In New York City, tens of thousands of people crept close for a look at Hawaiians and their quilts.
On the north Kona Coast, schools of fish keep a man company.
Inside Schofield Barracks soldiers are on duty, on-time and in-time with their music.
But first Spectrum Hawaii discovers the source of T-shirt vision.
(Instrumental music) You will find them just about everywhere on just about everybody.
T-shirts.
Once plain white undergarments for men, T-shirts have gone public in a big way.
T-shirts can actually tell us a lot about ourselves.
They speak about where we've been, our political positions, the sports we enjoy and even the beer we drink.
It presents silent but ever-present statements about who we are or hope to be to the rest of the world.
They can also be art.
Each printed shirt requires a certain degree of design, color selection and application technique.
Many are simple and mass produced.
Others are crafted as either one of a kind or as part of a limited production.
All T-shirt wearers have more than one.
Now even institutions are collecting.
The Honolulu Academy of Arts is planning to print T-shirt designs onto archival material for preservation and at the University of Hawaiʻi, Dr. John Charlot has assembled local T-shirts which portray a slice of island life.
Here you see one of the very first popular T-shirts in the island, Hawaiʻi, “Haleiwa Strained Poi”.
And out of that shirt came a whole school of Haleʻiwa artists.
Here you have John Steenbergen.
This is typical of a shirt that was done for a store.
And it's a very beautiful shirt.
You see the sunset, you see the loving detail used on this store itself and they're still selling them in great quantities there that was done in 1977.
Because they can be quickly printed, T-shirts also reflect political stance and timely protests.
Sol Kahoʻohalahala, a Lānaʻi artist, created shirts for young swimmers to protest the use of speedboats at a local beach.
And because it was for children, they made a whole set of little keiki T-shirts.
This is a "Happiness is Hulopoe", a T-shirt for an infant.
And this is a T-shirt for a somewhat larger child.
And the protest worked and the Department of Land and Natural Resources said that from now on only Hawaiian canoes and children can use the beach.
(Ipu drumming) Cultural groups such as dance hālaus often print their own shirts to identify their members and their interests.
So, when you wear these things around the street, all sorts of aspects of our local life are brought to your attention and they're brought to your attention in a typically Hawaiian way which is through beauty, through the visual loveliness that we see all around us in nature.
(Airbrush sound) Local T-shirts artists, Chun Yee and Grant Kagimoto are among those who are creating designs unique to Hawaiʻi.
Their tools may differ - Yee uses an airbrush, while Kagimoto applies his design with a silkscreen - their subject is life in the islands.
There will never be two-of-a-kind airbrush T-shirts.
Airbrushing is sort of like you make one original and that's it.
And you can make copies, but two airbrush shirts will never be the same.
(Airbrush sound) I like to do airbrushing over the other forms.
I can rapidly see what is happening other than waiting for it to happen and its sort of because it's fast, on the spot kind of thing.
It will take him 30 minutes to complete this shirt.
With potential customers looking on, Yee and other airbrush artists work in the heart of Waikīkī.
We try to go for the tourist end of it.
We do surf scenes, just scenery mostly.
And sometimes people want pictures of their cars, their dogs, their cat, their girlfriends.
Yee composes as he paints.
His canvas is the front of a medium size shirt.
His tools are mechanical and requires skill and practice.
Like how to hold the thing, spray it, air pressure, paint.
But after you get over that, you, you have the freedom just to create and you just have the art to think about.
What you want to create, what you want to do, how are you going to approach it?
The colors are bright.
Young buyers prefer the fluorescent hues.
Seen as a souvenir that will provoke memories of a Hawaiian vacation.
Rewards?
I guess it's the self-satisfaction when the customer comes up to you and he says it's really a nice job and he's really happy and that's, that's the time when I get the most reward out of it, is when the customer is really happy.
(Instrumental music) Far away from the crowds of Waikīkī, Grant Kagimoto sits alone drafting new design ideas for his company, Cane Haul Road.
The name Cane Haul Road, like the design ideas, is taken from the context of island life, which is rapidly changing.
We're trying to capture, I think, a lifestyle that we're familiar with being in our mid-30s.
It's not as much the lifestyle my father's generation is familiar with nor is it the lifestyle my nephews or nieces may be familiar with.
We more or less design from our own personal experience.
We try to have a subject matter that's fairly broad, but as we see the local neighborhood shave ice stands disappearing around us and as we see, more and more fast-food establishments come up with this kind of generic American quality to them, we, we, we fear that those things that have made Hawaiʻi a unique and wonderful place to live in.
We feel those things are disappearing and we have an obligation to some extent to preserve that.
It is a subtle message laced with visual and verbal puns and just good design.
Ten University of Hawaiʻi art students began Cane Haul Road ten years ago.
Today, only Kagimoto and his partner Carol Hasegawa remain.
Hasegawa produces a new upscaled line of shirts featuring abstract designs.
Before any shirts are printed the design is subjected to a critique by the staff.
The classic, the word classic.
That's a possibility but I was afraid it might be too close to either mango summer.
Perhaps the classic shouldn't be darker, but maybe you could use a bright neon like fuchsia and instead of it being black?
After conferring with retail store buyers, Kagimoto makes the final design.
Then he and Glenn Shiraki go to work.
15 designs are put into production annually.
It is because of artists like Yee and Kagimoto, the simple white undershirt of yesteryear has taken on a new dimension.
It's transcended their simple basic, utilitarian quality and have become just a staple in what you would wear and they're worn in so many different kinds of activities now for so many different kinds of reasons.
(Instrumental music) The island of Manhattan played host to the island state of Hawaiʻi not long ago, as part of the rededication ceremonies of the Statue of Liberty.
Music: He's a streamlined man.
Watch the wind from his direction as it breaks.
The Great American Quit festival invited a display of Hawaiʻi's cultural heritage.
The Hawaiʻi Craftsmen responded by organizing lectures, workshops, demonstrations and clinics for personal instruction.
My first quilting, after I finished appliqueing it, was right here.
The unprecedented nature of this event was not lost on Hawaiʻi Craftsmen President Benji Bennington.
This is the first time we've taken an exhibition outside the state and it is lending a whole new direction to what we feel we could do as a state organization supporting the arts in Hawaiʻi.
And the arts of the quilt are so important to the culture and the peoples of Hawaiʻi.
Hawaiʻi's participation was funded by Hawaiian Tel through a grant from GTE.
And who helped decorate the hall, man the booths, pass out programs and monitor the quilts?
35 New York Hawaiians selected by the Hawaiʻi Visitors Bureau Regional Director Jimmy Kaina.
(Music) Hawaiians residing in New York might be full-time entertainers, students, airline or federal employees, but they responded to the code vigorously.
(Music) 30,000 people in four days passed by these symbols of Hawaiʻi.
17 quilts were on display, but not one was for sale.
Hawaiʻi's bold quilt colors startled the spectators with their free and flowing style.
Quite unlike the ordered geometric patterns commonly found on the mainland.
This quilt of maile, breadfruit and kāhili is from Washington Place.
It was given to Queen Liliʻuokalani in the 1890s.
The legacy of Hawaiʻi through the observers and interested quilters, but master quilter Mealiʻi Kalama noticed another attraction.
It seems to me that all the other quilters seem to accept that this was part of the beginning of quilting in the islands.
And that the way it was introduced was, it had a kind of a deep spiritual value in its presentation.
America, from New York to Hawaiʻi, is that diversity with unity of which we are all so very proud.
America is a great work of art.
It is an exquisite quilt with a million strong stitches of cultures and traditions forming a fabric of beauty and variety.
Hawaiʻi extends its warmest welcome and aloha to all of you here this evening.
Aloha pumehana and mahalo.
(Clapping) Music: Strike those chords.
(Instrumental) Maneuvering.
Stabilizing.
Holding firm through fluid time.
Youth and age move straight and forward.
No rewind.
The streamlined man.
He's a streamline.
New Yorkers soon learned the difference between a paniolo and a pineapple.
They were glad they came.
It was a welcome respite from a cruel April.
There was snow outside.
(Musical vocalizing) The fish ponds of the North Kona Coast have long been a source of food for the Hawaiian people.
Breached by lava flows throughout its history, the ponds have altered their shape, but not their content.
Sam Hook now cares for the fish of many of these ponds.
This area is known as Kalāhuipuaʻa.
It first belonged to John Parker's great granddaughter.
Her father Sam Parker bought it from King Kalākaua back in 1880s.
It's part of me.
I mean I grew up in this area when when I was a little boy.
The fish in the pond right now is mullet and awa.
Of course, there's a lot of ʻōpala fish as we call it, like the āholehole and manini and aʻu and, but the main fish here is supposed to be the mullet and the awa.
The fish was raised for the aliʻis at the time when the aliʻis was around.
Of course there's ponds all back there too, behind all those condominiums, and they take a lot of these fish from here and put it in them ponds to eat up some of the limu that grows back there.
They, what you call, harvest every now and then.
But I don't think they can really, how would you say it, commercialize the fish because this is conservation.
It's not, you know, a commercial thing.
The battalion marches on.
Men of war.
Protectors of peace.
Bold, brave and gallant.
But even they step to the beat.
The beat of the 25th Infantry Division band.
Tropic Lightning takes to the field.
This is Canby Field located at Schofield Barracks, Oʻahu.
Inside will be found men on a mission.
A soldier's mission for all, but for a select few also a musical mission.
The music of the United States Army.
(Marching band music) Entertainment to the troops.
To further the community relations of the United States Army.
To enhance the esprit de corps - that's their primary mission.
Secondary mission is combat mission.
(Brass band music) A brass quintet might be the goal of a soldier musician.
But for that privilege, he must do all other missions as well.
I came in to play my horn.
I didn't have the money for school at the time.
I'm from a steel mill town.
And I didn't want to go right to college.
I just was kind of tired of school.
And I figured, well, I want to play and they're gonna pay me to play, but the thing that I always have to remember is everyone's a soldier first.
No matter what, everybody, there's 300 some jobs in the army, but everyone's a soldier first.
(Brass band music) I remember, I wasn't in the 25th in Vietnam, I was very close by.
And we came up with a number of times, we'd get reports of the band being playing somewhere and all of a sudden, put down the instruments, pick up their rifle and go.
Most people don't realize that they see us march down the street and they say, that's real nice, that must be a nice job.
They don't see us crawling in the mud with our rifles, which we have.
We have gas masks.
You know we do all that stuff, all that guerrilla training.
We do it because we're in the army.
The Army doesn't make musicians, but they welcome those already skilled.
Because we were pretty well told when we went to the school if you don't already know it and can't do it, goodbye.
Traditionally, the Army Band was all male.
That is until Teresa Collins came along.
One time, an audition notice came out in what they call the daily bulletin for musicians to audition for the band there at Fort Jackson.
So, my sergeant thought it would be a big joke if he set up an audition without telling them that it was a woman.
He said, I have a soldier here who would like to audition on flute.
And they said, well send your soldier over.
And when I showed up, said oh, you know, there were no women in any band, but that one band at Fort McClellan.
And I auditioned there and was accepted.
And it was strange that it was Mr. Bowden that auditioned me who's the band master here now.
And he sent a letter to Washington, D.C. requesting an exception to policy.
The exception was made and there are other surprises in the Army's music such as Big Band jazz.
(Jazz band music) The band came to my hometown, the All Army Jazz band came, played a concert and that's where I knew that there was even bands.
I didn't even realize it.
And I signed up for three years just to try it out and because I wanted to play.
(Jazz band music) During October, we'll be playing in many high schools around the area.
Not as a hard sell type of, come on join the Army recruit.
But a soft sell, just give the Army presence in a school and show fine.
It is an opportunity.
(Jazz band music) When the musician takes to the field, he does what's expected of him, as does every soldier who follows this creed: I am the infantry.
I am my country's strength in war, her deterrent in peace.
I am the heart of the fight wherever, whenever.
I carry America's faith and honor against her enemies.
I am the queen of battle.
By my steadfast courage I have won 200 years of freedom.
I forsake not my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty.
I am relentless.
I am the infantry.
Follow me.
(Marching band music) One of the few times that we get to play.
I mean, you know, most of the time, so like a lot of times, especially here, we playing you know, we're doing soldier and type stuff.
And a lot of times we don't have time, you know, because we doing like military gigs yesterday.
Military gigs like outside that's a big difference between playing outside and sitting down playing a horn.
But to me it is.
And a lot of times when you're in the Army you don't get a chance to sit down and play so when they get a chance to sit down and play or really show what they can do, they like that.
I mean, they really enjoy it, I do.
(Band music) There aren't any, there aren't any first timers in this band.
That's why you'll see everyone's a sergeant.
The reason everyone the sergeant here is because everyone's been in that long.
(Band music) There are many U.S. Army bands in Europe, one in Japan, two in Korea, but only one in Hawaiʻi.
It's an assignment to covet.
The newcomers need not apply.
(Marching band music) You usually don't send people right to Hawaiʻi when they come in because everyone wants to go here.
(Marching band music) Hawaiʻi is sort of held up as a reenlistment area where fine, you want to, we'll give you, if you'd stay in, we'll give you Hawaiʻi, you know, come on out enjoy paradise for a while.
(Band music) And what do the old soldiers have to say?
The musicians who met their duty by foiling the purpose of alien hostilities or by stirring their comrades with a bugle call.
They come up and they hear the band playing an old march that they really love or something like this and they'll say boy, that makes me really proud today.
That type of thing.
(Band music)