Explore Our Image Collections

"Photographs in Connection with the Investigation of Working Conditions of Filipino Laborers on Hawaiian Sugar Plantations, 1926," by Lt. Colonel Robert A. Duckworth-Ford, Aide-de-Camp to Governor-General of the Philippines Leonard Wood. This collection is from Alex Ford of California, grandson of Lt. Colonel Duckworth-Ford. Titles are taken from typed captions present on each photograph. Full text of the report is available here in PDF format.Related reading:Report of the Director of Labor to His Excellency the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands is available here in PDF format. You may be interested in reading Filipino History in Hawaii Before 1946 found…

The visually stunning propaganda posters produced by the new Soviet government from 1917 onward are fairly well-known. Communist Party slogans to the masses were featured. There are many books on the subject, and several good collections now available on the internet: Hoover Institution, Duke University, New York Public Library, Swarthmore, Library of Congress, and so on. There are also sites on Yandex in Russian.Our collection of 145 posters covers the Cold War period: roughly the end of World War II until Gorbachev’s perestroika/glasnost era (1984), and a few into the late 1980s. Socialist realism art and utopian images of life in the Soviet Union dominate. Political propaganda,…

The Gandhi Photos Collection contains 27 photographic images of and related to Mohandas Gandhi. They were created by and for the Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Government of India, capturing moments in his life from 1886-1948. The images are of Gandhi with other historic figures, such as Lord Mountbatten, Sarojini Naidu (a poet and Indian Parliamentarian), Jawaharlal Nehru, Sundar Vallabhai Patel, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, and Lord Cripps (architect for the partition of India). There are also family pictures that include his brother, sister, and wife. The locations of the images are diverse, including Gandhi's birthplace in Porbander, South Africa, Rajkot, Simla, Srinagar, Delhi, in the…

The album contains the passport applications for 165 people who wished to return to their native country. Every person was required to submit a photograph, and details on where they were born and when, what work they did in Russia, year and name of ship on which they came to Hawaii, what work they did here, how many children, and their religion.

The South Asia Collection at Hamilton Library began with the Oriental Institute in 1932, initially acquiring materials on Sanskrit, Indian philosophy, and religion. Today, the collection is rich in resources about South Asia from the 18th, 19, and 20th centuries, and filled with treasures on a variety of subjects, including history, travel writing, and literature. Several of these are rare items, held in the Special Research Collection, such as Views of India, an album of fifty-four water-color views of architectural sites at Agra, Delhi, and Mathura; Thomas Pennant’s Indian Zoology, a beautifully illustrated volume on animals and birds on the subcontinent; travel accounts by William…

There are about 1,500 magic lantern slides in the UHM Japan Collection, and these were the gifts of two donors: the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 国際文化振興会 (KBS), a predecessor of the present Japan Foundation 国際交流基金, and the family of the Reverend Takie Okumura 奥村多喜衛(1865-1951). In 1930s, KBS (1936-1972) actively created lantern slides and distributed them to institutions around the world to help educate about Japan. The records indicate (Gregg Sinclair Papers, UH Archives & KBS documents, JF Library) that 682 lantern slides were sent to the University of Hawaii. In 1999, 466 of the slides on this site were found at the house of Prof. Yukuo Uyehara…

The Stanley Kaizawa Collection consists of three groups: (1) 135 English translations of Kabuki play scripts that were censored by the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) of the Allied Forces of Japan, (2) audio tapes of Dr. James Brandon interviewing Stanley Kaizawa, and (3) three photo albums containing 360 photos and 14 pieces of ephemera. The digitized photos and items in the three albums contain: (1) Bromides gifted to Kaizawa by Kabuki actors whom he had befriended. Many of the bromides have actors' autographs and short messages addressed to Kaizawa, (2) photos taken by Kaizawa to capture CCD activities and the censors' interactions with ordinary Japanese people, and (3) various…

Vladimir Ossipoff (1907-1998) was Hawaii's foremost modernist architect with a career spanning more than sixty years. He opened his own firm in 1936 which changed names several times because Ossipoff worked with many of Hawaii's most talented architects. In the 1940s he organized the Associated Architects with Allen Johnson, Philip Fisk, and Alfred Preis. In 1956, architects Gregory Goetz, Alan Rowland and Sidney Snyder joined the firm and later became partners in Ossipoff, Snyder, Rowland and Goetz. The firm worked on over 800 projects from homes to iconic buildings, including the IBM Building, expansion of the Honolulu International Airport, the Pacific Club, Outrigger Canoe Club,…

This digital photo collection by photographer and documentary filmmaker Paul Barreto focuses on the Tboli and Ubo communities around Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, Philippines. The images were taken during two visits to Lake Sebu. Paul first met Boi Myrna Pula, a Tboli cultural worker and storyteller, in May 2024 during a speaking tour in San Diego, California. She invited him and his partner, Kristine Angeles, to visit the community and introduced them to fellow cultural worker Mechie Belleza Mafok and Datu Benjie Manuel, School Head of the Tboli Sebù Senior High School. Boi Myrna, Mechie, and Datu Benjie work collaboratively on cultural preservation and advocacy. According to Boi Myrna,…

力行会　海外日本人移民関係幻燈資料The collection features 179 black/white and hand-colored images of the lantern slides, which were created and provided by the Nippon Rikkokai Foundation 日本力行会. The Nippon Rikkokai was founded by the late paster Hyodayu Shimanuki 島貫兵太夫 in 1897 to assist Japanese people who immigrated to other counties. The main images of the lantern slides at this site are lives of those immigrants to Americas, mainly to Brazil, in late 19th and early 20th century. The UHM Library has been given permission to share the images through the Library's Image…