Hawaiian occupation coding for births and deaths in 1961

I received more than just the race summaries from the 1961 Statistical Supplement to the Hawaii Department of Health Annual Report. They also sent occupation counts. The table values were as follows (listed in the same order as the report), prefixed by a sequential number I’ve assigned:

• 0 No occupation
• 1 Professional, technical and kindred workers
• 2 Farmers, managers, officials and proprietors
• 3 Clerical and kindred workers
• 4 Sales workers
• 5 Craftsmen, foremen and kindred workers
• 6 Operatives and kindred workers
• 7 Private household and service workers
• 8 Farm laborers and foremen
• 9 Laborers, except farm and mines
• R Armed forces
• Not stated

It turns out that those assigned numbers fit penciled codes on all the birth and death certificates I have access to from 1959 to 1963.

On Obama’s certificate, both parents were students, coded “0″, and I would match that to the first category, “no occupation.” I found some other certificates (e.g. Ah’Nee’s mother) with an occupation of “None” also coded “0″. That leaves Armed Forces (the 11th code) without a 1-digit numeric value.

The Alan certificate from 1963 has the mother’s occupation as a teacher, coded “1″ and matching, I think, the second entry on the list. Alan’s father was in the military and I can’t figure out what his code is–looks to me like an “R” (which just might be a cute mnemonic for “R-med Forces,” but I’m not sure. Nordyke was a doctor and coded “1″. The Barstad death certificate from 1959 has the mother’s occupation as “Waitress” coded “7″ which aligns with “Private household and service workers”. The Glover certificate from 1960 lists an occupation of “Quarterman” (a foreman in a shipbuilding yard) and codes it “5″ which matches “Craftsmen, foremen and kindred workers” in the table above. The Monkton mystery certificate has an industry of “porter service” but the occupation is blanked out, but coded “7″, which makes sense as a “service worker.” The father’s occupation on the Ah’Nee certificate was “Chief Reefer” coded “5″. I think that’s sort of a ship’s engineer.

It looks like once again the 1961 Statistical Supplement is the Rosetta Stone for penciled codes on Hawaiian birth certificates.