Peter T Young

June 26, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kaumana Cave

Hilo is situated on lava flows from two of the five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawaiʻi. In the northern part of Hilo near the Wailuku River (that forms the approximate boundary between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa Volcanoes,) Mauna Loa flows overlie much older ash deposits and flows from Mauna Kea.

Twenty-seven Mauna Loa flows (pāhoehoe and ʻaʻa) have been identified in and near Hilo. The youngest flow is from the historic Mauna Loa eruption of 1880-81, and the oldest flow yet found lies near Hoaka Road, with an age of more than 24,000 years. (USGS)

The 1881 lavas reached just north of the present University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo campus. After crossing the present Komohana and Kumukoa Streets, a very narrow section crossed what is now Mohouli Street, about 300 yards above the intersection with Kapiʻolani Street.

Several hundred homes are now built on pāhoehoe lavas of the 1881 flow and can easily be recognized by their ubiquitous “rock gardens” (no soils have yet formed on this flow). Kaumana Cave was formed at this time and was a major supply conduit for the lavas that threatened Hilo. (USGS)

Lava Caves (more commonly called lava tubes) are natural conduits through which lava travels beneath the surface of a lava flow. Tubes form by the crusting over of lava channels and pāhoehoe flows.

When the supply of lava stops at the end of an eruption or lava is diverted elsewhere, lava in the tube system drains downslope and leaves partially empty conduits beneath the ground. (USGS)

Kaumana Cave is located up the hill from the downtown area on Kaumana Drive (Saddle Road,) stretching for almost two miles. When you get to the Cave you can see a concrete stair case which leads through the old skylight down to the entrance to the Cave.

The Kaumana Cave, part of a 25-mile-long lava tube, is the centerpiece of a small park maintained by the County of Hawaiʻi. Above Hilo, near the 4-mile marker along Kaumana Drive, the cave’s entrance – actually a skylight formed when part of the lava tube collapsed – is open to curious visitors who want to explore the inside.

The roof of the tube is 20 to 25 feet thick in most places and most of the rubble on the floor fell during or shortly after the eruption, when the skylight entrance fell.

The tube was initially filled with fast-moving lava then the level dropped and a long period of flow along the floor took place and from time to time slopped over to the side creating the bench-like features seen near the cave entrance. Roof blocks fell and became embedded and coated with basalt. The lava stream later emptied leaving the evacuated tube. (Hostra)

A steep staircase leads into a collapse pit. Here the cave roof collapsed and allows entry into the lava tube. From here you can enter different sections of the cave, going mauka (uphill) or makai (downhill) paths.

Going makai, a short path leads to the entrance. There are a few boulders to step carefully through, after which sections of smooth and mostly level surfaces allow a bit easier access. About 50 yards into the downhill section you reach a choke point, a little scrambling and a bit of duck-walk is necessary to get through.

After the narrow, the cave opens back up again. After another hundred yards there are a series of ledges, old crusts left by cooling lava when it half-filled the cave. To continue from here requires crawling through another very low passage. (Cooper)

“Long ʻōhiʻa tree roots hang from overhead … Sides of Cave have dribbles of lava from above forming odd stalagmitelike objects on floor. (There is a) very noticeable slope which is quite easy to travel.”

“Another junction. This one has three branches. There are two shallow rimmed lava cones filled with water. Wedge-shaped overhang is off to one side.” (1953 Loins Club; DOI)

In periods of normal rainfall, running water sometimes is audible beneath the floor of the cave. Rainfalls of 8 to 12 inches produce waterfalls spouting from cracks high on the wall of one cave section.

They form a small stream that runs on or just beneath the floor for several hundred yads before finally sinking into cracks. Its flow is augmented by several small bubbling springs at or just above floor level and part of its flow also is lost into small floor-level cracks. (Halliday)

Kaumana Cave is an example of a lava tube cave that carries floodwater for over half-a-mile. The lower end of Kaumana Cave opens into a drainage ditch several yards below the roadway of Edita Street.

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June 25, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kapaka

Hanohano ʻia home aʻo Kapaka
E kipa aʻe e nā pua a ka lehulehu
Ka nehe o ke kai lana mālie
Ke ʻala līpoa e moani nei
A ʻike i ka nani o Kaliʻuwaʻa
Ka beauty aʻo Sacred Falls aʻu i aloha
Hoʻi au i ka home o nā Makua
Nanea e hauʻoli me nā hoaloha
Puana kuʻu mele no Kapaka
E kipa aʻe e nā pua a ka lehulehu

Proud are we of our home, Kapaka
Where there is welcome for all
The lapping of the sea is gentle
The fragrance of seaweed is in the air
Behold the splendor of Kaliʻuwaʻa
The beauty of Sacred Falls, that I love
I go to the home of my parents
To relax and be happy with loved ones
My song is a story for Kapaka
Where there is welcome for all
(Home Kapaka – Mary Pukui, music by Maddy Lam (Huapala))

Kapaka is an ahupuaʻa in Koʻolauloa on the windward coast of Oʻahu. (23-ahupua‘a (traditional land division) make up the district of Koʻolauloa.) Kapaka (the tobacco) takes its name from the crop that was once grown there. (Huapala)

The Islands grew “four different kinds of tobacco … some of them are much better than others”. (Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, 1854)

First, native tobacco – when tobacco was first introduced into these islands, there were two kinds cultivated by the natives, one with a large round leaf, and the other with a smaller and more pointed one.

Second, there were some plants from seeds introduced from Havana by Robert C Wyllie. Both in appearance and flavor, the tobacco bears a strong resemblance to the broad-leafed native kind, and none but one well acquainted with tobacco, could distinguish them.

Third, there were a few plants from seed sent us by William L Lee, procured by him from the NYSA Society. It has a very small, round and fine leaf, and a superior tobacco.

Fourth, seed sent by John Montgomery; the plant is so different from any other we have seen, that it was suppose it was from Manila. (Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, 1854)

Later, “Cooperative experiments with tobacco have been conducted on the island of Hawaii with the object of producing a type of tobacco that is especially adapted to Hawaiian conditions.” (USDA; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, December 19. 1904)

Kapaka was an ahupuaʻa anomaly in that a ‘lele’ of Kapaka is situated in the adjoining ahupuaʻa of Kaluanui. Lele (’jumps’) are distinct sections of land in different parts of an ahupuaʻa (in this case, the Lele of Kapaka ‘jumped’ to a portion of the adjoining ahupuaʻa.)

“The district of Koʻolauloa is of considerable extent along the sea coast, but the arable land is generally embraced in a narrow strip between the mountains and the sea, varying in width from one half to two or three miles.”

“Several of the vallies are very fertile, and many tracts of considerable extent are watered by springs which burst out from the banks at a sufficient elevation to be conducted over large fields, and in a sufficient quantity to fill many fish ponds and taro patches.” (Hall, 1839; Maly)

“Lele o Kapaka” contained approximately 6.75 acres, and by its location on the kula of Kaluanui, it was presumably used for agricultural production, perhaps lo‘i kalo or lo‘i ‘ai (taro pond fields,) irrigated by the system of ʻauwai which early land accounts describe as being on the kula lands. (Maly)

On January 28, 1848, King Kamehameha III and William Charles Lunalilo agreed to their Māhele ‘Āina, and as a result, the ahupua‘a of Kapaka, including the Lele o Kapaka, was kept by Lunalilo.

In 1864 and 1894 various leases were granted that encumbered Kapaka and the lele o Kapaka. Those leases noted, a thatched “house standing on the land … likewise, the pa (wall or fence) surrounding the land (were to be maintained.)”

Likewise, the tenant may “cut and collect the mikinolia, guava, and hau trees for fire-wood and fencing, and the hau bark to be used as cordage, from places pointed out (and) may also release six animals upon the Kula, under the direction of the Luna Paniolo.” The latter lease allowed cultivation of rice on the Lele land. (Ulukau)

Lunalilo followed Kamehameha V as King of Hawai‘i; when he died in 1874, income from the sale of his lands was used to fund development and operation of the Lunalilo Home for elderly Hawaiians.

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June 24, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kapiʻolani Home

“In fulfillment of the commands of His Majesty, and to carry out the views of my colleagues of the Board of Health and the community in the erection of a Home for leper girls, I now present to Your Majesty, as Lady Patroness of this benevolent institution, named after Your Majesty, the keys of this Home.” (Gibson, Dedication of Kapiʻolani Home, November 9, 1885)

“Queen Kapiʻolani took the keys in her hand and proceeded to the door leading into the refectory. She put a key, especially marked, into the door, unlocked it, and then, withdrawing the key, handed it to the Reverend Mother Superior, with the remark:”

“’I deliver these keys to you.’ The President of the Board of Health then said: ‘By command of His Majesty the King I declare the Home now open.’” (Dedication of Kapiʻolani Home, November 9, 1885)

Kapi‘olani had visited Kalaupapa in 1884 to learn how she could assist those who were diagnosed with leprosy and exiled there, and she raised the funds to build the Kapiʻolani Home for Girls. (KCC)

Queen Kapiʻolani, Father Damien de Veuster (now Saint Damien,) Dr Eduard Arning and Mother Marianne (now Saint Marianne) recognized the need for a home for the non-infected children of the leprosy patients.

On November 9, 1885, the healthy girls living in Kalawao moved into Kapiʻolani Home on the grounds of the sisters’ convent at the Kaka’ako Branch Hospital. (Hawaii Catholic Herald)

“It will accommodate fifty inmates, besides the matron, and will be under the supervision and control of the Sisters of Charity, of whom there are now seven, including the Mother Superior attached to the Convent of their order, which is within the enclosure of the Branch Hospital.”

“The Home is a two-story building, on the mauka side of the Branch Hospital, and separated from it by a high fence. The building is 70 feet by 50 feet, and is surrounded by open-railed verandas, 10 feet wide, which furnish a cool and sheltered place for play in all weather.”

“On the ground floor, which is approached by a wide flight of steps to the lower veranda, are two store rooms, an office, class room and refectory. The last two are spacious rooms, well lighted and ventilated, the height of the ceiling being 13 feet 1 inch.
A wide flight of stairs on the outside loads to the upper floor, on which are situate two large dormitories, two bath rooms and matron’s room.”

“The arrangement of these dormitories deserves mention. The one on the mauka or land side, which is the breeziest, from the prevailing wind, will be occupied by girls who have developed the disease; the other will be occupied by girls who are as yet free from it, but who, having been born of leper parents, may be reasonably suspected of having the disease latent in their blood.”

“There will be no communication between these rooms. Separate closets and baths have been provided for each class of inmates. In this way it is hoped to minimize the risk of contagion, by preventing the clean breathing the same atmosphere with the unclean at night.”

“During the daytime, when there is a free circulation of air, the risk of contagion is so slight that it need hardly be estimated. At the same time it should be stated that no bad case of leprosy will be admitted to the Home, but only such as gives hopes of yielding to cleanliness, wholesome food, moderate exercise and kind and scientific treatment.”

“A notice of this kind would be incomplete were no mention made of the Branch Leper Hospital contiguous to the Home, and the noble Christian work performed therein by the Sisters of Charity. The Branch Hospital was established in 1881, and as in the case of the Leper Settlement at Molokai, it was not well managed at the outset, nor indeed, until after the arrival of the first party of the Sisters two years ago precisely yesterday.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, November 9, 1885)

“I had the honor to address the Bishop of Olba a letter, dated January 4, 1883, in which I informed His Lordship that the care of the sick poor of this Kingdom had most earnestly enlisted the sympathies of Their Majesties the King and Queen and awakened the solicitude of the Government) that they appreciated the necessity for trained and faithful nurses, and felt that nowhere could such invaluable assistance be obtained so readily as among the ranks of those blessed Sisterhoods of Charity, who have, in various parts of the earth devoted themselves to the care of the sick”. (Address by Gibson, President of the Board of Health)

From 50 other religious communities in the United States, only Mother Marianne’s Order of Sisters agreed to come to Hawaii to care for people with Hansen’s Disease (known then as leprosy.)

The Sisters arrived in Hawaii on November 8, 1883, dedicating themselves to the care of the 200 lepers in Kaka‘ako Branch Hospital on Oahu. This hospital was built to accommodate 100 people, but housed more than 200 people. (Cathedral of Our lady of Peace)

Kapiʻolani Home was devoted to the care of non-leprous girls of leprous parents, not yet confirmed as lepers, and others suspected of the disease.

Under the care of the Franciscan Sisters, the government has provided a home for many little girls born of leper parents. It is exceedingly rare that a child inherits leprosy, and even where both parents are lepers, if the child be removed before it has become infected with the disease there is small danger of its developing leprosy.

These non-leprous children are generally taken from their parents when 2 years of age. Sometimes friends of the family provide for them, and in other cases they are taken to the home.

Girls, ranging from 2 to 20 years of age, who are not only given a good school education, but trained in such branches of domestic work as are necessary to fit them to become useful members of the community thereafter.

This home is for girls, and is insufficient to accommodate the present number of inmates comfortably. There is a necessity for a similar institution for boys and for enlarging the present capacity of the Kapiʻolani Home. (Hawaiian Commission, September 8, 1898) (A Boys Home was later built in Kalihi.)

After the hospital closed in 1888, the home was moved three times: first, to a more suitable new building adjacent to the Kalihi Receiving Station; second, to a temporary camp in Waiakamilo when a typhoid epidemic closed the previous home in 1900; finally, in 1912 to Kalihi where the patients’ children were housed until 1938. (Hawaii Catholic Herald)

Mother Marianne died in Kalaupapa on August 9, 1918. The Sisters of St. Francis continue their work in Kalaupapa with victims of Hansen’s Disease. No sister has ever contracted the disease. (Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace)

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Kapiolani Girls Home-1907

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Queen Kapiolani Statue

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June 23, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Red Hill Underground

Originally Top Secret, Red Hill’s hidden facility became generally known in the early-1990s, when the facility was declassified.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor all of the Navy’s fuel was stored in unprotected above ground tanks at Pearl Harbor, next to the submarine base.

When RADM Chester Nimitz was Commander of the Bureau of Yards & Docks (in 1940) he wanted the Navy’s 2 ½-year supply of fuel oil protected from aerial attack – existing aboveground unprotected tanks next to the Submarine Base presented a vulnerable enemy target.

Standard practice was to dig a trench and bury the tanks, but this was impractical to store 255-million gallons of fuel oil; here, the Navy’s initial plan was to dig a series of tunnels and insert the tanks

Instead, consulting engineer James P Growden came up with excavating large vertical tank chambers instead of horizontal tunnels. (Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.)

This would increase the volume of material that could be excavated simultaneously and decrease the number of heavy equipment needed for hauling muck. It also decreased the unit cost for rock removal substantially.

Starting the day after Christmas 1940, 20 underground fuel storage tanks were built more that 100-feet below the surface. (The facility was designed as an impenetrable, bombproof reserve of fuel for the military.)

To determine the depth necessary to protect the fuel from Japanese aerial attack, the engineers gathered data from the Army, multiplied it four-fold and rounded the figure off to 100 feet of rock cover.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had little effect on the work site – work on the storage facility proceeded virtually without interruption.

Each vertical tank is 100 feet in diameter and 250 feet high, roughly the size of a 20-story building, and lined with quarter-inch steel plates (it has an overall design capacity of 6-million barrels of fuel oil (9.97-billion gallons.))

Dug from the inside, the storage facility is connected with pipes (32-inch-diameter diesel pipe, and 18- and 16-inch jet fuel pipes) and tunnels down to a Pearl Harbor pumping station, more than two-and-a-half miles away.

The tanks were set up in two parallel rows with two main access tunnels, one above the other, bisecting the rows; smaller tunnels branched from these main axis tunnels to the tank cavities.

The upper dome of each fuel chamber was excavated first, starting with a ring tunnel, then working upward, towards the central shaft. They started digging in the upper portion of each tank chamber.

Upon completing the ring tunnel, the miners dug upwards in a hemisphere from all points around the ring, narrowing as they reached the central shaft. As soon as the upper hemisphere was concreted, workers were lowered down the central shaft to begin excavation of the tank chamber.

The miners continued to dig downwards in a cone until they reached the lower hemisphere of the tank chamber; tThe lining for the lower hemisphere was placed similarly to the top.

Then, they steel-lined the walls of the tank chamber. Reinforced concrete was placed against the rock and smooth continuously welded steel plates formed the inner liner. (Rogers)

Think of the scenario: with limited above ground disturbance, hollowing out twenty 20-story building-sized cavities 100-feet underground, lining each with ¼-inch steel (with concrete-backing,) testing and repairing leaks, and tunneling them together and to Pearl Harbor, 2 ½-miles away – in secrecy.

In 1995, the American Society of Civil Engineers placed the facility alongside Hoover Dam, the Eiffel Tower, Panama Canal and Statue of Liberty as a historic landmark.

In 2014, evidence of fuel leakage was noted. The Navy and City & County, State and Federal agencies have come together to evaluate the impact to the environment and community, and to look at solutions in dealing with the leak and strategies to mitigate the impacts.

While at DLNR, I had the opportunity to visit the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility above Pearl Harbor; it’s a secured facility with no public tours or access.

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200 feet down to the bottom of an empty fuel tank-(honoluluadvertiser)

Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks

An intersection, about 450 feet beneath Red Hill-(honoluluadvertiser)

Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks

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Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks

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BWS Slide noting Red Hill Storage Tanks

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June 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Madge Tennent

She was born Madeline Grace Cook in Dulwich, England, on June 22, 1889. Her father owned a construction business; her mother was the editor of a women’s fashion magazine.

When she was five she moved with her family to Cape Town, South Africa. At the age of twelve, she entered an art school in Cape Town.

The following year, her parents, who recognized and encouraged her talent, moved to Paris to enable Madeline to study there In Paris, she studied figure drawing under William Bouguereau, an experience that laid the technical foundation for her later figural drawings and paintings. (Beebe)

Two years later they returned to Cape Town, where Madge taught art and illustrated fashion magazines. She was also an accomplished pianist, taught by her mother, and gave regular recitals in Cape Town. One such recital was attended by a visiting military officer from New Zealand, Hugh Cowper Tennent, who was in South Africa with his regiment.

They married (1915) and returned to his home, New Zealand, where she led the haphazard life of an army camp follower until their first son Arthur was born in 1916.

Madge directed an art school, having been appointed head instructor at the Government School of Art in Woodville, the village where Madge and Hugh lived while he awaited further military orders. (Wageman)

Hugh went off to war in Europe and returned with a seriously wounded hand; the young family was sent to Western Samoa, which had become a New Zealand protectorate after the war, with Hugh as the treasurer of the territory. Their second son, Val, was born there in Apia.

They spent six years in Samoa. During her stay in Samoa, Tennent became fascinated with Polynesians, and while on a leave of several months in Australia, Tennent studied with Julian Ashton “and learned to draw seriously for the first time.” (Beebe)

On a trip to London to enroll the boys in a British boarding school in 1923, the Tennents arrived in Honolulu with their two young sons, planning on a three-day stop-over.

They were introduced to members of the local artistic community, who saw her Samoan studies and asked her to stay and paint the Hawaiians. They stayed.

As a chartered accountant (the British equivalent of a CPA), Hugh was unable to work until he put in a year of residency. Madge supported the family by doing watercolor portraits, mostly of society children. She kept a studio downtown on Hotel Street.

Madge was fascinated by the Hawaiians from the beginning, but true inspiration struck when she was given a book of colored reproductions by Paul Gauguin in Tahiti. From that time on she devoted herself to the single-minded pursuit painting Polynesians.

Often referred to as Hawai‘i’s Gauguin, Tennent was unswerving in her devotion to the beauty of the Hawaiian people with pen, brush and palette knife. (Walls)

She was active in Hawai’i from the 1930s to the 1960s. “The Hawaiians are really to me the most beautiful people in the world … no doubt about it – the Hawaiian is a piece of living sculpture.” (Tennent; HPA)

Tennent portrayed Hawaiian women as solidly fleshed and majestic – larger than life. Her method of working with impasto – applying thick layers of paint to achieve a graceful, perfectly balanced composition – is evident in ‘Lei Queen Fantasia.’

The paint is applied in whirls in what might be called the ‘Tennent whirl’ – the colors bright and luminous. Tennent envisioned Hawaiian Kings and Queens as having descended from Gods of heroic proportion, intelligent and brave, bearing a strong affinity to the Greeks in their legends and persons. (HPA)

Over the years she was very active in the arts community in Honolulu, taught frequent classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and wrote for publication on art-related subjects. (Walls)

Just a few days before her death in 1972, Tennent summed up her philosophy of life and art for a newspaper reporter who interviewed her, frail and blind, at a private nursing home overlooking Diamond Head. He asked her …

“How does it feel, Mrs. Tennent, to have your genius publicly recognized during your lifetime?” … “Genius, baloney,” she muttered, with all the strength she could muster. “It was nothing but darn hard work.” (Walls)

Major collections of her work are found at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the University of Hawaii. In 2005, Hawai’i Preparatory Academy’s Isaacs Art Center was chosen by the Trustees of the Tennent Art Foundation to become the caretaker of the collection. (HPA) Tennent died February 5, 1972.

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