A renovated naval jail built in 1908 once housed American Samoa’s Archives Office. The unexpected setting was one stop in a longer effort to bring scattered government records into permanent archival care. According to the American Samoa Government’s Archives and Records Center history, no dedicated archives department or records building was established during either the 1900–1951 U.S. Navy administration or the 1951–1978 Department of the Interior period. Records were held in several locations. The office’s account says that, by 1969, most local government archives had been identified and sent to the U.S. National Archives in San Francisco. Remaining records later occupied an assortment of temporary homes, including administrative buildings, a Second World War-era quonset hut at Samoana High School, an old naval warehouse and a former cafeteria at Tafuna. Local archives and records management legislation followed in 1984. In 1985, the Records Management Office moved into the Department of Administrative Services, with permanent staff and facilities established. The first Archives Office shared the renovated Fita Fita Naval Station Jail with the Territorial Registrar. A new records centre, named after Governor Peter Tali Coleman, was dedicated at Tafuna in 1991. The jail’s archives were consolidated into that centre in 1998. The office’s stated work extends beyond storing historical papers. It helps with government records research, provides certified evidence from departmental holdings, and assists with archived birth, marriage and death records. Its finding guides include High Court matai and land title cases. That history gives the former jail an unusual place in American Samoa’s public memory: a building once used for confinement became part of the effort to preserve records of government, families and land.
