boils down to it, it's all it's all super fun.

When I walk in here, I'm always so happy just to  see everything laid out on the table and all the different prints.

And I'm still seeing new things  all the time that I love.

And, yeah, it's awesome.

(instrumental music) Kalaʻi Miller: Gyotaku is a traditional form of Japanese art that started in the 1800s  as a way for fishermen to document their catches.

It’s a practice that continues today, especially  with the popularity of fishing and diving in Hawaiʻi.

A Kauaʻi police officer shows us how  he turns today’s catch into tomorrow’s art.

(nats driving) Come on Rocky, let’s go.

Desmond Thain / Gyotaku Artist: My favorite fish to print umm, would probably be a parrot fish.

I like to  print parrot fish because they're so beautiful.

(instrumental music) My name is Desmond Thain.

I'm a  gyotaku or fish printing artist.

And I also have a secondary job  through the County of Kauaʻi.

Gyotaku basically means it's the Japanese  word for fish printing.

If you separate the word so gyo, g-y-o means fish.

And taku  means to rub.

So, the kanji symbols gyotaku is fish rubbing.

I like to think of it  as an entire fish's body fingerprint.

I had a inclination towards art just growing  up.

I was I always into like, Wyland art, to be honest.

And I'd like to draw sharks  and whales and dolphins.

And my fascination through art continued into my adult life.

And  I'd always partake in fishing with my friends and go diving and stuff like that.

So, one of my  buddies told me about the gyotaku, and I didn't really know of it.

I seen it in restaurants and  stuff.

I thought it was just like a rudimentary fish drawing on the wall.

I didn't think much of  it.

However, until I caught my first large kumu, my friend told me to go and gyotaku it.

So,  I brought it to somebody, and it wasn't as good as I thought it'd be.

So that kind of  started my inclination to trying it myself.

So, the first few prints, you couldn't tell  the difference from a pāpio and an uhu.

It was just a big blob.

I had to learn a lot.

It  was it was definitely a learning curve.

Once I started getting comfortable, or proud of my  artwork, I started posting it on my Facebook.

I woke up the next morning after my first  post, and I had like, 20 or 30 messages and people asking me to do it.

And I was like,  ah, is this like spam?

Or what is this?

And it was actual people.

And I kind of answered  a few and then it all started from there.

Let’s start here.

I'll start by preparing  the fish.

I like to ensure that the fish is already rinsed clean, there's no mucus on it.

I like to position it in roughly the  position that I want to print it in.

So, let's start by just pulling out these fins.

And in putting this what I call fin support is nothing special.

It's just a couple of old  t-shirts and towels and stuff.

Kind of like that.

So, the process of gyotaku is different for  each way of harvesting the fish.

It preferably I would like it to be caught fishing.

Just because  spearfishing obviously you have to spear the fish.

Most often than not the fish isn't incapacitated  in one shot, they usually struggle and fight and run into the reef and their scales and you  know, sometimes guts and stuff come out.

So, when the subject comes to me, I have to prepare it  in a manner in which it will look good on paper.

If it's caught fishing, all there is,  is a simple hook in the mouth, right.

So, this fish we're printing today  is what we call a blue fin trevalley, or what locals call them as  the pāpio.

It's a very common table fare fish too.

A lot of people  like to fry it up and eat it, pan fried.

I've also kind of gravitated towards different  animals.

I know kind of seems a little weird, but I've done it on like pigs  and chicken and, and reptiles and stuff like that.

And each subject  is different as far as the preparation and medium that you're printing with.

I just  always eager to learn and try something new.

So, you want to keep the scales so that way you  can see the details from the scales on the print.

So, then what I'll do next is I'll  just come back in and just kind of like pat it, ensure that all the  moisture is off of the fish.

For the most part, they come to me because  it's their personal best.

And they're most proud of that fish because they've been in  search of that fish their whole life.

I've had other people come to me for  different reasons.

For example, one of the most moving ones for me was this guy.

He brought me his late father's last fish he ever caught.

It was in his freezer for years, he was  telling me and the only way he could actually cherish and remember this fish, like  his father would be is to print it.

So now that I have that prepared, I'm just gonna go ahead and mix the ink.

It's just a  simple acrylic ink.

It's nothing fancy.

And then we're just going to dilute it so  we get the viscosity to the right fluidity.

I do it with two types of ink, sumi ink, which is  the traditional ink that ancient artists used to use, and then I use acrylic inks.

And acrylic inks  are non-toxic, and they're able to be washed off.

Sometimes it'll dry on the fins, but who's eating  the fins, right?

Once you clean it, you fillet it, and you got nice, beautiful pieces of meat, as  well as a beautiful piece of artwork, and you can enjoy it with the family as well as the artwork  for you know, forever as long as you live, yeah.

We're just doing the black and white ink, you  can go in after if you want to and add color, paint the eye in, but just  for demonstration purposes, we're just doing the initial print today.

So, I'll go in, take all the excess ink off of this brush and I like to go in the  direction of the scales here like that.

There's three different ways you can  detail your gyo, raw gyotaku prints.

There's what I call the traditional option,  which is pretty much just a black and white, raw print with just the eye.

Then you take  that piece of paper and mount it and frame it.

The second option is what I  call the basic option for me, is just the very simple colors on it.

No real  fancy detailing, no filling in of any gaps or anything.

It's just a very simple coloration,  the eye and then you mount it and frame it.

And then what I like to call my fine art or  premium style is almost like a photo realistic image of your fish.

What I'll do is I'll go and  take all these reference photos starting at the face all the way to the tail.

And just like any  human, each fish has its own individual traits, patterns, colors, so I like to specialize in that  area with my artwork, and mimic the fish that was actually printed.

And I'll do that to the tee  where it takes me like roughly eight hours on just the eye.

Some pieces take me 120 hours to complete  because of the size and the detail involved.

And the paper we're using this one is a mulberry  paper it's actually called unryu or cloud dragon paper.

And I like it because it kind of gives  it a Japanese feel.

There's all these fibers in it and there's all these cool little textures  in it other than just the piece of raw paper.

Gonna kind of imagine where the center is and just  lay it over the fish just like that.

Like I said, I like to kind of start at the center  here.

And as you're printing it, you can kind of feel where you're printing  without even having to check underneath the paper and you can kind of see as the  print transpires through the paper, so you're not questioning if you  touched the entire fish's body.

If you go into some of the art stores, they  won't sell every color that you need.

So, you're going to have to get  really good at mixing colors.

So, you try to have a reference, for  example, like a photo on a cell phone, and I'll hold the phone there and I'll keep  adding, okay?

So, if it's like an ʻōmilu green, okay, so that's not just a, like a lime green.

It's not like a deep green, it has a mixture of like mustard yellow, a little bit of blue, a  little bit of grass green, and you mix it and what you get is what I call the ʻōmilu green.

And  if you get that color just right, you'll save it.

Last couple of things I like to do  is just ensure that around the mouth and gill.

Kay.

Then I'll go ahead  and this up print this fin here.

It’s that side pectoral fin and do  the same for that top rudder fin.

Okay, and then we got about to lift it  here I'll start to display it for you guys.

What I get is a gyotaku print of the  entire fish.

And that is Japanese gyotaku.

(instrumental music) Tako is one of the most fun and  difficult subjects to print, it seems a bit intimidating.

But the reason  why I enjoy printing tako is because the way you can position the tako in all different  ways, is so unique.

You can print the same tako ten different times, ten different ways  and each of them look will look so different.

So, this is a piece that I actually printed back in 2016 I caught this giant tako I  think it was roughly 10 pounds.

The average size of these fish are usually  or tako are usually five to six pounds.

This one I didn't detail as much.

I wanted to  leave it as natural as possible.

So, you'll see like a lot of the wrinkles and blemishes  in the actual skin, all the veins in the head here.

And I kind of positioned it in a manner  in which I remembered it.

It was walking across the ocean floor when I first saw it, so I tried  to print it kind of like where it was walking.

Tako are very unique in which if they lose a  limb, they can grow it back so you can kind of see like on this limb here, there's like  a little arm growing back.

It was a really special day for me.

I was so happy I actually  kept the tako in my freezer for like two years.

I brought it out every six months  and looked at it and appreciated it.

I'm trying to mimic the feeling that they got  when they actually seen the fish swimming, that moment before they actually caught the fish,  brought it on to shore, whatever that feeling is, I'm trying to mimic that as best that  I can.

And when I deliver that piece of artwork to the customer, I know inside  of me that I've tried everything in my power to ensure that this is a quality  piece of art that this person is getting.

Kalaʻi Miller: Mahalo for joining us.

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For Home  is Here, I’m Kalaʻi Miller.

A hui hou.

Jeff Livingston: This car was built specifically for Benjamin Franklin  Dillingham as his private car.

And this car was actually used  by members of the royal family.

Jana Lam: My childhood room was very, very crazy.

And it was just covered with posters.

Posters of  like movies, those like Anne Geddes posters with the babies, I don't know, cats, animals.

I had a  huge Speed poster on the wall with Keanu Reeves.

Desmond Thain: The largest fish I've ever gyotaku’d probably be maybe  like a 800-pound marlin.

Smallest fish.

Um, maybe?

I want to say, like a  goldfish, somebody's pet goldfish.

Yeah.

(instrumental music)