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In Hawaiʻi, Plantation Tourism Tastes Like Pineapple

The Dole pineapple plantation has a destructive history of transforming the Hawaiian Islands—something that continues today in the tourism industry.

In 1927, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company published a small booklet written by Marion Mason Hale entitled The Kingdom that Grew Out of a Little Boy’s Garden, which tells the story of a boy from Maine who sowed the seeds that “blossomed into one of the most romantic stories ever known.” James Drummond Dole founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in 1901, and over the next 56 years built it into the world’s largest fruit cannery. Key to his success was the canning of pineapple, as it enabled the fruit to survive the long voyage to markets in the eastern United States. In the early years, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company was producing around 45,000 cans per season, an output that climbed to nearly 5 million cans of fruit and juice per day by 1957, according to Henry Arthur White’s biography of Dole. This massive growth earned Dole the title of “The King of Pineapple.”

The depiction of Dole as a twentieth-century American success story obscures a deeper history of violence and imperialism. That past violence continues to be reified and perpetuated through the present day tourist industry. Pineapple is practically synonymous with the Hawaiian Islands, and no company looms larger in that image than Dole. Today, tourists can easily take a bus from downtown Honolulu to Wahiawa to see the Dole Plantation “experience.” The property invites visitors to spend the day exploring a maze for children, taking a garden tour, and riding a Pineapple Express train. The main building features a restaurant and a large Country Store that sells a wide variety of pineapple-themed products, underscoring how the company continues to place the utmost emphasis on maximizing profits as opposed to accurately representing its past. The story told to tourists is remarkably similar to the one in Marion Hale’s 1927 publication, one that easily misleads visitors about the history of the company and the larger fruit industry.

The Colonial Origins of Dole Plantation

James Dole was not the first in his family to settle in Hawaiʻi. His grandfather, Daniel Dole, was a member of the ninth company of Christian missionaries who, in 1840, set out to convert Native Hawaiians. Missionaries, like Dole, had a significant impact on the Hawaiian government as they increasingly imposed western notions of land and property, best exemplified by the Mãhele of 1848. These efforts resulted in a massive land grab from the Hawaiian people as stolen land was sold to Anglo-American businessmen and investors.