A collection of plantation-era textiles and clothing from Hawaii, donated to the Japanese American National Museum in 2004, is coming home for a two-month exhibition looking better than ever, according to donor Barbara Kawakami.

"It took me 30 years to collect all this stuff and I’m thrilled," said the 90-year-old author and historian. "They spent about $150,000 just to preserve the clothing after I turned it over, and that made me the happiest because if I had it with me, I wouldn’t have the resources and time to do that. It’s amazing what JANM has done."

"Textured Lives," opening Saturday in the Bishop Museum’s Castle Memorial Building, is drawn from more than 260 examples of plantation textiles and clothing worn by the first generation of Japanese immigrants who worked on Hawaii’s sugar plantations. The exhibition was originally presented in Los Angeles in 2010 and expands on Bishop Museum’s "Tradition and Transition: Stories of Hawai‘i Immigrants" exhibition.

The pieces tell a story of hardship, ingenuity and adaptability as issei women transformed and reinforced precious kimono and underpinnings to endure the rigors of plantation work and dress their children. They saved every scrap material, repurposing old rice bags and string for clothing, and graduated from using layers of denim to create soles for their tabi to using rubber cut from inner tubes to keep their feet protected.

Although styles changed as the Japanese women learned various techniques from their Chinese and Portuguese neighbors, Kawakami said one thing that never changed was an obi-like sash around their waists, which helped keep hunger at bay in light of the meager meals they packed for themselves at a time when families could afford little more than rice and takuan or a piece of ume.

Beyond the simple dates and descriptions that mark the museum exhibit are the colorful first-person stories that Kawakami — author of "Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885-1941" (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993) — collected from those who wore the clothing. She said she was lucky to have started her research before the passing of the generation that arrived in the isles between 1885 and 1900.

"When I was a child, I observed these issei people going down to the train station. I could feel the sweat and tears as they told me the stories of their hardship days," Kawakami said.

It’s a story she knows firsthand. Her issei father died when she was 7, leaving her mother to raise eight children alone. Although Kawakami had dreamed of attending McKinley High School, she had to leave school after eighth grade to help raise her younger siblings.

She spent the first half of her working life as a dressmaker, but when her youngest son left for college, he asked her to promise to do something for herself, and that was to finish her education. She went on to earn her master’s degree in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Although her first impulse was to study astronomy, she thought it would be best to start with a subject she knew, textiles and clothing, and when it came to writing a thesis, she couldn’t find any information on Hawaii immigrant clothing.

"That’s when I started talking to some elderly people, and that’s when I found out about the picture brides," she said. The brides came to Hawaii through arranged marriages to men they didn’t know, and packed beautiful wedding and daily-wear kimono without knowing the hardship that awaited in the fields.

For Kawakami, the prize of the exhibit will be three bridal kimono owned by Shizu Kaigo.

"When she came to Lihue in 1916, she was so fragile she couldn’t work in the fields," Kawakami said.

"She had four brothers so she didn’t have to work, but at 9 years old she became so adept at sewing she could create detailed bridal kimono."

Kawakami’s stories inspired the making of the 1995 film "Picture Bride," and the film will be shown at 10:30 a.m. on the exhibition’s opening day.

If not for Kawakami’s research and her ability to speak Japanese, much of the day-to-day history of the plantations would likely have been lost.

"Before I started my research in 1979, nobody was talking about picture brides. It was exciting and I was fortunate to come across so many picture brides, but I still didn’t have any of their clothes. I tried so hard and no one had the plantation clothing. Most of (the seniors) had moved or been evicted from plantation homes and they were moved into senior citizen housing. At that time, many of them had thrown away their plantation clothing or some had given it to the Salvation Army."

Then she attended her Japanese school reunion, where a classmate, Elaine Haruko Watanabe, told her she had a box of her mother’s plantation clothing she was ready to give away.

"That was a miracle because it was the first complete plantation outfit I came across. It had everything, from the kyachan (heavy denim leggings) to hand mittens to tabi," Kawakami said.

She later met picture bride Haruno Tazawa, who had more complete sets.

"I asked her the reason she kept the old clothes, because they were practically rags. When you see the jacket, you can barely see the original cloth because it’s been patched, patched, patched all over."

Kawakami said Tazawa told her the story of how she was inspired to save the clothing after visiting a niece in Tokyo in 1930. On the family’s Shinto shrine was a box draped in white. The niece’s husband had worked on a plantation in Brazil, and the box contained his clothing from that time.

"She explained that he was so poor and his pay so meager that he only had one outfit that he would wash every night until it got threadbare. When he finally went home to Japan, he didn’t want to throw it away, but saved it as a remembrance of how tough his life had been."

Kawakami wanted to find a home for the garments locally, but said no organization here had the resources to care for the textiles. A few of the pieces went to the Smithsonian Institution, and she’s glad her legacy is reaching a generation born far from the plantations.

"I was awed when I went to JANM and saw hundreds of kids and docents at the plantation exhibition. They had made activity guides for the students to study. Imagine, it was just something I innocently started," she said. "Funny yeah? I had no other thing to do, and this was the only subject that I felt sure that I could make a contribution.

"For many years I felt cheated because I wasn’t able to go to school. Now, I’m thankful. I might have gone to McKinley or as far as Ph.D., but I might not have had this collection to share."

Kawakami turns 91 later this month and said, "I’m glad I’m still around to see all this."

Barbara Kawakami talks story in a video at fashiontribe.staradvertiserblogs.com