Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Everybody Has It – Everybody Needs It

“The most interesting medical journal that has come to this desk in a long time is Number 3 of the first volume of the Hawaii Medical Journal. Although the publication date given on the cover is January, the Journal did not arrive until the middle of April.” (North Carolina Medical Journal, May, 1942)

“The delay in the publication of this issue of the Journal is due in part to the pressure of activity following the events of December 7th (1941) which delayed the preparation of material by the authors and in part to the necessity for securing permission from the office of the Military Governor for continuance of publication. That permission was finally received on January 15th…”

“The whole issue breathes the spirit of American medicine at its best. The first page of reading matter is headed ‘War Came to Hawaiʻi’, and briefly retells the story of the Pearl Harbor tragedy.”

“A dramatic story of the Honolulu Blood and Plasma Bank is told by its director, Dr Forrest J Pinkerton. He first tells of how ‘wounded men … very evidently marked for death … still live because of the life-giving plasma poured back into their veins.”

“A call for donors was broadcast over local radio stations and the response was overwhelming. From a previous maximum of 8-donors a day, 4-days a week, volunteers were now being bled at the rate of 50 an hour, 10-hours a day, 7-days a week. This continued over a period of 2-weeks. Every available doctor and nurse was enlisted to assist.”

“Men and women waited in line for hours. Soldiers stood their guns with fixed bayonets in the surgery hallway and rolled up their sleeves and helped; sailors gave their few precious hours of liberty to wait their turn. Mothers asked strangers to hold their small children and took their turns on the surgery tables.”

“Civilian defense workers from Pearl Harbor, and workers from Red Hill, red eyed from long hours of welding, stopped by to donate before snatching a few hours rest.”

“A crew of husky iron workers in their oily work clothes came en masse; whole crews from dry docks and inter-island steamships; the dock workers and society folks waiting in line side by side to do their part. Sugar and pineapple plantation employees came direct from their work in the fields…”

“The question most commonly asked was ‘How soon can I come again?’” (North Carolina Medical Journal, May, 1942)

Founded in 1941, the organization was originally known as the Honolulu Blood and Plasma Bank operating out of The Queen’s Hospital.

The Blood Bank operated as a war-time agency with the outbreak of World War II returning to its civilian status in 1942. Over the years, the name changed to Blood Bank of Hawaiʻi, services were expanded to include neighbor island blood drives and Hawaii’s unique ethnic population became nationally recognized as a source for many types of rare blood.

Later, to encourage folks to donate, ‘Fang’ called into Aku’s morning radio program (Hal Lewis – J Akuhead Pupule) to announce a coming Blood Drive. That was Betsy Mitchell (the Blood Lady;) she was Director of Donor Recruitment and Community Relations for the Blood Bank.

The Mitchells used to live in our old neighborhood on Aumoana on Kaneohe Bay Drive. In the early-‘80s she moved to Volcano, co-founded and was past president of the Cooper Center Council, and was one of the most energetic and community-minded people you would ever meet. Unfortunately, Betsy passed away on December 16, 2013.

I looked forward to the monthly meetings we had in Volcano; I think of Betsy a lot, especially when I give blood.

Unlike the post-Pearl Harbor waiting lines to give blood, the Blood Bank of Hawai‘i needs folks to drop into their offices or mobile locations to make donations to meet Hawaiʻi’s needs; they require approximately 250 donors every day.

There’s no substitute for blood. If people lose blood from surgery or injury, or if their bodies can’t produce enough, there is only one place to turn – volunteer blood donors.

You may donate if you are in good health, weigh at least 110 pounds, have a valid photo ID with birth date and are at least 18 years old (or 17 years old with signed Blood Bank parent/legal guardian consent form.)

Every donor completes a health history questionnaire and screening interview to identify behaviors that indicate a high risk for carrying blood borne disease. There is strict confidentiality.

They like my blood (O-negative,) it’s a universal donor type (can be transfused to almost any patient in need;) I’m also CMV-negative (not been exposed to the cytomegalovirus (so I am a ‘baby donor.’))

They regularly call me for donations – there is an 8-week wait period between donations. The process is relatively painless – the worst part for me is when they pull the tape holding the needle down and it pulls the hair on my arm.

Please consider giving blood.

More on the Blood Bank of Hawaii here:
http://www.bbh.org

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Kakela me Kuke’

In 1837 Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke landed in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiʻi,) as part of the 8th Company of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Neither were missionary ministers. Castle was assigned to the ‘depository’ (a combination store, warehouse and bank) to help the missionaries pool and purchase their supplies, to negotiate shipments around the Horn and to distribute and collect for the goods when received. Cooke was a teacher.

Twelve years after Castle and Cooke had landed in the Islands, the American board decided that its purposes had been accomplished. It advised its representatives that their work was done and the board’s financial support would end.

Over the years Castle, who felt Cooke’s accounting abilities would help the depository, kept trying to convince his friend to join him. Cooke firmly declined until 1849, when his schooling of the royal children was complete. He needed to make a living since monetary support from Missions headquarters had been discontinued.

Castle and Cooke, good friends, decided they would become business partners. Many of the missionaries were planning to remain. Their needs must be met. So those of other residents and the crews of the whaling ships which wintered in Honolulu harbor.

So a business was born. On June 2, 1851, Samuel Northrup Castle and Amos Starr Cooke signed their names to partnership papers. A sign reading ‘Kakela me Kuke’ (‘Castle & Cooke’) was installed at the entrance to the Honolulu depository.

Money could be made by trading with the community at large, while mission posts could be supplied at cost. They took up the matter with the Mission Board in Boston, which, after two years, decided to release the partners from the mission and pay each a yearly salary of $500.

In 1853 a branch store was opened downtown, to be closer to the considerable action the California Gold Rush brought. Also in 1853, Castle and Cooke purchased their first ship, the Morning Star to ship produce to California. By 1856, the partners elected to sell the depository, located on the outskirts of Honolulu, to concentrate on their burgeoning downtown business.

In 1858, Castle and Cooke first ventured out of the mercantile business to make an investment in the new sugar industry. In the late 1860s they branched into the shipping business, handling shore-side business for a number of transpacific schooners and several inter-island vessels.

Despite these diversifications, however, the mercantile portion of the business continued to provide the bulk of the profits. One of the most active customers was Kanaʻina, husband of High Chiefess Kekāuluohi and father of the boy who was to become King Lunalilo.

Then, the Civil War started; goods became hard to get and sales slumped. Then, business with the whalers failed; oil found in Titusville, Pennsylvania replaced whale oil. Castle & Cooke almost went out of business. It was sugar that encouraged the partners to continue their business.

They had generally avoided the policy of investing their firm’s funds in other enterprises, but had bought personally into ventures that attracted them. This often led to relationships producing merchandise and shipping business for the firm and occasionally resulted in its appointment as fiscal agent for a company — as in the case of Kohala Sugar Company.

Kohala Sugar was founded in 1863 by the Rev Elias Bond; he organized the venture to create jobs for the Hawaiians living in Kohala. (It was not until 1910 that Castle & Cooke as a firm acquired an interest in the Kohala Sugar Company, though it had served as its agent for nearly 50 years.)

Then, in 1890, BF Dillingham’s railroad (OR&L,) started with the help of $100,000 invested by Castle, ended at Pearl City. To go further the line needed freight revenues. None were in sight – unless the Ewa land could be made to grow sugar by tapping its underlying fresh water sources to irrigate the crop.

From the organization of Kohala in 1863 until the Ewa lands were leased for sugar in 1890, Castle & Cooke at one time or another served as agent for nine plantations.

On December 28, 1894, the Castle & Cooke partnership was incorporated. The company continued to believe in the profitability of the Ewa Plantation and the risk paid off. In 1898, the original merchandise business was sold.

Diversification did not stop, however. In the ensuing years Castle & Cooke involved itself in an automobile company, the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company, and a big but short venture into the sugar refinery business with the Honolulu Sugar Refining Company.

Although Castle & Cooke had been in the shipping business for 50 years, a 1907 agreement with William Matson to be the agent for his Matson Navigation Company greatly increased the business in this area. The agreement endured for 56 years.

To insure a supply of oil for his ships, Captain Matson bought some wells in California and built a pipeline to the coast. In 1910 he founded the Honolulu Oil Corporation. Castle & Cooke, with other island firms, helped him finance his oil venture.

Pineapple cultivation on a commercial scale began in Hawaii in 1886 when Captain John Kidwell set out a thousand plants in Mānoa valley. By 1909, Castle & Cooke, as agent for Waialua, had negotiated leases of over 3,000 acres of the plantation’s upper lands to James D Dole and other growers for pineapple plantings.

Castle & Cooke had no substantial direct investment in the pineapple industry until 1932 when Hawaiian Pineapple Company (later Dole) encountered financial trouble. In that year Castle & Cooke and Waialua jointly under wrote the reorganization of the pineapple company and for a few years thereafter, Castle & Cooke served as its agent and took over the operations.

Castle & Cooke recognized the need for diversification which led to investment in tuna canning (Hawaiian Tuna Packers, 1946) and macadamia nuts (Royal Hawaiian Macadamia Nuts, 1948.)

For a time in the 1960s, Castle & Cooke were the biggest of the Big Five (C Brewer (1826;) Theo H. Davies (1845;) Amfac – starting as Hackfeld & Company (1849;) Castle & Cooke (1851) and Alexander & Baldwin (1870;)) however, Amfac later outpaced it.

Later, the company was the subject of several takeover bids; ultimately, David Murdock took firm control of Castle & Cooke (1985,) reorganized it into a holding company for three separate operations: Flexi-Van, Dole Food and Oceanic Properties, and relocated its headquarters to Los Angeles. (Lots of information is from Castle & Cooke, Greaney and FundingUniverse.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hotel Del Coronado

Hotel founders, Elisha Babcock, Jr., and Hampton L. Story, along with San Diego developer Alonzo Horton walked along the Coronado beach in 1886.

Although neither Babcock nor Story had experience in the hotel business, they were so inspired by the natural beauty of Coronado that they decided to buy the island and build a magnificent hotel, one that would be “the talk of the western world,” an iconic California destination where “people will continue to come long after we are gone.”

They subsequently purchased about 4,000 acres of land around the Coronado Peninsula and the neighboring North Island in order to create a resort community that would service the new hotel. (Historic Hotels)

They first created the Coronado Beach Company, after which they established a number of additional enterprises to support the development of the Coronado community (a ferry company, water company, railroad company and an electrical power plant).

As soon as a site was chosen for the historic Hotel Del Coronado, the men laid out Coronado’s parks, civic areas, commercial zones and streets (Isabella and Adella avenues were named for the founders’ wives).

Once the town of Coronado was established, it was time to attract residents, so Babcock and Story held a very well-publicized land auction, which attracted a reported 6,000 people. 350 lots were sold during the auction, raising about $100,000. By June 10, 1887, Coronado lot sales had reached the $1.5 million mark. The grand total would eventually reach $2.25 million. (Hotel Del Coronado)

“Orange avenue is the name of one of the wide and elegant thoroughfares at Coronado Beach, the ferry to which locality is now in operation. The sea beach is over there is very fine, in which surf bathers can dip for many miles … Lots, which are large, can be bought at reasonable rates now, and more houses will soon be under way.” (Daily San Diegan, Feb 22, 1886)

The Coronado Beach Company are about to erect a mammoth hotel of five hundred rooms, and on the mesa a palace hotel of some three hundred rooms is projected.” (Daily San Diegan, Jan 4, 1887)

“The first shovelful of earth for the excavation for the foundation of the Coronado hotel was cast by Mrs ES Babcock, yesterday. The work will now proceed as rapidly as possible.” (Daily San Diegan, Jan 13, 1887)

By May 1887, approximately 250 men were employed in the construction of the exciting new destination beach resort, and The San Diego Union reported: “A million feet of lumber is scattered about the yard, and more is coming all the time.”

The all-wooden Hotel del Coronado used a variety of lumber: Douglas fir for framing and California redwood for exterior siding; hemlock, cedar, white oak, and Oregon sugar pine were also used. (Hotel Del Coronado)

Although guests began arriving as early as late January 1888, Hotel del Coronado’s birthday has generally been celebrated on February 19 – the day the historic Southern California hotel served its first meal in the main dining room (today’s Crown Room).

Room rates – which included three meals a day – started at about $2.50 per day. The hotel was built at a cost of $600,000 and furnished for $400,000. (Hotel Del Coronado)

Known affectionately as “The Del” by its many countless guests, the legendary Hotel del Coronado harkens back to the height of America’s Gilded Age.

Hawai‘i Connection to the Hotel Del Coronado

In 1876, son of wealthy “Sugar King” Claus Spreckels, John Dietrich Spreckels (sometimes called the Sugar Prince) went to the Hawaiian Islands, where he worked in his father’s sugar business.  

He loved sailing, and owned both personal shipliners and boats. Apart from being the Sugar Prince, Spreckels also became known as “Seadog.” In 1880, the Sugar Prince’s legacy grew to incorporate more than just the sugar industry.

Given his passion for sailing, Spreckels then established his own shipping enterprise in 1880, the Oceanic Steamship Company, operating a mail and passenger line to Hawaii and Australia.

In 1887, Spreckels visited San Diego on his yacht Lurline to stock up on supplies.  (Nearly forty years earlier (1850,) Honolulu-born William Heath “Kanaka” Davis, Jr. (1822 – 1909) had arrived in this part of California.

Davis purchased 160-acres of land and, with four partners, laid out a new city (near what is now the foot of Market Street.)  He built the first wharf there in 1850.) (Part of the interest in and growth of San Diego may also be attributed to when a terminus of a transcontinental line was made in 1885.)

When the Hotel Del Coronado was under construction; Spreckels, fell in love with it and provided generous loans and other assistance to the resort’s founders, Babcock and Story, in order to keep the dream alive.

“You have often heard the remark that San Diego is a one-man town. Personally, I feel proud to live in San Diego when it is referred to as a one-man town … this afternoon you can’t give our great leader enough glory.” (Mayor Wilde remarks of Spreckels, November 15, 1919; San Diego History))

Spreckels became an investor in the Coronado Beach Company in 1889, buying out Hampton L.Story’s one-third interest and over the next three years bought controlling interest in the company and became the sole proprietor of the Hotel del Coronado. (Coronado History)

He established Tent City, a large vacation campground that sprung up near Hotel del Coronado.  Tent City grew quickly – from 300 tents in the first year to more than 1,000 three years later, and attracted visitors from across the nation as an affordable vacation alternative.

“To be candid, I did not entirely fancy the idea at first, and then for a time I was doubtful of the success of the place. I was somewhat of the opinion that it might detract from the popularity of the resort proper and the hotel,” Spreckels said in a 1903 interview. “But Tent City has … established itself as firmly in my favor as in that of the public.”  (San Diego Union Tribune)

An early getaway brochure described the accommodations: “A furnished tent comprises electric lights, matting on boarded floor, comfortable beds and cots, bedding, wash-stand, mirror, tables, chairs, rockers, camp-chairs and stools, necessary cooking utensils, clean linen, daily care of tent, and laundry service of tent linen.”

Tent City also featured restaurants, a soda fountain, library, grocery store, shops, a small hotel (the Arcade), theatre, bandstand, dance pavilion, merry-go-round, shooting gallery, swimming floats (one with a high-diving board), its own police department, and daily newspaper. (Hotel Del Coronado)

In 1904, The Del – already considered a technological marvel – made history when it unveiled the world’s first electrically lit, outdoor, living Christmas tree. Holiday lights were strung from the hotel to a nearby Norfolk Island Pine. Although indoor trees were popular in America by this time, electric Christmas lights were a rarity (candles were still commonplace).

Spreckels died in San Diego on June 7, 1926. His biographer, Austin Adams, called him “one of America’s few great Empire Builders who invested millions to turn a struggling, bankrupt village into the beautiful and cosmopolitan city San Diego is today.”  (San Diego History Center)

Coronado is also home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, and Silver Strand Training Complex, supported by nearly 20,000 military and civilian personnel.

In 1969, the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge was completed and made Coronado Island and Hotel del Coronado much more accessible. (Lots of information here is from Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego History Center, Coronado CA, and Coronado History)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Valentine’s Day

For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,
When every fowl comes there his mate to take,
Of every species that men know, I say,
And then so huge a crowd did they make
(Parliament of Fowles, Chaucer, 1382 – LH Phillips Memorial Public Library)

“Parlement of Foules” is the apparent first surviving record of a connection between Valentine’s Day and romantic love. Chaucer probably composed the poem in 1381–82. The date suggests that Chaucer wrote “Parlement of Foules” to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of the English King to Princess Anne of Bohemia.

Saint Valentine’s Day, or simply Valentine’s Day, is celebrated on the 14th of February, almost internationally but primarily in western societies. It is a commemorative Christian feast for some but a secular occasion for others who see it as a day to celebrate affection in all of its forms but primarily romantic love.  (World History Encyclopedia)

The day may have taken its name from a priest who was martyred about 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. According to legend, the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter.

Other accounts hold that it was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, for whom the holiday was named, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person. Another common legend states that St. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.  (Britannica)

February had been very important for the Romans; and the celebration of the pagan festival of Lupercalia, dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and to Romulus and Remus, the mythological founders of Rome.

The name presumably derives its etymology from lupus, meaning wolf and perhaps referring to the she-wolf, which, according to one form of the legend of Romulus, raised the two boys who founded the city.

The festival involved the sacrifice of a goat and a dog; the goat’s hide would be cut into strips and dipped in its blood, and priests, called Luperci, would then carry these strips and gently slap crop fields and women with them, with the latter being eager for this treatment as they believed that it would make them more fertile in the coming year.

Young women would then proceed to put their names in a large urn from which bachelors would take one and be bonded to that woman for the whole year. They could participate in all forms of physical relationship, and most but not all of these relationships would end in marriage.  (World History Encyclopedia)

When the Roman Empire was Christianized, such pagan activities were deemed unacceptable. Many pagan celebrations were replaced with Christian holidays, and thus Lupercalia (if it was indeed practiced this way and in February) may have also transformed into something more acceptable to the church.

The original purpose that Saint Valentine’s Day served is not clear; it may be a toned down elements of Lupercalia or it was a commemorative day for the martyrs of the early Christian era.  (World History Encyclopedia)

Formal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. The first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s. (Britannica)

London’s relationship with Valentine’s Day cards goes back at least two hundred years. By the mid 1820s, an estimated 200,000 valentines circulated annually within London.

In 1840, the Post Office introduced a new service where letters could be sent across the country for one penny using the first postage stamp, known as the Penny Black. The number of Valentine’s Day cards sent then skyrocketed. By the late 1840s the number was reported to have doubled, and had doubled again by the 1860s. (London Museum)

Valentines commonly depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts, traditionally the seat of emotion. Because it was thought that the avian mating season begins in mid-February, birds also became a symbol of the day. Traditional gifts include candy and flowers, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love. (Britannica)

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Greek Artillery

Ua makaukau pono ʻo Liliʻu
Ma na poka ʻAhi Helene. …
Noho hou o Liliʻu i ke Kalaunu.

Liliʻu is readily prepared
With her Greek artillery fire. …
Return again Liliʻu to the throne.
(Hawaiʻi Holomua, February 11, 1893; Chapin)

Greek sailors found their way to the Islands on whalers and trading vessels after 1830. Beginning in the late 1870s, some forty men from the small Mediterranean country migrated and settled on the Big Island and O‘ahu.

They set up produce-growing and shipping operations, cafés, bars, rooming houses, and hotels. (Greek Festival Hawaiʻi)

In 1883, Peter Camarinos, originally from Sparta, opened the California Fruit Market on King Street, near Alakea, in Honolulu, and in 1891, established the Pearl City Fruit Company with other Hawaiian-based businessmen, inspiring relatives and others to venture here. (Lucas)

They were pioneers in exporting pineapples and bananas and other exotic fruits to California markets. He installed refrigeration containers on ships that can hold up to 2,000 lbs. of fruit. Camarinos transported their own goods to market and allowed other businesses to use their refrigeration containers for a fee. (Lucas)

George Lycurgus, known as Uncle George, was a cousin of Camarinos who came to Hawaiʻi in 1887 and played an important role in the development of the San Souci, Hilo Hotel and Kilauea Volcano House. (Gonser)

Migration from Greece in the last third of the 19th Century was primarily due to crop failures and a surplus population that caused wide-spread poverty. A Western technological revolution of cheap and fast steamship and rail travel, along with rapid industrialization, made feasible large scale emigration to America and, on a smaller scale, to Hawaiʻi.

The Greeks came into direct conflict with that small but powerful group of American businessmen who effectively weakened Kalakaua’s government by means of the ‘Bayonet Constitution’ of 1887.

Later, there was a revolution against Queen Liliʻuokalani’s constitutional monarchy and in 1895 a subsequent counter-revolution that attempted to restore her to the throne.

From January 6 to January 9, 1895, patriots of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the forces that had overthrown the constitutional Hawaiian monarchy were engaged in a war that consisted of three battles on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi.

This has frequently been referred to as the “Counter-revolution”. It has also been called the Second Wilcox Rebellion of 1895, the Revolution of 1895, the Hawaiian Counter-revolution of 1895, the 1895 Uprising in Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian Civil War, the 1895 Uprising Against the Provisional Government or the Uprising of 1895.

In their attempt to return Queen Liliʻuokalani to the throne, it was the last major military operation by royalists who opposed the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The goal of the rebellion failed.

It turns out several of the Greek businessmen were royalists and were implicated in getting guns past customs officials, notably, Lycurgus at the San Souci in Waikiki.

Lycurgus was a royalist and was implicated with other counter-revolutionists in supplying arms (1895.) He was arrested, thirteen counts of treason were filed against him and he was held at ‘The Reef’ (Oʻahu Prison) for 52-days. (Chapin)

The beginning chant in this post appeared in Hawaii Holomua shortly after Queen Lili’uokalani’s removal in early 1893; it expressed a strong desire that she regain her throne.

“Greek artillery fire” was a classical and heroic allusion by the poet, but it was also, as events turned out, appropriate in that Greek men in Hawaiʻi during the Revolution and Counterrevolution were loyal to her.

During those years, a dozen or so natives of Greece who were Hawaiʻi residents were involved in the prolonged and ultimately futile struggle to preserve the monarchy. Seven men were active participants, and the rest were royalist sympathizers. (Chapin)

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