Explore Our Image Collections

Donald Angus' collection of botanical prints are housed at the Bishop Museum, Foster Gardens, the National Tropical Botanical Garden, and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Hamilton Library. These exquisite illustrations were published in monographs and journals mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries. They reflect the enthusiasm of scientists, and the popularity of the exotic flora being introduced and cultivated in European botanical gardens. Many prints in the Angus collection are from Monandrian Plants of the Order Scitamineae by William Roscoe (1753-1831). Roscoe, a wealthy banker and amateur botanist, founded the Liverpool Botanic Garden in 1802. Many of the illustrations in his 1828…

The Images of Okinawa collection is composed of 195 color slides donated in July 2010 by Ms. Madeleine K. Van Epps, plus 53 black & white photos taken by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR). Kupfer Slide Collection154 of 195 color slides were taken between 1945 and 1946 by Dr. Donald H. Kupfer, the donor's father (see the featured slide photo). Dr. Kupfer was a Navy officer at the time he was stationed in Okinawa. He was born in 1918 and graduated from Yale. In 1955, Dr. Kupfer joined the faculty at the Department of Geology & Geophysics of Louisiana State University until he retired in the 1980s. Dr. Kupfer passed away in November 2010. He was 92…

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,…

Stephen Kolenda is a Professor Emeritus of Business Administration & Accounting at Hartwick College in New York. He lived in Thailand and China, and taught on two occasions for Chiang Mai University in Thailand at the Department of Business Administration. For about 25 years he tracked the economic development of northern Laos, including its effects on the environment and local culture.  He published several papers and made many presentations about the effects of the road construction that has culminated in the new Chiang Khong bridge and the opening of the road linking China to Thailand.  Starting in 1995 he maintained a photo journal of the area - preceding the start of the road, and…

The Kumaichi Hiraoka Postcard Collection was donated by his granddaughter, Nancy R. Hiraoka, in 2017 to the Japan Collection of the UHM Asia Collection Department. It consists of over 1,000 postcards that were created before 1945. This project digitized over 800 postcards and envelopes, which were all produced in Japan. Kumaichi Hiraoka, known as “Oka'' by his close friends, was born in Yamaguchi-prefecture in Japan. He came to Hawaii at the age of 16, and worked for two years on Waialua plantation. He worked as a taxi driver, then as a private chauffeur for the George Beckley family, Walter McFarland (Hawaii Tuna Packers); Robert W. Shingle (Walter House Travel Co., Territorial Senator)…

"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…

Images of "tourist travel" to and in Hawaii from 1956 and the early 1970s taken by Leslie Sheraton, described as "an avid photographer". The slides were in the possession of Leslie Sheraton until his death in 1978. His son, Don Sheraton then inherited the records until his death in 2003, when they passed into the custody of his widow, Kathy Ingraham, who donated the slides to the Hawaiian Collection at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2012.

These photographs were taken during the late 1920s and early 1930s by John B. Shackford during his travels and tenure as an English teacher in southern China.The titles of the photos are taken from Shackford's original hand-written notes identifying the pictures. However, in some cases, the writing is illegible. If you can help identify a place or name, we welcome your comments.

Scanned photographs from two overland trips in China (1987 and 1988). The first trip began with a 2-day ferry from Kobe, Japan to Shanghai, and ended in Hong Kong. The second trip began in Hong Kong and ended with a train ride from Beijing to Moscow (through Mongolia) on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Travel on both trips was by train, long-distance bus, and once (Kunming to Jinghong, Xishuangbanna) by hitchhiking.

The Steve Thomas Traditional Micronesian Navigation Collection is comprised of unpublished papers, audiovisual and photographic materials (including oral history transcripts and 35mm slides), publications and miscellaneous items related primarily to traditional navigation on the Western Carolinian island of Satawal, which is located within Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia.July 13, 2010: Master Navigator Mau Piailug Dies. Several news outlet are reporting today that Mau Piailug passed away over the weekend on his home island of Satawal: Honolulu Star-Advertiser1 ;  KITV Honolulu web story2 July 20, 2010: News outlets worldwide continue to publish memorials to Mau Piailug: Wall…