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Growing up on Maui in the 1950s, my best friend was a haole classmate whose father was a high-ranking administrator at the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. plantation in Puunene. We both attended Kaunoa Grade School, which was a former English standard school in Spreckelsville, a plantation town started by sugar baron Claus Spreckels. 

As an indication of how much I thought about my friend, since he was a Milwaukee Braves fan, they became my favorite Major League Baseball team, even though I was playing for a team called the Phillies. Because my friend’s uncle, Marquis Calmes was a Republican member of the Maui County Board of Supervisors, I cheered for GOP candidates to win during the elections. At my age, I hadn’t even heard of the Democratic revolution.

I didn’t realize until much later that my friend’s uncle, who was his mother’s brother, was Portuguese, which meant his mother was also Portuguese. When I visited their home, she seemed very much like other haole women I knew at that time, such as my school teachers. Their ancestry also meant my friend was half-Portuguese, although I didn’t think about this until decades later.  

One reason I didn’t regard my friend as having Portuguese ancestry was because he was very different culturally and socioeconomically from my Portuguese friends in Kahului and classmates who entered Kaunoa when the school in Spreckelsville closed in 1958. Unlike my friend, they all spoke pidgin, as I did, and were working class with fathers employed by the plantation.

This introduction is a way to bring up some of the issues that motivated me to write because while teaching at University of Hawaii Manoa for 30 years, I was struck by the paucity of Portuguese students in my classes, although I’m sure some of them were.

One reason it seemed, at least to me, that Portuguese are not as evident in Hawaii compared to the 1950s and 1960s is because of cultural assimilation by some of them to haole identity, as exemplified by my friend’s mother and my friend. 

Another reason for a less visible Portuguese presence is intermarriage, especially with Native Hawaiians and haoles. Given the demeaning stereotypes about Portuguese disseminated through jokes told about them and the desirability of being Kanaka, those with Native Hawaiian ancestry tend to assert that identity and status, even though they might have a Portuguese last name.

In a recent documentary on “Portuguese in Hawaii,” a woman who appears to be in her 60s and thus perhaps third generation, . 

She remarks, “It’s very hard to find people like me who are pure Portuguese. Usually, everyone is part Portuguese. They’re either one-half or one-fourth. They’re either Chinese-Hawaiian-Portuguese — that’s a very common mixture by the way — or Portuguese-Japanese.” 

Assimilating to and claiming haole identity by Portuguese is a more complex issue. Those with the requisite cultural and class background, like my friend’s mother, could make that transition, which has become much easier since then, particularly for women who drop their Portuguese family name upon marrying.

But for my working-class Portuguese classmates and their second-generation parents, not only was assimilation to haole identity much more difficult, it was also much less desired. I think that this preference to be considered local and not haole is still the case with most Portuguese, even though they have risen considerably in class status.

UH Manoa history professor John Rosa, who is Portuguese-Chinese and in his mid-50s, agrees. He remarked, “In general, to people my age and younger in the 21st century, a person who’s Portuguese might be considered white (because of European ancestry) — unless they’re Portuguese-Hawaiian — but not haole.”

After 1930, the U.S. census removed a significant barrier to Portuguese assimilation to being considered haole when it deleted the ethnic category “Portuguese.” From then on, they were included under the white or “Caucasian” racial classification. Previously, the latter category included two subgroups, Portuguese and “Other Caucasian,” which referred to haoles proper. 

In 1930, the census recorded 27,588 Portuguese in Hawaii, who represented 7.5% of the population and a substantial 37% of the total Caucasian population of 73,702. As they disappeared from subsequent decennial census tabulations, the percentage of Portuguese in the Caucasian population declined steadily as increasing numbers of whites arrived during the military buildup prior to and during World War II and after statehood.

Shortly before the census began to classify Portuguese as Caucasian, University of Hawaii psychology professor Stanley Porteus published his book, “Temperament and Race,” co-authored with Marjorie Babcock. Their research methods and conclusions have been consistently criticized over the past century for closely reflecting racist thinking in Hawaii at that time. 

The book claims to be a study of temperamental differences among several non-haole ethnic groups, including Portuguese, Native Hawaiians, Japanese and Filipinos. To establish these differences, the authors had 20 elite haoles – 16 of whom were plantation managers – provide their supposedly objective ratings of those minorities on eight psychological and behavioral traits, such as “planning capacity” and “self control.” 

But rather than provide empirical data that might support the official categorization of Portuguese with haoles, “Temperament and Race” affirmed the racial boundary between them. The mere inclusion of Portuguese among the study subjects along with other non-haole groups was a clear indication that haoles considered them racially different and inferior to themselves, just like the other non-haole minorities.

In the continental U.S., Portuguese, like Irish and Italians, became racially white but not in Hawaii. 

Furthermore, despite being of European descent, most Portuguese in Hawaii do not claim to be haole. As UH Manoa social work faculty member Michael DeMattos wrote in his 2022 doctoral dissertation, “Race, Class and Identity Formation among the Portuguese of Hawai‘i, 1880-1930,” “At times white, never haole, and always local.”

While the U.S. census does not provide information on Portuguese in Hawaii, one means to estimate their population is provided by census data on ancestry. According to the American Community Survey of the census for 2016-2020, 48,005 state residents, or 3.4% of the population, reported having Portuguese ancestry, which seems a reasonable figure compared to the almost 28,000 in 1930. 

That current number is enough to maintain Portuguese identity and community, despite an ongoing relatively high intermarriage rate for several decades. Furthermore, a significant number of historical and cultural sources on Portuguese in the islands have been produced very recently. 

The informative documentary I mentioned, “Portuguese in Hawaii,” is accompanied by a book by the documentary’s producer, Nelson Ponta-Garca.

Another book, “Between the Sea and Sky: The Saga of My Portuguese American Family in Upcountry Maui, 1881-1941,” was published in 2021 by Donna Binkiewicz, a professor of history at California State University Long Beach. She is a fifth-generation descendant of Portuguese immigrants to Maui where she was born. 

In the community, in addition to organizations started much earlier, such as the Holy Ghost societies, the was established in 2017 as a nonprofit organization as a “focal point for Portuguese culture and tradition in Hawaii.” In 2021, a groundbreaking ceremony was held in Hilo for the . 

These recent developments are very important ways for Portuguese in Hawaii to define themselves long after their arrival almost a century and a half ago as plantation laborers.

Despite government agencies no longer counting them, Pukiki are counting on themselves to sustain their community, culture and identity in Hawaii.