This homespun museum occupies the former residence of the sugar mill’s superintendent. There’s the usual display of industrial machinery, including a working model of a cane-crushing plant, but what lingers afterward is the human story.
One exhibit traces how the sons of missionaries took control of Maui’s fertile valleys and dug the amazing irrigation system that made large-scale plantations viable. Compelling black-and-white photographs spotlight the labor and recreational aspects of plantation life. An early-20th-century labor contract on display, from the Japanese Emigration Company, committed laborers to work the cane fields 10 hours a day, 26 days a month, for $15.
