Explore our online exhibit, Made in Kona; listen to stories of Kona told through videos and oral histories; or join Maile Melrose for her Meanderings.

Stay tuned for more exciting additions to our digital resources in the coming year!

 
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Maile’s Meanderings

For years, Maile Melrose has shared stories of Kona through an online publication created in collaboration with Kona Historical Society.

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Online Exhibits

View our most recent online exhibit, “Made in Kona.”

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Na moʻolelo O Kona

Listen to stories of Kona, as told by Hannah Kihalani Springer.

Kona Historical Society welcomed Kaoru “Kay” Ueda, the Curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection in the Hoover InstitutionLibrary & Archives at Stanford University to begin work on a project that will digitize Japanese language and multilingual newspapers in Kona Historical Society’s collections and make these items more accessible to the public.

This project is a collaborative effort between Kona Historical Society and The Hoji Shinbun Collection at Sanford University’s Hoover Institution, currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full‑image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers. This collection today contains over eighty newspapers titles published in Hawaii and the Americas. Most publications present a mix of content in Japanese and English, with formats and the proportionality of Japanese/English often changing as a reflection of shifting business and social circumstances.

One of the newspapers from KHS’ collection that Kay digitized and included in the online Hoji Shinbun Collection is an issue of Kona Echo from March 25, 1909. The Kona Echo, published semiweekly by Dr. Harvey Saburō Hayashi in 1897, was the second-oldest Japanese-language newspaper in Hawaii. Dr. Hayashi almost single-handedly published the Kona Echo, with the help of his family, while still practicing medicine. Before Dr. Hayashi began printing the Kona Echo using a typeset printer, each copy was printed by hand.

Digital Japanese Language Newspaper Project

View the entire Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Library & Archive

Online Videos

View a portion of our video collections and oral history recordings.