Hilo, Puna (ambient noise, waves crashing) Matthew Kamelameha singing: Hilo my home town.

Come along... Narrator  On the eastern side of the island of Hawaiʻi, lay the Hilo and Puna districts.

The rugged, almost lonely beauty of Puna contrasts against the capital of Hilo, which pulsates with activity and the creative spirit of those who make Hilo their home.

Matthew Kamelameha singing: Learn to do the hula.

Make some whoopie too.

Start the day, wear a lei and a colored muʻumuʻu hear the crowd sing aloud, "Aloha nui to you!"

For there's no place on earth where friends prove their worth than Hilo, my home town Judge Shunichi Kimura I have an enormously I guess an affectionate and emotional recollection of Hilo cause I grew up in Mountain View about 15 or 16 miles from here and we used to come down say once or twice a year to Hilo because this was the big town and we were from the country.

And the Fourth of July, for instance, the parades and the events and Moʻoheau Park where you now see was the center of activity.

And EK Fernandez, you know, came to town for once a year.

And I think we had something like 15 cents in our pocket, you know, five cents for the ride to Hilo and 10 cents for the fair.

And we took home gifts at 10 cents are we're talking about that 30s.

So and Hilo was substantially differently.

It was the center for the island, was surrounded by agriculture, sugar primarily.

And the rest of the areas were truly rural.

And they depended upon Hilo for not only the governmental center, but also the financial center and the commercial center.

And I remember the trains running you know, right makai of here on all of the shorelines.

Almost everything moved by train and all the way up Hāmākua and all the way up to Glenwood area.

And it was interesting, it was a just a very live place and everything occurred there.

And the shops were pretty much as you see the remnants now of tiny, you know, Mom and Pop family type of thing.

And they were no supermarkets obviously.

And there were buildings and houses all around the front of the street.

So what you see now on the redevelopment areas open space, which is built up with all kinds of facilities, commercial centers, and also tenements behind them and of course, the tidal wave of '46, the April 1 tidal wave of '46, it changed the physical frontage of Hilo.

And also population moved around and of course, the devastating 1960, next large tidal waves, again caused an enormous amount of damage and, and so Hilo as you see it today is almost totally different from the Hilo that I grew up in the 30s and 40s.

Then the two major changes the physical change, of course it because of the tragedy of the two major tsunamis that hit here.

And the other is of course the island economy has changed where sugar has come down and is now a more limited part of the Hawaiʻi's economy.

Narrator The decline of sugar production stimulated diversification of Hilo's economic base.

Traditional sources of income such as the fishing industry have become a way of life for many.

In the early morning dawn, the fish auction begins.

(Cart rattles) Wayne Okutsu Today we have basically yellowfin tuna and caught outside of Hilo and down south toward Pohoiki side and it's all locally, locally caught last night and Saturday night.

Since Monday's our first day of auction we have fish that's been caught Saturday night, put in the reefer and brought out today.

Why we core the fish before auction is because it gives you, it gives the buyer an indication of what's really happening within the fish itself: color, texture of the meat, burn.

You know that we have a problem with burn being this far into the season, and this will be kind of like an indicator to show the buyer at least 70 to 80% What's really happening within the fish itself.

(Bell rings) Wayne Okutsu 189 pound, $1.

Dollar, dollar, dollar, sold.

One dollar for him.

Dr. Leon Bruno Of course it was a fishing community and a plantation community.

The missionaries were very effective throughout the island here as well as on other islands in terms of converting people to Christianity.

The Lymans had a unique role in this because even though David Belden Lyman was trained as a as a minister, he was first and foremost an educator.

When they first came the only place to stay basically was at the missionary homes.

And so the Lyman Mission House was the stopping place for royalty and sea captains and people of note.

When they came, the family had to make room for them.

And that was the reason that you see up in the attic today cots and things where the youngsters and later years as they grew older, the family used to stay and open up their bedrooms for the traveling dignitaries.

Narrator Modern Hilo is alive with small thriving businesses, one of which is the Hilo Macaroni Factory.

Earl Ikeda This is the process for the crackers of Hilo Macaroni Factory are made.

This is where it all begins.

This is our mixing area.

This is where we put all of our ingredients into this particular mixing machine here.

It's ground up for, for several minutes and then put into vats that are then taken over to our aging on this side here.

In cracker manufacturing, the dough has to age or sit for several hours before it can be rolled out or sheeted out and made into crackers.

After the crackers are properly aged and it's taken to what we call our first cutting machine.

What happens here is that the machine will compress all the loose dough together and someone will come and cut it to slab such as these that are piled up here.

Now this is a, a say, a slab of compressed dough here.

After the dough has been properly set for a while or let allow to rest then we put it on to our second roller.

This particular machine or roller compresses the the dough to a thinner thickness.

This is called sheeting.

At this point here we also recycle some of the materials that comes back.

Then after it's properly rolled, it's put on to our cutting machine on the other side here.

What the cutting machine does is it compresses the dough or sheets the dough to the proper thickness that we desire.

Then it's put through our cutter then cut to different molds, different shapes.

And then finally, we we have people who scoop, we use the term scooping for putting the dough onto a board and then insert it into the oven over there.

After the crackers are taken out of the oven, this process we call raking because we use a tool similar to a rake to bring out the crackers from the oven.

After that's been done it's put into containers such as these and then transported here to our sorting table.

Here the crackers are sorted out and graded.

The ones for sale and the ones that we use as rejects.

This is the final stage where it's, where the packages are sealed, put into cartons and put away.

Narrator The tranquility of nature surrounding Hilo induces creativity and culture.

Man The style of dancing that we do is considered court type dancing.

And court dancing is called ukwanshinudu.

Ukwanshin literally refers to the ship that brings the crown.

It refers to the dances that were performed at the coronation ceremonies of the kings of Okinawa.

According to what was explained to me by the teacher, the sensei, was that it took about three years of training prior to the actual ceremony.

And it was from these teachers or these dancers, that my own teacher learned his dance techniques.

It has been passed down from his father to my sensei, and to several of his students, and I feel lucky to have been one of his students.

Grace Chao Takehiro The traditional Chinese dance, to me, is my heritage, my roots.

It's something that I can't get away from.

Modern dance is my expression.

It allows me to do anything I want to do.

It allows me to say anything I want to say, whereas traditional dance, you fit into the dance, the dance don't fit into you, you know what I mean?

You have to be that character, it's already set.

Whereas in western dances, you're allowed the freedom to be whatever you want to be to say whatever you want to say.

Traditional dances I don't think allow you that freedom.

I don't feel like I would be the same person, anywhere else in the world of who I am today.

And bottom line is, I feel I'm very close to truth living in Hilo.

Very simple, very basic.

Everyday you have to face yourself.

Every day you have to face people who are simple.

Who doesn't like a lot of frails, a lot, a lot of things, material things, very basic.

Linus Chao My photography, and just helped me as a notes to make a sketch.

When I was there, I could not paint right there.

Because you don't have time to put equipment.

Why I use camera and I took the pictures.

When I bring home, several thousand pictures will give me lots of reference.

I been Hilo 19 years.

I choose Hilo is my home because I love him very much.

Hilo is a place between the rich and poor doesn't have much difference.

The rain doesn't bother me at all.

I love the water.

And I painted the most of my paintings related with water, snow, and clouds, waterfall and my pictures also.

The water and mountains in the Chinese philosophy means many things.

And my own feelings is water is always moving, pure, clean, energy and the help human beings so much, so important.

So I love water.

So that's why I always paint water.

The, in Hilo and there's so many beautiful things, the bay, the waterfall and the volcano.

When I paint watercolor I enjoy very much.

It's very relaxing work.

You don't have worries when materials are not as expensive.

If it's not good, you change another paper.

And life is limited.

But art is unlimited.

A good artists suppose likes the audience to be happy, to be unlimited.

That's the philosophy of art should be.

So when I paint this I feel this way.

Just do it, enjoy it.

No matter the mountain higher or lower doesn't matter.

It's not that important.

Jane Chao I was born in northern China near Siberia.

I grew up in Japan.

So I took my first art lessons in Japan.

In that time the ladies take art, not because you become an artist , but to be a lady you should know how to write poems and play musical instrument and do some artwork and just to have your prestigious you know, standard.

I wasn't quite serious, but I really enjoyed you know to create something.

Then afterwards we went back to China.

I took from Chinese masters and gradually, I really become very interested in art.

My type of work is that I go out and sketch or take photographs and try to put on the silk.

But there's no way that I can paint as pretty as the God's creation.

The nature is so beautiful, I cannot do it.

So rather to struggle to make it like a real, I make my own interpretation.

Sometimes maybe it looked like artificial flowers.

But I think that will also show my character, my soul, and I just keep creating my own small world.

Dan Deluz  My name is Dan Deluz.

I'm born and raised in Hilo, lived here all my life.

I learned woodcarving in '69.

Start carving different woods.

When you know you got a good piece, you don't want to sell it, you know, you really gotta good then you know you you know, ballgame, you doing something good.

The main thing is quality.

You can't do a quality product, don't do it.

Usually milo and koa are the easier woods that people start off with.

Koa is considered a hard wood to work in, but actually it's one of the best, it's easy for us now.

It's really, no woods are hard for us now.

Because it's the same, same principle.

Some just little cuts a little harder.

Some is a little bit different on sanding, but it's really not that bad.

I work with all the different woods.

(Machine whirring) Dan   Deluz Dip 'em in mineral oil, brings all the natural colors of the wood out.

We dip it for about three times and let it sit overnight.

This is what has been dipped already.

But we had put a couple of butterfly patches on 'em.

You see the Hawaiian butterfly patches on two sides.

That's the finished product.

It stays here overnight and wipe it down, it'd be ready to use.

Karron Nottingham Halverson Although we're listed almost like a small city, we're basically a small town.

The people are very caring and very close and very compassionate.

And there's a sensitivity between all of the cultures.

We all intermingle.

The religious aspects, the shopping attitudes etc.

are all you're very responsible to, you know to itself and each individual is responsible to your community.

You feel this responsibility to the community of Hilo to give back something because it gives so much.

In my work in handmade paper, mixed media constructions.

That's what I call what I do.

What I'm attempting to do is to tell stories, I'm telling a lot of personal stories.

I'm telling stories about what I see the shapes I see, the colors I see, what motivates me.

In my work, I personify the essence of womanhood, the essence of woman, of mother, who I am, in my little characters, in the dogs and in the cats that roam around the colorful environments, the stylization, the childlike forms.

I want to relate to my children, I want to relate to children.

I want to relate to the population, the child of the population.

That pureness.

It's not a real educated art.

It's more of a folk art.

It's a person's art.

It's a folk craft.

It's art for people.

It's the same thing like quilts, like an old family quilt or an heirloom piece of tatting or lace, something that's very precious, but not made from precious materials.

Narrator Designer Sig Zane creates a legacy of precious material by immortalizing the shape of native Hawaiian plants onto fabric.

Sig Zane Well sometime back when I was a farmer, not really, maybe call it gentleman farmer, I used to work in the taro patch and I was real close those leaves.

So that's what one of the first design was a taro leaf.

And then after that I kind of went into playing around with the other Hawaiian plants, the ʻieʻie or the ʻōhiʻa because got so much of it over here.

I guess that's the direction I like working in.

I've been all over the world, but nothing beats Hilo in terms of living and surrounded by all this green it's easy to be inspired.

I try to make it a little educational in a sense.

A lot of people might see it, some plants, but they don't know the name of it.

And I try to make that known in my work.

I try to bring out things that maybe they don't know the name and I will say it, reiterate it so that it stays in their mind and at least besides being functional wear, it's educational.

Narrator We leave Hilo and journey to Puna where the rich volcanic soil spawns fields of orchids.

Puna's rugged landscape is unusually still in the wake of the threat of future volcanic flows.

Roy Blackshear I think the future for this island is is fantastic.

To me, this is a sleeping giant.

Island of Hawaiʻi is a sleeping giant.

And I I say that because most people think that Honolulu, Hawaiʻi they think that you're on Hawaiʻi.

And if they want go visit another island, maybe they go to Maui, maybe they go to Kauaʻi.

But now they're beginning to find out that by golly there is an island called Hawaiʻi.

My grandfather was W.H.

Shipman and I spent an entire year living down here with W.H.

Shipman and Herbert Shipman, his son.

We now live in Herbert's house, down by the water.

I started collecting electromechanical items, such as the telephone, and then that sort of branched into other lines and before, and before I knew what I was, I was collecting photographs.

My wife Jackie, and I moved back 1969 from Honolulu to Hilo.

She said, how many old cameras do you have?

I said, I have no idea I said we'll have to get them out and pack them though.

And so at that time, we had around 60.

And now I think I have over 100.

Henry Bianchini The Big Island, Puna in particular, is so alive with subject matter.

One could spend the rest of their life just on the beach stones, just the particular forms that you can find in the beach stones along the Puna coast.

You could draw landscapes for the rest of your life, there is no end to the subject matter here.

The light is so beautiful.

The climate is so beautiful.

It's a perfect place to work.

The limitation of living on the Big Island in Puna, in particular, I find benefit, is a benefit for me.

It gives you time to work out your themes and work out your forms and understand yourself better before you start taking it out to the marketplace or the world, the art world.

And you can test your your mettle, as they would say.

I'm very pleased to be able to work thanks to my family, my wife, Diane, and my children, but I'm never really satisfied.

I'm always in love with the piece that I'm working on.

And there's great hope in that.

But there's never any real satisfaction or never any, any real feeling that you've accomplished anything.

It's the next piece.

Tom Rissacher  The wave is such an incredibly beautiful phenomenon of nature that is really exhilarating to watch.

And I think it speaks of something very, very ancient, almost like a primal energy form that's been around for billions of years.

And you look at a wave or a painting of a wave and it could be it could be a wave that broke on the shores of Antarctica 100 million years ago or it could be breaking right now somewhere on the beaches of Hawaiʻi.

It's always it always has that.

That same feeling and that same look about it.

There's what I deal with his energy patterns.

When I'm painting the waves, I'm essentially dealing with the energy patterns and the light patterns that are going by.

And they repeat themselves with the universal regularity that I think everybody feels on an intuitive level.

A lot of people, a lot of people look at my paintings, and they say, wow, it looks like a photograph, which is a compliment of sorts.

But what I'm aiming at and what some people occasionally they'll look at a painting and say, God, that's better than a photograph.

And that is really what I'm aiming at.

Because it's not that difficult, really, to make a painting that looks like a photograph.

But it's a little more difficult to go beyond that.

And, in other words, provide all the visual information that's there, but improve upon it, and enhance it.

And that's what I'm trying to do with most of my paintings is to create that sense of realism without adhering strictly to the photographic image, in other words, I'll adjust everything in the picture to fit the needs of the painting.

Robert Keliʻihoʻomalu My name is Robert Keliʻihoʻomalu.

Born and raised in Kalapana.

My wife, we both moved back and that time we didn't have no electricity like we have now.

So she has to wash clothes, so she had to pack the clothes down here and we have a pond right down here on the mauka side of the black sand beach.

And that's where she used to wash her clothes by hand.

Philamen G Girl Keliʻihoʻomalu Back then in 1962, was so quiet and was so beautiful too that time and the ocean the sand was so nice.

Didn't have any wash out at that time.

And I enjoyed living here in Kalapana.

My hope for my children is to live in Kalapana, but there's hardly any job around around here, so they have to go out there and you know, look for job.

The children are welcome to come back anytime they want to.

Nalani Kanakaʻole This is it.

No place like Hilo.

Pualani Kanahele Yeah, Hilo is home, you know.

The, the place here is this home for us and you can go away for a few years, but you always come back to Hilo because this is where we're born this is where we're raised.

Our childhood was good and we'd like for our children to be able to experience that kind of childhood too.

And you know the land, the area, the people mean a lot to us here.

So there's a very deep connection and yeah, I don't think I'd live anywhere else.

Singing: He ho'oheno kē 'ike aku Ke kai moana nui lā Nui ke aloha e hi'ipoi nei Me ke 'ala o ka līpoa He ho'oheno kē 'ike aku Ke kai moana nui lā Nui ke aloha e hi'ipoi nei Me ke 'ala o ka līpoa He līpoa i pae i ke one Ke one hinuhinu lā Wela i ka lā kē hehi a'e Mai mana‘o he pono keia