OFFSHORE

In 1881 — less than a week after King David Kalakaua left Hawaii for a yearlong tour around the world — a ship arrived in Honolulu carrying laborers sick with smallpox. The decisions that Hawaii’s future queen made to keep people safe – and the pushback she received from angry citizens and frustrated business owners […]

How do you practice Hawaiian culture when you’re thousands of miles from Hawaii? And what happens when Hawaiians abroad finally get a chance to go home?

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. And while many have cited Hawaii’s high cost of living as the main reason for leaving, it’s really just a piece of a much larger story.

After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, hundreds of disenfranchised Hawaiian musicians would journey to the continental U.S. in search of fame, fortune, or just a chance to make a decent living. Some would die in poverty and obscurity. Others would change American music forever.

Two decades after Hawaiians helped build a fort for John Sutter in California, another group of Hawaiians would find themselves stranded in Massachusetts. And take up arms in America’s bloodiest war.

This is the story of a group of Hawaiians who ended up in California more than 160 years ago — back when Hawaii was an independent nation. And how their descendents are still connected to the islands in unexpected ways.

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. It’s a staggering number that raises questions about what Hawaii will be like in coming years, and how Native Hawaiians will carry their islands with them to far flung places.

This season, Offshore is taking a deep dive into the Hawaiian diaspora. Join journalist Kuʻu Kauanoe, as she digs into what is driving Hawaiians from the islands today. And tells some amazing stories about Hawaiians who left long ago.

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is one of the most remote places on Earth. Now, it’s threatened by climate change, pollution and politics.

When we started reporting this season, we expected it to be a story about troubling adoptions that happened in the 1990s. But it quickly became clear that issues with Marshallese adoptions were never fully resolved, they simply moved. To new counties. States. Adoption agencies. So we’ve continued chasing leads while producing this season. In this […]