Vivian Leilani Vidinha Souza

Vivian Leilani Vidinha Souza Image
Location of Interview
Collection Name

Koloa: An Oral History of a Kauai Community

Description

In 1984, members of the Friends of Koloa Public/School Library began researching their community's history for a commemorative publication, marking the sesquicentennial of commercial sugar cultivation in Hawaii.

Interviewer
Date of Interview
07-15-1987
Principal Investigator
Biographical Sketch

The youngest of eight children who survived childbirth, Vivian Leilani Vidinha Souza was born January 14, 1918 in Koloa. Her father, Antone Vidinha, Sr., was Portuguese born in Mana, Kauai and eventually became the sheriff of Koloa. Her mother, Alohakeau Hale Vidinha, was Hawaiian born on Niihau. Vivian's brother, Antone Vidinha, was a former mayor of Kauai. Vivian, a lifelong resident of Koloa and Poipu, completed the eighth grade at Koloa School. In 1932, she began working at the Kauai Pineapple Company cannery in Lawai. She worked there until the cannery closed its doors in 1965. She lives in Poipu today with her husband, Louis Souza, whom Vivian married in 1937. They have three children.

Scope and Content Note
Daughter of a Koloa sheriff responds briefly, with her husband's input, to questions about her Portuguese grandparents, her father and his job, her Niihau-born mother, Koloa stores, Kauai harbors, and, more extensively, about Hurricane Iwa.

Program Note:  
This interview is part of the Center for Oral History's project Koloa: An Oral History of a Kauai Community. Interviews from this project are available in the Center's ScholarSpace open access repository.

The Center for Oral History (COH), in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, collects, documents, preserves and highlights the recollections of Native Hawaiians and the multi-ethnic people of Hawaiʻi. It produces oral histories and interpretive historical materials about lifeways, key historic events, social movements and Hawaiʻi’s role in the globalizing world, for the widest possible use.


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