Far from paradise, or Siberia

Available for over a year

At the turn of the last century, the Hawaiian Board of Immigration imported more than 1,500 Russians, mostly from Siberia, to work on the islands’ sugar plantations. It was a last-ditch effort to make the then-US territory of Hawaii more white. But soon after arriving, the Siberians went on strike. Image: A Russian plantation worker and his family in Hawaii, c.1918. Credit: Russian Collection, Hamilton Library/University of Hawaii at Manoa