Unless you grew up in Hawaiʻi, Korea, Okinawa, or Guam, you probably don’t view Spam as a delicious culinary delight. But, for those of us who did, you know exactly how delish Spam can be.

In Hawaiʻi, 7 million cans of Spam are consumed a year, which is about 5 cans per resident per year. Guam has an even more staggering statistic, with the average resident eating roughly 16 cans annually.

For me, Spam, has always been a big part of my life. Whenever I would go on a field trip, my mom would pack some musubis for us. When we went to Hawaiian Waters (now Wet N Wild) as a family, we would go to the car for lunch, and we would enjoy musubis. I remember ordering Spam, egg, and rice plate at McDonald's drive-through for breakfast, ordering a huge plate of kimchi and spam fried rice at Big City Diner, and of course, the late-night 711 musubi runs.

I can only speak for the Hawaiʻi experience, but Spam is such a big part of everyday life. We even have a yearly Spam festival called Spam Jam, where they close down Kalakau Avenue in Waikiki and some of the biggest restaurants and chefs create delicious dishes using Spam as their star ingredient.

Spam was created in Austin, Minnesota, so why is Spam so popular in Hawaiʻi? Why is it also so popular in Korea, Okinawa, and Guam?

Well, the simple answer is the US military… but did you really think I was only going to give you the simple answer? 😉

When most people bite into a Spam Musubi for the first time, their first reaction is always pleasant surprise, and then usually a comparison to sushi. But for anyone who grew up in Hawaiʻi, it is a way of life.

On the surface, it is a simple dish: a slice of Spam, a block of rice, and a strip of nori. But the dish tells an intriguing story about migration, war, scarcity, imperialism, adaptation, and local creativity.

To understand why spam musubi became so beloved in Hawaiʻi, you have to start long before the first musubi was wrapped. This story starts all the way back in 1937, when the canned meat was created in Austin, Minnesota.

Hormel introduced Spam on July 5, 1937, during the late Depression era. The product was designed as an affordable, shelf-stable protein made largely from pork. Hormel credits Ken Daigneau, brother of a company vice president, with coining the name in a contest that paid $100.

The product’s appeal was practicality from the start: it was cheap, portable, and did not require refrigeration before opening. That is what transformed Spam from a domestic convenience food into a global one. During World War II, the U.S. military and Allied supply chains sent more than 100 million pounds of Spam abroad.

Spam followed American military power. In places where there was prolonged U.S. military occupation, wartime devastation, food shortage, or postwar dependency on imported goods, canned meat stopped being a novelty and became a staple.

Wherever American troops went, Spam often stayed behind. In South Korea, Spam entered local foodways through the Korean War and the black markets around U.S. bases, eventually becoming central to budae jjigae, or “army stew.” The BBC reports that South Korea became the biggest consumer of Spam outside the United States and that gift-boxed Spam remains a prestige holiday item there.

In Okinawa, spam spread due to the U.S. occupation and postwar military rule, after which canned pork was absorbed into local dishes like goya champuru and pork tamago onigiri.

In Guam, Spam’s importance became parmount due to postwar scarcity, and the long shadow of U.S. military presence. Spam was not merely adopted but “indigenized” into local cuisine and identity.

Hawaiʻi fits into that same Pacific story, but in its own distinct way. Spam arrived in 1937, yet it became deeply rooted in island food culture through wartime conditions and the social structure of Hawaiʻi itself.

After Pearl Harbor, the Territory of Hawaiʻi was placed under martial law, and the military sharply curtailed civilian rights. Historians of Hawaiʻi and Japanese American life note that the islands’ large Japanese population was subjected to surveillance and restrictive rule, even though mass removal on the scale of the continental incarceration camps was impractical.

At the same time, Hawaiʻi’s food system faced the pressures of war, distance, rationing, and militarization. Spam, with its shelf life and reliability, fits island realities. Over time, it ceased to be “military food” and became local food.

But spam musubi did not emerge from Spam alone. Its other parent is onigiri, the Japanese rice snack that immigrants brought to Hawaiʻi in the plantation era.

Japanese immigrants who came to the islands as plantation laborers brought culinary habits with them, including rice-centered portable foods. In Japan, onigiri had long functioned as practical food for travel and work. In Hawaiʻi, those traditions met a multicultural plantation society shaped by Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Native Hawaiian, and other influences. Spam musubi was born from that meeting.

As for who created spam musubi, the answer is slightly murky, though Barbara Funamura is widely credited with creating or at least popularizing the modern spam musubi.

What made spam musubi explode in popularity was it’s usefulness. It is filling, cheap, portable, and easy to eat with one hand. It works as breakfast, snack, lunch, or post-beach grinds. It also perfectly suits local flavor preferences: rice as a staple, nori as a wrapper, shoyu-based sweetness, and the rich savoriness of fried Spam.

Spam in the continental U.S. often carried stigma: poverty food, wartime leftovers, or the butt of jokes. In Hawaiʻi and much of the Asia-Pacific, the meaning evolved differently. For us, Spam is tied to memory, family, and identity, even when those memories are complicated by war, imperialism, and hardship.

Spam musubi continues to be one of Hawaiʻi’s clearest edible expressions of local culture. So next time you start dogging on Spam, maybe try it first and learn the history of why we love it so much.

Step One: Cook the Rice

Step Two: Marinate the Spam

Step Three: Cook and Glaze the Spam

Step Four: Shape the Musubi

👉 Order: Rice → furikake → Spam

Step Five: Wrap

🔑 KEY TIPS