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D
ean Kaneshiro has always been interested in storytelling. He got his
first video camera in 1992 as a gift from
his dad and immediately started making
home movies on the weekends. For over
10 years now, Kaneshiro has worked with
nonprofits and various ministries, creating promotional videos for the web. A
few years ago though, after returning to
Hawai‘i with his wife and kids, he discovered a story that he knew he had to document using his media of choice.
“I stumbled upon this story about
three years ago when we first moved
here,” says Kaneshiro. “I was helping a
friend out with another project of his and
the last interview was with Beth McLachlin and she starts talking about Donnis
Thompson’s vision.”
McLachlin is a decades-long supporter
and contributor to the Wahine volleyball
program and champion of women’s athletics in Hawai‘i. Donnis Thompson became the first Director of the new Women’s Athletic Program at the University of
Hawai‘i (UH) in 1972.
“Beth described [a women’s volleyball]
invitational that Dr. Thompson put on at
the Blaisdell—7,800 people came. It was
record-breaking,” begins Kaneshiro. “She
actually charged for tickets. And this was
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work to establish it at UH, and realized
there was enough material in the story to
create a full-length documentary.
The Rise of the Wahine
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1976 when no one had done anything
like this. And this woman—her story of
being an African American here at that
time and doing what she did—it blew my
mind. That’s when that love of storytelling really awakened inside of me.”
While Kaneshiro was researching Dr.
Thompson, he discovered the late Representative Patsy Mink’s significant role
in the creation of Title IX and Pat Saiki’s
Cover photo: The 1979 Rainbow Wahine
Volleyball take first place in the Association for
Intercollegiate Athletics for Women tournament.
01 The 1979 team after their victory.
Courtesy riseofthewahine.com
02 Dean Kaneshiro: writer, director, editor and
lead producer for “Rise of the Wahine.”
Chelsea Akamine
“The title, Rise of the Wahine, means
multiple things,” explains Kaneshiro.
“Wahine means woman, of course, and
it’s the name of our woman’s athletic program, but women in general were also
rising in this country. At this particular
time in the early ’70s—politically, culturally—it was just an electric time. So the
rise of the Wahine athletic program becomes an example of women who were
able to run with the doors that began
opening for them then.”
Doors that began opening, in large
part, thanks to Patsy Mink, the first
Asian-American woman (and first woman of color) to be elected to Congress.
Mink had faced discrimination
throughout her life but always displayed a
fierce determination to fight it. In her junior year at Maui High, she won the class
presidential election despite the fact that
the election took place mere months after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and
feelings of distrust and racism toward Japanese-Americans were pervasive. While
attending the University of Nebraska, she
successfully created a coalition of parents,
students, teachers, alumni, businesses and
even administrators that lobbied successfully for an end to the university’s dormitory segregation rule.
In 1948, she applied to 20 medical
schools, none of which would accept her
01 Beth McLachlin during
her interview for the documentary.
02 Marilyn Moniz-Kaho‘ohanohano during her time as a
Wahine Volleyball player. She
is now an assistant Athletic
Director at UH Mānoa and
appears in the documentary.
03 Dr. Donnis Thompson
became the first director of
the Wahine Athletic Program
in 1972.
Courtesy
riseofthewahine.com
because she was a woman, so she attended law school instead at the University
of Chicago which had accepted women
since 1902.
“These experiences, and watching
her own daughter, Wendy, experience
discrimination from a very, very young
age, sparked Patsy to say, ‘This thing’s
not stopping. It’s carrying on to the next
generation and we need to end it,” explains Kaneshiro.
In 1972, her hard work in Congress
helped allow President Nixon to sign
Title IX in to law. The law says that any
institution receiving federal funding cannot discriminate based on gender.
“Only about six months after, the nation started to realize the implications
of this,” says Kaneshiro. “So male athletic directors around the country started
causing a stink. They said, ‘We can’t share
what little money we have with these new
female programs—we have to put it toward the revenue-generating programs
like men’s basketball and football. I think
there was also just ignorance on the part
of a lot of men at the time that women
were even interested in playing sports.”
But interested they were and so, here
in the Hawai‘i State Legislature, Pat Saiki
began to carve out money in the budget
to advance the women’s programs at UH.
One of the first things Saiki accomplished
was inserting language that required UH
to hire an Athletics Director for a new
woman’s program that same year.
“Dr. Thompson was an African American woman from Chicago who came to
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