PUUNENE SCHOOL

a Glimpse of the Past…

Hawaii’s last working sugar mill, in Puunene, Maui, produced the final shipment of sugar from Hawaii in December 2016.

Old Puunene Church

The Puʻunēnē School, also known as Puunene School, is a historic school building in the community of Puʻunēnē in the central part of Maui, Hawaii, United States. Built in 1922 by the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (a division of Alexander & Baldwin), which ran the community, it was erected on 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land donated by the company in 1913. Upon completion, it replaced an earlier four-room school on the site that was built to hold 350 students. The Classical Revival 1922 two-story concrete building became Maui's largest elementary school with about 1000 students. (Excerpts from Wikipedia).

In the 1950s the area went into decline, and the building was used for special education classes. In 1979 it became an administrative annex for the Department of Education. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Hawaii on August 22, 2000. (Excerpts from Wikipedia).

Puunene Irrigation Ditch

In 1937 to 1940, Puʻunēnē School science teacher Soichi Sakamoto’s began training boys in a Three-Year Swim Club to compete for the 1940 Summer Olympics originally scheduled to be held in Tokyo, Japan but cancelled due to World War II. “Sakamoto’s swimmers would win medals in later Olympics, fulfilling his dream of creating world-class athletes and continuing Hawai‘i’s tradition of cultivating great swimmers like Duke Kahanamoku.”