Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Naukane

During Captain Cookʻs visit to Hawaiʻi on his third voyage of exploration in 1779, then-Lieutenant King (later Captain) noted, “During the following night, the cutter belonging to the Discovery was stolen …”

“This irritated captain Cook, and he gave orders to stop all the canoes that should attempt to leave the bay, intending to seize and destroy them, if he could not recover the cutter by fair means.”  (Captain King’s Journal)

“The natives now collected in vast numbers along the shore, and began to throng round captain Cook”.  Shortly after, “Captain Cook, the last time he was seen distinctly, was standing at the water’s edge”.

“… he was desirous of preventing any farther bloodshed … whilst he faced the natives, none of them had offered him any violence, but having turned about to give his orders to those in the boats, he was stabbed in the back”.  Cook was killed.    (Captain King’s Journal)

One of the Hawaiians at the scene was Naukane, son of Kamanawa (Kamehameha’s uncle and one of his closest allies – Kamanawa (left) and Kameʻeiamoku, his twin brother (right) were later memorialized on the Hawaiʻi coat of arms.)  (Kittelson)

When Kamehameha moved his Royal Center to Honolulu, his chiefs came with him. Naukane, then in his early twenties, accompanied his father and probably became involved in royal court life.  However, fascinated by the growing number of ships calling in the islands, Naukane looked to the sea. (Kittelson)

His chance came in February 1811, when John Jacob Astor’s ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorne, called.  The captain wanted to hire twenty-four of the Islanders, twelve as seamen and the remaining half to establish a post for the Pacific Fur Company on the Columbia River.

This was the first large group of Hawaiians to come to America.  The king appointed Naukane to go with them as a royal observer.  (Duncan)

Because Naukane resembled one of the Americans, he became known as John Coxe and retained the name throughout his long and colorful life in the Pacific Northwest (he also went by John Cox and Edward Coxe, or, simply Coxe.)  (Duncan)

The Tonquin reached the mouth of the Columbia in March; after a few days looking, they selected a site and by the end of May they had completed Fort Astoria.  It was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast of what was to become the United States.

Astor planned the post to grow into a permanent settlement, with plans to develop a large trade ring that included New York, the Pacific Coast, Russian Alaska, Hawaiʻi and China. The furs collected in the northwest and Alaska, would be shipped to China and exchanged for porcelain, silk and other cloth, and spices that would be brought back, via Hawaii to New York.

Other operators had other posts.  In the summer of 1810, Jacques-Raphaël Finlay (Jaco Finley) of the North West Company built Spokane House at the junction of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers.

Shortly after arriving in the northwest, Coxe started working for Canadian David Thompson of the North West Company.   Coxe later spent the winter of 1811-1812 at Spokane House with Finlay.  On those expeditions, Coxe became the first Hawaiian to visit the inland Northwest.

Coxe accompanied Thompson “across the Rocky Mountains from western Montana and in the long trail to Fort William on Lake Superior. … John Coxe also took the trail east from Fort William but his road led to Quebec, where he created a sensation with his stories of Hawaiʻi and his demonstrations of Polynesian dance steps.”  (Taylor)

By 1813, Fort Astoria and all other assets in the area were sold to the North West Company – they renamed it Fort George.    Coxe continued to work there until August, 1814, when all of the Hawaiians at Fort George were sent back to the Islands.

Comfortable with the service from the Hawaiians, in 1817, North West sent a ship “to bring as many of the Sandwich Islanders to the Columbia river as we could conveniently accommodate.”  (Corney)

(In 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company combined with the North West Company, and the post name was changed back to Fort Spokane.)

After he returned to Honolulu in 1815, Coxe probably reverted to his native name, Naukane.  He was well received by Kamehameha.

Not only was Naukane the son of one of Kamehameha’s closest advisors, and a member of Liholiho’s entourage, but he had traveled widely. Kamehameha I died in 1819 and Naukane rose in stature when Liholiho ascended the throne.  (Kittelson)

Naukane’s expeditions did not end on the American continent.  Because of his familiarity with western ways (with travels to America, Europe & South America) and his personal ties, when Liholiho departed on November 27, 1823 to England aboard the L’Aigle to discuss the future of his Islands with George IV, Naukane accompanied the King.

The King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu died of measles in July 1824; apparently Naukane’s travels had built up his immunity, for he was hardly bothered by measles.

King George IV held an audience for the remaining Hawaiians at Windsor Castle on September 11; Coxe was present.  The bodies of Liholiho and his queen were returned to Hawaii aboard the frigate Blonde captained by Lord Byron.

With the King dead, Naukane no longer was bound, and he immediately offered his services to the Hudson’s Bay Company and returned to the Northwest. He was only one of approximately thirty-five Islanders working for the company by 1825.  (Duncan)

The firm’s base of operations had been transferred from Fort Spokane to a new site farther inland, Fort Vancouver. Coxe worked for a few more years; then the company retired him and gave him a plot of land two miles below the fort.  (Kittelson)

Naukane died February 2, 1850.  The vast plain between Fort Vancouver and the Columbia became the Hawaiian’s memorial – Coxe’s Plain … “A couple of miles below the fort (Vancouver) there were luxuriant meadows of great extent.”

“A portion of these bore at that time the name of Coxe’s Plain, a name I think which it still continues to bear. Old Coxe, a native of the Sandwich Islands and a very original character, was the swine-herd and had his residence there among the oaks which dotted the verge of the plain.”  (Anderson; Barry)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Reclamation” Projects – Early-1900s

“Whenever in the opinion of the Board of Health any tract or parcel of land situated in the District of Honolulu, Island of Oahu, shall be deleterious to the public health in consequence of being low …”

“… and at times covered or partly covered by water, or of being situated between high and low water mark, or of being improperly drained, or incapable by reasonable expenditure of effectual drainage or for other reason in an unsanitary or dangerous condition…”

“… it shall be the duty of the Board of Health to report such fact to the Superintendent of Public Works together with a brief recommendation of the operation deemed advisable to improve such land.”  (So stated Section 1025, Revised Laws of the Territory of Hawaiʻi, in 1906.)

That year, Board of Health President, LE Pinkham, stated in a report “for the Making of Honolulu as Beautiful and Unique in Character, as nature has Endowed it in Scenery, Climate and Location:”

“Nature, situation and human circumstance fix world-wide prominence and importance on certain strategic points in commerce, navigation and defense. Human events have moved slowly, but are becoming intensely accelerated, and it would seem Honolulu is now beginning to fulfil her destiny.”

Likewise, laws in place gave the Superintendent of Public Works the right to make Improvements to property which had been condemned as insanitary by the Board of Health.

Also in 1906, the US War Department acquired more than 70-acres in the Kālia portion of Waikīkī for the establishment of a military reservation to be called Fort DeRussy.  Back then, nearly 85% of present Waikīkī was in wetland.

The Army started filling in the fishponds and wetland that covered most of the Fort site – pumping fill from the ocean continuously for nearly a year in order to build up an area on which permanent structures could be built.

Thus, the Army began the transformation of Waikīkī from wetlands to solid ground and it served as a model that others followed.

Back then, much of the makai lands from Honolulu to and including Waikīkī were characterized with lowland marshes, wetlands, coral reef flats and farming of fishponds along with some limited wetland kalo (taro) taro agriculture (and later rice.)

However, they were also characterized as, “stretched useless, unsightly, offensive swamps, perpetually breeding mosquitoes and always a menace to public health and welfare”.

The Territory saw the opportunity to drain and fill the land that “was valueless” to be “available for the growth of the business district of the city” and attain “a valuation greatly in excess of the cost of the filling and draining.”

Likewise, in areas such as Kakaʻako there were practical issues to contend with.   “Calmly wading around in muddy water up to waist, on Tuesday after noon last, a Kakaako housekeeper was busying herself hanging out the family washing to dry. Her clothes basket she towed after her on a raft.”

“None of the neighbors marveled at the strange sight for when it was wash-day at their places they had to do the same. Tied up at the front gates of many of the houses in the block were rafts, upon which the more particular members of the families ferried themselves back and forth from house to street”.  (Hawaiian Gazette, April 3, 1908)

This set into motion a number of reclamation and sanitation projects in Kakaʻako, Honolulu, Waikīkī, Lāhaina, Hilo and others.

The first efforts were concentrated at Kakaʻako – it was then more generally referred to as “Kewalo.”  The Kewalo Reclamation District included the area bounded by South Street, King Street, Ward Avenue and Ala Moana Boulevard.

This area already had a practical demonstration of dredging and filling.  In 1907, the US Army Fort Armstrong was built on fill over Kaʻākaukukui reef to protect the adjoining Honolulu Harbor.

“The plan practically takes in all the land from King street to the sea, and it will be the first step in a general reclamation scheme for the low lying lands of the city.”  (Hawaiian Star, October 24, 1911)

Kapālama Reclamation Project included approximately 60-acres of land between King Street and the main line of Oʻahu Railway and Land Company.  In addition, approximately 11-acres of land were filled from dredge material between Piers 16 and 17.

In 1925, the “practically worthless swamp lands” were converted “into property selling as high as $30,000.00 per acre.”

During this project, Sand Island and Quarantine Island were joined to the Kalihi Kai peninsula. In 1925 and 1926, a channel was dug from the Kalihi Channel into Kapālama Basin creating a true island out of “Sand Island.”

The Waikīkī Reclamation District was identified as the approximate 800-acres from King and McCully Streets to Kapahulu Street, near Campbell Avenue down to Kapiʻolani Park and Kalākaua Avenue on the makai side.  (1921-1928)

The dredge material not only filled in the Waikīkī wetlands, it was also used to fill in the McKinley High School site.

The initial planning called for the extension of the Ala Wai Canal past its present terminus and excavate along Makee Island in Kapiʻolani Park, connecting the Canal with the ocean on the Lēʻahi side of the project.  However, funds ran short and this extension was contemplated “at some later date, when funds are made available”; however, that never happened.

Eleven-and-a-half acres of Lāhaina “swamp land” (near the National Guard Armory,) drainage canals and storm sewers were part of the Lāhaina Reclamation District.  (1916-1917) Mokuhinia Pond was filled with coral rubble dredged from Lāhaina Harbor.

By Executive Order of the Territory of Hawaiʻi in 1918, the newly-filled pond was turned over to the County of Maui for use as Maluʻuluʻolele Park.

In Hilo, the Waiolama Reclamation Project included the draining and filling of approximately 40-acres in the area between the Hilo Railway tract, Wailoa River, and Baker and Front Streets.  It included diversion of the Alenaio Stream.  (1914-1919)

Generally, the consensus was the reclamation projects were successful in addressing the health concerns; in addition, they made economic sense.

As an example, in Waikīkī, before reclamation assessed values for property were at about $500 per acre and the same property reclaimed at ten cents a foot, making a total cost of $4,350 per acre.  The selling price after reclamation, $6,500 to $7,000 per acre, showed the financial benefit of the reclamation efforts.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

James Makee

James Makee was born at Woburn, MA, November 24, 1812. He married Catherine McNiven in New York in 1836.  He first arrived in Hawai‘i in 1843, in command of the sperm whaler Maine, having been compelled to put into this port for medical assistance.  (PCA, Sep 20, 1879)

While the Maine lay in the roadstead off Lahaina, Maui, it was learned that her master, Captain James Makee, had been attacked by the ship’s cook, brutally cut with a hatchet or cleaver, and left for dead.

This unfortunate incident, however, resulted in Captain Makee abandoning his seafaring career and he became interested in Hawai‘i and decided to locate in Honolulu, sending for Mrs. Makee, then living in Massachusetts.

Makee, then only thirty-one years of age and founder of the Makee family in Hawai‘i, remained in the islands to become a distinguished pioneer builder, first as a merchant in the whaling industry and later as a rancher and sugar planter.

As a trader in Honolulu, Captain Makee met with success in his first venture and formed the firm of Jones and Makee, ship chandlers, the partnership later becoming Makee, Anthon & Co. The company did a flourishing business and in 1850 Makee, Anthon & Co. were agents for some fifty out of seventy whaling ships in port on October 18 of that year.

The following year marked the first entry of Honolulu men into the whaling industry as ship owners, when Captain Makee, with a group of other local merchants as minority shareholders, acquired the “Chariot” and sent her into the Artic in April, 1851.

With the expansion of business in Honolulu, Captain Makee in 1853 financed the erection of the Makee & Anthon block on Queen Street, the first three-story brick building in Honolulu, materials for which were imported from Boston.

“Something New in Honolulu. A fine new Fire-Proof Store, three stories high, erecting at the corner of Kaahumanu and Queen streets, by Capt. Makee, built of brick, with a granite front, is something new in Honolulu, and consequently excites considerable attention.”

“No granite has before been used in the erection of buildings, at the islands, although fence and gate posts, and a few door-steps, have been imported from China, of a quality, however, far inferior to the Massachusetts granite now used by Capt. Makee, in the construction of his Store. This block will be of the most substantial character, and an ornament to the city.” (Polynesian, April 1, 1854)

Then, a second ship, the bark “Black Warrior,” was acquired by Makee & Anthon, and operated as a whaler for three years.

On January 23, 1856, “Kapena Ki” (Captain James Makee) purchased at auction Torbert’s plantation on Maui. He sold his Nuʻuanu residence and moved to Maui and raised his family on what he called ‘Rose Ranch’ after his wife Catherine’s favorite flower.

The extensive estate had some limited facilities for raising and milling sugar cane and was developed both as a cattle ranch and sugar plantation by Captain Makee.

He took a deep interest in the upbuilding of the property and was one of the first to import thoroughbred stock on a large scale. He also engaged in dairying and in 1858 began planting sugar cane, rehabilitating the abandoned Torbert enterprise.

Makee was one of the first to import, on a large scale, purebred stock. He also went in for dairying and his “sweet butter” found a fine market. In 1858 he began the rehabilitation of Torbert’s cane and the crop of 1861 was marketed in Honolulu.

He solved the area’s major problem – water. “Makee has built a wooden house and deep reservoir on the side of the house. The troubles of the men and women are now ended by this work, they are now truly well supplied with water. This land, in ancient times, was a barren open place, a rocky, scorched land, where water could not be gotten.”

“The water of this land in times before, was from the stumps of the banana trees (pūmaiʻa), and from the leaves of the kākonakona grass; but now there is water where moss can grow. The problem is resolved.” Nupepa Kuokoa, Iulai 7, 1866, [Maly, translator])

“Makee’s Plantation or Rose Ranch, as it is more generally termed by the proprietor and his friends, is situated on the south eastern part of the Island of Maui, in the district of Honuaula. … The estate contains about 6,500 acres, 1,200 of which are capable of producing cane.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 19, 1861 [Maly])

(From Torbert, then the decades of ownership by Makee, then Dowsett, Raymond and Baldwin, in 1963, the property was acquired by the Erdman family. The property is now known as ʻUlupalakua Ranch and it remains a cattle ranch.)

The sugar crop of 1861 was marketed in Honolulu and by 1862 the plantation had been greatly improved, according to the accounts of Rev. S. C. Damon, who visited Ulupalakua in that year.

During the Civil War Captain Makee won wide attention by a patriotic gift of two consignments of molasses, of one hundred barrels each, which he sent to San Francisco to be sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission at Washington, DC.

Later, a shipment of sugar and island produce was sent by Parker N. Makee, a son, as an additional contribution to the Union cause.

Throughout his residence at “Rose Ranch,” Ulupalakua, Captain Makee was noted for his hospitality, visitors from all parts of the world being entertained there.

On July 18, 1871, Colonel Zephaniah Swift Spalding married Makee’s first born daughter, Wilhelmina Harris Makee at McKee’s Rose Ranch in Ulupalakua, Maui.  In that same year, Makee’s eldest son, Parker, took over management of the West Maui Sugar Association.

In 1876, Captain Makee and Spalding purchased Ernest Krull’s cattle ranch in Kapa‘a, Kauai, intending to start a sugar plantation and mill.  After a brief stay in San Francisco (1875-1878) Spalding returned to the Islands, living on Kauai, where Makee was already operating the Makee Sugar Company and mill at Kapa‘a.

King Kalākaua and others formed a hui (partnership) to raise cane.  About the first of August, 1877, members of Hui Kawaihau moved to Kauai.  Makee had an agreement to grind their cane.

In 1876, Kapi‘olani Park was initially touted to create “a tract of land in the vicinity of Honolulu as a place of public resort,” where “agricultural and stock exhibitions, and healthful exercise, recreations and amusements” could occur, its literal purpose was far from it.

On the dedication day in 1876, King Kalākaua and James Makee (Kapiʻolani Park Association’s first president) stressed the public space, which they said was needed for a modern city to be civilized, to allow “families, children, and quiet people” to find “refreshment and recreation” in the “kindly influences of nature,” and to be a “place of innocent refreshment.”

However, when Kapiʻolani Park was first conceived, the motivation wasn’t about creating a public place.   Kapiʻolani Park began as a development project, run by the Kapiʻolani Park Association.

The association was founded with a two-fold purpose: (1) building residences for its stockholders along the ocean at Waikiki and on the slopes of Diamond Head and (2) laying out a first-class horse-racing track as a focal point of this new suburb.  They named the large island in the Park’s waterways after James Makee.

Appointed a commissioner to aid in the development of the resources of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1877, Captain Makee in that year launched a breakwater project at Makena, Maui, developing a harbor to facilitate the shipment of sugar.

Captain Makee also owned the Waihee Plantation, Maui, of which his son, Parker, was manager. His interests in the Ulupalakua ranch were divided to members of his family in Jan., 1878.

Upon his death in Honolulu, September 16, 1879, Captain Makee was survived by his widow and eight children, Charles and Parker N Makee, Mrs ZS Spalding, Mrs MLW Kitchen, Mrs D Noonan, Mrs George Herbert, Mrs ED Tenney and Mrs FP Hastings. (lots of information here is from Orr.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sugar, Growth Years

“The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauai in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200. Other pioneers, predominantly from the United States, soon began growing sugarcane on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Oahu.”  (HARC)

Shortly thereafter, King Kamehameha III, seeking to encourage commercial cultivation of sugar by native Hawaiians offered the “acre system,” giving “out small lots of land, from one to two acres, to individuals for the cultivation of cane.”

“When the cane is ripe, the King finds all the apparatus for manufacturing & when manufactured takes the half. Of his half one fifth is regarded as the tax due to the aupuni (government) & the remaining four fifths is his compensation for the manufacture. These cane cultivators are released from all other demands of every description on the part of chiefs.”  (Armstrong (1839;) MacLennan)

About this time, the initial signs of commercial sugar are found on Maui, in Wailuku.  In 1840, the King ordered an iron mill from the US, and it was erected by August.  Hung & Co in 1841 advertised the sale of sugar and sugar syrup from its 150-acre plantation in Wailuku. More than likely, this was sugar from the King’s Mill.  (MacLennan)

Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well.  Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.”  (Garvin)

Then, King Kamehameha III sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands.  In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:

“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”

“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880. These twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. Basic features of rural factory life were established.

This was a period of rapid growth for the sugar industry, building upon the momentum triggered by the Māhele of 1848, the Kuleana Act of 1850, and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875.  Likewise, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.

From January 27, 1848 through March 7, 1848 King Kamehameha III participated in what we refer to as the “Great Māhele” that was a reformation of the land system in Hawaiʻi and allowed private ownership; this fundamentally changed the land tenure system to a westernized paper title system through the Māhele.

The lands were formally divided among the king and the chiefs, and the fee titles were recorded in the Māhele book.  Deeds conveying land contained the phrase “ua koe ke kuleana o na kānaka,” or “reserving the rights of all native tenants,” in continuation of the reserved tenancies which characterized the traditional Hawaiian land tenure system.  (Garavoy)

The 1850 Kuleana Act allowed “native tenants” to claim fee simple title to the lands they worked.  Those who claimed their parcel(s) successfully acquired what is known as a kuleana.

The Kuleana Act did not allow the maka‘āinana to exercise other traditional rights, such as the right to grow crops and pasture animals on unoccupied portions of the ahupua’a. The court’s interpretation of the act prevented tenants from making traditional use of commonly cultivated land.  (MacKenzie)

The growth in the size and number of sugar plantations was further fueled by the Treaty of Reciprocity – 1875 between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i that eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.  Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.

During the Civil War boom period, the typical 1860s plantation was two hundred to three hundred acres in size, with about one hundred acres in cane, employing around one hundred workers year-round.

Hawai‘i’s government committed extensive resources to the success of sugar export. Honolulu’s merchants and financiers came to dominate sugar production. The Islands turned a corner during these decades – Hawai‘i’s dependence upon sugar began.

The fastest growth occurred on Maui, which in 1866 had twelve plantations, compared to Hawai‘i’s eight, O‘ahu’s six, and Kauai’s four.  Production on Hawai‘i Island, was just under a third of the total.

The island of Hawai’i had become the major sugar producer. Plantation statistics for the Hawaiian government in 1879 shows Hawai‘i with twenty-four plantations, Maui with thirteen, Kauai with seven, O‘ahu with seven, and Molokai with three – a total of fifty-four operations.

At the heart of this transformation was the plantation center. Unlike the commercial sugar mill, which drew on existing communities of Hawaiian workers, the plantation center represented a new clustering of population and technology.

Specifically, it was characterized by a sizable increase of foreign population, government recognition of the area as a vital economic region with distinct political needs, and by public and private investment in a shared physical infrastructure (e.g., stores, wharves, harbors) established specifically to trade with the West.

An important development in Hawai‘i’s history, the plantation center created new social institutions of dependency.  The Hawaiian government also had a significant hand in the rise of plantation centers.

The decline of whaling, collapse of the native vegetable trade, and a rapidly decreasing native population left the government with huge expenditures and little source of income.

In response, it applied public funds and assets toward the sugar trade in hopes of increasing Hawai‘i’s wealth. The Board of Immigration was established in 1866 to recruit workers for plantations. (MacLennan)

Five plantation centers changed the surrounding landscape and altered nearby Hawaiian communities. Plantations in Līhu‘e, Wailuku, Makawao, Hilo and Kohala brought an invasion of agricultural practices, technologies and repeopled the land with foreigners (from China, Portugal and Japan) and Hawaiians from other islands.

Characteristics of the five developing plantation centers separate them from the smaller sugar ventures of the period.  Plantation centers comprised several separate sugar mills and fields of different owners. Schools, stores, and worker villages sprang

up around these centers, serving the plantations.

By 1880 there were several other very new centers in Ka‘ū and Honoka’a on Hawai‘i, Lahaina on Maui, Princeville on Kauai, and several scattered plantations on O‘ahu. (MacLennan)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sammy Amalu

Bob Krauss was a man of words and he certainly had a way with words.  The following is from an article he wrote noting the death of Sammy Amalu and highlighting some of Amalu’s activities. Here is what Krauss had to say …

Sammy Amalu, 68, died yesterday at Queen’s Medical Center. That’s the official word from the emergency room at Queen’s. But it may be difficult for some skeptics to believe that Sammy isn’t setting us up for another caper – the most outrageous of all in a lifetime that shifted between dreams and reality with bewildering ease.

Sammy’s life was what Shakespeare must have been thinking about when he wrote, ‘If this were played upon a stage now, l could condemn it as an improbable fiction.’

He claimed to be of royal descent: His Highness Samuel Crowningburg-Amalu, High Chief Kaplikauinamoku Prince of Keawe.

He graduated from Punahou School and two federal prisons. He said he also attended Oxford University in England and Waseda Doshisha University in Japan.

In 1956 he failed to show up for his own wedding but the bride went ahead with the champagne reception anyway. The next day he said he had been kidnapped by relatives who opposed the marriage.

In 1962, he talked Hawaii’s leading financiers and hotel executives into selling him $75 million worth of prime real estate in a deal that made front page headlines. Sammy didn’t have the price of cab fare to the  airport.

He was so persuasive that he talked a guard at Folsom Prison into smuggling out a $175,000 bum check Sammy had written. At the time Sammy was in prison for writing a $200 bum check.

He was still in prison when he began writing his column for The Advertiser. Some readers think he wrote some of his best columns there.

Even while he was alive, reporters struggled to sift fact from fiction about Sammy. Now it’s probably impossible.

He claimed descent from King William Liholiho and Kaleimamahu, brother of Kamehameha I, and the Crowningburg family which came to Hawaii from Germany in 1870.

He was born on Kauai to Charles and Ethel Amalu.  After graduating from Punahou, in 1935, Sammy attended the University of Hawaii. He served briefly in the U.S. Army during World War ll.

His first reported marriage in 1946 was to a daughter of a prominent family in Italy, Maria Anastasia di Torionia. A later newspaper report doubted whether the marriage actually took place.

His “second” marriage, in 1956, was to Jane Tomberlain, a wealthy divorcee whose former husband was a millionaire oilman. It later ended in divorce.

His last marriage was to Honolulu Realtor Ann Fetzer in 1973.

Throughout most of his life, Sammy was plagued with a weakness for writing bad checks.

In 1950, he was convicted of embezzlement for writing two bum checks in the Philippines. Shortly after his marriage in 1956, he was indicted by a federal grand Jury in Denver for passing bogus checks again.

He was found guilty and served a four-year term at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan.

While many of Sammy’s checks were bad, they were always written with style. He was a poet, too. Above all, he was an actor who invented his roles with headspinning profligacy.

His greatest triumph in turning make believe into reality began with a story in May 1962 in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin about a mysterious international syndicate in Switzerland which was offering a total of $75 million for various Island properties.

The story and the headlines, grew as the days passed and new developments took place.

The president of Sheraton Hotels in Boston accepted an offer for $34.5 million for the Royal Hawaiian, Moana Surfrider and Princess Kaiulani hotels.

Sheraton had paid only $18 million for the same properties three years before.

Investor George Murphy received an offer of $5 million for his ranch on Molokai. He had paid, $300,500 for the property seven years earlier.

Financier Chinn Ho was offered $9 million for his Makaha Valley Farms. He had paid $1.25 million for most of the Waianae Coast in 1947.

Reports surfaced of syndicate offers of $11 million for 19 acres on Kapiolani Boulevard, $13 million for an acre on Waikiki Beach and $1 million for downtown parcels.

Real estate agents handling the deals said they did not know with whom they were dealing. United Press International called it “the deepest financial mystery since Captain Cook first introduced money to Hawaii.”

After a week of front page headlines, the executives of the syndicate turned out to be a couple of young hitchhikers Sammy had picked up coming in from the airport.

He had dreamed up the entire complicated hoax as a satire on Hawaii’s frantic real estate boom. Sammy himself skipped off to Seattle,  where he was arrested for writing another bum check and sent to prison.

It was there that he became the nation’s only federal prison inmate to write a column for a metropolitan daily newspaper.

Sammy’s career as a columnist started in the form of letters to an old Punahou classmate, Thurston Twigg-Smith, publisher of The Advertiser.

The letters, describing prison life in Sammy’s graceful and impeccable prose were so funny and interesting that Twigg-Smith decided to try them as columns.

Paroled in 1970, Sammy returned to Honolulu as a fulltime columnist as well as a social and literary lion. He was booked months in advance to speak at public functions.

For his first public appearance, he wore what became his trademark: while trousers, white embroidered barong tagalog, white nylon scarf at the neck and an ornate Hawaiian sash.

In 1976, he suffered an embolism, resulting in paralysis from the waist down. After that, he spent his time in and out of hospitals and his Waikiki apartment, meanwhile writing occasional columns for the Sunday Star-Bulletin and Advertiser.

Briefly, he lived in the household of Mrs. Robert (Gertrude K) Toledo, who was exonerated of the murder of her husband in an August 1984 trial during which Sammy testified in her defense.

In 1970, Sammy wrote his own obituary. It goes like this: ‘Sing no sad songs over my mortal dust.  Nor come to me weeping. I was born of an ancient line, of a high and princely house.’

‘I have known a true friend. I have loved a good woman. I have fathered a son. l have known laughter; I have known tears. I have tasted victory; I have sipped of failure.  Is not all that enough?’

‘Say only this of me when I am no more: He was a child of princes, and the dust of this flesh was fashioned of Hawaii’s soil.’

Funeral arrangement are pending. (Bob Krauss, Hnl Adv Feb 23, 1986)  (Amalu died on Feb. 23, 1986 at the age of 68.)

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