From DiscoverNikkei.org
Hole hole bushi
Hole hole bushi are songs that Japanese immgrants created and shared about their work and life while working on Hawaii's sugar plantations. Through these songs, Issei expressed their frustrations, longing for home, and feelings about being immigrants.
Mrs. Kasahara sings her hole hole bushi.
Lesson plan using hole hole bushi for Grade 4. (click the title)
Women and work hole hole bushi audio.
"Conscience and the Constitution": "Song of Cheyenne" (PBS).
- "Scrawled on a scrap of paper were the lyrics for a song we found in the camp papers of resister James Kado. Our translator, Violet Kazue de Cristoforo, a tanka poet in her own right, noted that the authors must be Hawaiian due to the formal structure and the use of "aloha." We believed it was a poem, but when we gave it to Mako, the founder of East/West Players in Los Angeles and an Academy Award nominee, he recognized the meter as that of an Issei work song, "Hore Hore Bushi," which would be sung by Hawaiian plantation workers as they cut the sugar cane. Both Kado and Yanagisako confirm the song was meant to be sung, not recited. It is this song which is heard in the documentary."
- Script of play, including the transcript of song.
Bibliography
- ジャック・Ｙ・タサカ, ホレホレ・ソング 哀歌でたどるハワイ移民の歴史 (日本地域社会研究所, 1985)