General | Page 150 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 7, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Hitachi Tree

Moanalua Gardens is a 24-acre privately-owned public park in Honolulu. The park is the site of Kamehameha V Cottage which used to be the home of Prince Lot Kapuāiwa, who would later become King Kamehameha V.

Moanalua Gardens is also the home of a large monkeypod tree (about 130-years old) that is known in Japan as the Hitachi Tree, one of the most recognizable corporate icons in Japan.

The Hitachi Tree first originated through a TV commercial for Japanese electronics manufacturer Hitachi, Ltd that first aired in Japan in 1973. The Hitachi tree, a large monkeypod tree with a distinctive umbrella-shaped canopy, grows in the middle of a grassy area in the middle of the park.

The tree is registered as an exceptional tree by the City and County of Honolulu and cannot be removed or destroyed without city council approval.

An earlier agreement between the Damon Estate and Hitachi gave Hitachi exclusive worldwide rights to use the tree’s image for promotional purposes in exchange for annual payments.

It was previously reported that Hitachi Ltd, has agreed to pay the owner of the Moanalua Gardens $400,000 a year for 10 years to use the garden’s famous monkeypod tree in its advertising.

The tree symbolizes the “comprehensive drive” and the “wide business range” of the Hitachi Group. It continues today as an image of the Hitachi Group’s working for communities through leveraging of its collective capacities and technologies, and the dedication of the individuals that the Group comprises.

The tree is widely recognized, especially in Japan, and has become an important symbol of the Hitachi Group’s reliability, and earth-friendliness. It also enhances Hitachi’s brand value as a visual representation of its corporate slogan: “Inspire the Next.”

Over the past 40 years, the Hitachi Tree has become a valuable Hitachi Group asset as a familiar and respected image in Hitachi’s expanding messages globally.

It symbolized the Group spirit of bringing its whole strength to a wide variety of business fields in Japan in order to contribute to society. In Hitachi’s view, how better to portray this spirit than with a mighty tree?

Since then, the Hitachi Tree advertisements focused on the domestic market, have continued in various forms, including newspapers and magazines, on public transport, in picture books and through photography competitions on the theme of trees.

As such, the Hitachi Tree plays an important role connecting customers and the Hitachi Group

Monkeypod is native to Central and South America and widely distributed in subtropical areas. The leaf shape is similar to that of fern fronds, and the leaves open at sunrise and close in the afternoon. Flowers bloom twice a year, around May and November.

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The Hitachi Tree

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The Hitachi Tree-size

August 5, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Makauwahi Cave

The Makauwahi Cave (“fear, break through”) is the small portion of the largest limestone cave found in Hawaii.

It lies on the south coast of the island of Kauai, in the Māhāʻulepū Valley close to Māhāʻulepū Beach, and is important for its paleoecological and archaeological values.

It is reached via a sinkhole and has been described as “…maybe the richest fossil site in the Hawaiian Islands, perhaps in the entire Pacific Island region”.

The pale rock ridge that houses the sinkhole started as a field of sand dunes.

Over time, rainwater seeped through the sand, converting it chemically into limestone rock.

Underground water ate away at the lower parts of the limestone, forming an extensive complex of caves, and finally one large section of cave roof collapsed, creating a feature known as a sinkhole.

The feature is as much as 100 yards long from the entrance to the most distant known cave, and as much as 40 yards wide, but it may contain other caverns whose entrances are buried.

Paleoecological and archaeological excavations of the sediment that has filled the pond in the sinkhole put its age at some 10,000 years.

More importantly, the findings show how the first humans that inhabited Kauai affected the pre-human natural environment.

It is one of only a handful of sites in the world that show such impact.

Before the first Polynesian settlers set foot on Kauai, Hawai‘i was a strange Eden, empty of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, because none had ever made it across the vastness of the Pacific to these remote islands.

The sinkhole contains nearly 10,000-years of sedimentary record; since the discovery of Makauwahi as a fossil site, excavations have found pollen, seeds, invertebrate shells and Polynesian artifacts, as well as thousands of bird and fish bones.

An array of native birds that had evolved in splendid isolation filled every kind of niche.

More than 40 species of extinct native bird fossils have been excavated from Makauwahi, including an odd long-legged owl, which specialized in hunting small forest birds, and a nocturnal duck with shrunken eyes.

Among the bones discovered at Makauwahi were those of one lumbering flightless duck with a heavy bill designed to graze like a tortoise on short, tough grass and vegetation from rocks.

Bones of the endangered Hawaiian hawk and Laysan duck have also been discovered at the sinkhole. Today, these two species survive on single islands distant from Kauai, but the fossil discoveries suggest they were once more widespread throughout Hawaii.

Evidence from a full millennium of human activity chronicles the details of life nearby and its considerable impact on the island environment.

The Makauwahi Cave site provides a rich record of life before and after human arrival, and preserves many artifacts and food remains, including perishable cultural items.

Oral traditions said to extend back as far as the fourteenth century in some cases show good agreement with the archaeological and paleoecological record.

Following European contact, additional environmental impacts, including a drastic increase in erosion and many additional biological invasions, are documented from the site.

Paleoecologist David Burney and his wife Lida Pigott Burney, with help from hundreds of local volunteers, has found 10,000-year-old buried treasure in the Makauwahi Cave and wrote a book on the subject, Back to the Future in the Caves of Kauai, A Scientist’s Adventures in the Dark.

Makauwahi Cave is one of the Points of Interest in the Holo Holo Kōloa Scenic Byway. We assisted Mālama Kōloa and Kōloa Community Association with the preparation of the Corridor Management Plan for the Scenic Byway.

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Makauwahi Sinkhole

An active archeological dig with 10,000 years of preserved fossils found. The entrance requires crouching and head bumping is an initiation injury.

Makauwahi Sinkhole

Makauwahi Sinkhole (TGI)

A view of the open-air cave from the entrance.

Makauwahi Sinkhole (hawaii-edu)

Makauwahi Cave-Image-Map-(cavereserve-org)

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July 30, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Thomas Square

On January 22, 1850, the King’s Privy Council addressed “Another suggestion to set apart a day for marking out the boundaries of the square on the Plains of Waikiki to be called by the name of Admiral Thomas was also approved of by vote.” (Privy Council Minutes, January 22, 1850)

Then, on the anniversary of sovereignty restoration that year, “At sunrise a gun was fired, His Majesty’s large standard was hoisted at the Palace, the Hawaiian ensign on the Fort, on the Hill, and on all Hawaiian vessels.”

“At eight o’clock all the Foreign Consuls displayed their flags. The foreign vessels in port hoisted their ensigns, and some of them were beautifully decorated with flags, private signal, pendants, &c.”

“Amongst them all, was conspicuous HBM’s schooner Cockatrice, being dressed out with great taste, and having the Hawaiian ensign flying from the fore, during the day.”

“The merchant’s offices, warehouses, stores, and shops were more generally closed, than during any preceding anniversary.”

“It being generally known that it had been the King’s intention, had health permitted, to have ridden out in state, to the plain, and there given the name of Thomas Square, to the exact spot on which the gallant admiral of that name, restored his Flag, numerous parties on horseback, during the day, visited the spot.” (Polynesian, August 3, 1850)

“The restoration of the Hawaiian Monarchy in July 1843 – ending the five-months-long illegal seizure and occupation by the Englishman, Lord George Paulet – created the chief, and indeed the only, notable site in Kulaokahu‘a.”

“The exact locale – the future Thomas Square – leaped into history with, literally, a bang. On the morning of July 31, two pavilions decorated with greens and a flagstaff stood on the plain east of town.”

“On the street line to the west, tents from warships in port punctuated their arid surroundings. A thick mat of rushes paved the line of march. Thousands waited for the ceremonies of the day.”

“At 9:30, Rear Admiral Richard Thomas of the British navy called on the King to sign official documents. A half hour later, several companies of English sailors and marines were drawn up on a line facing the sea, with an artillery corps on their right.”

“Admiral Thomas and his staff arrived in the King’s state carriage, while the Monarch himself came on horseback, accompanied by the household troops. The artillery honored His Majesty with a 21-gun salute.”

“At a given signal, the British flag officer bowed his colors; the British flag was then lowered and the Hawaiian flag raised amid salvos, first from Thomas’s HMS Carysfort, then from English and American warships, merchantmen and whalers, and finally from the Honolulu fort and the Punchbowl battery.”

“A great cheer arose as the wind caught the folds of the Hawaiian flag. Admiral Thomas read a long declaration, after which marines, sailors, and artillery passed in a review witnessed by Commodore Lawrence Kearney and officers of the USS Constellation. Hawaii’s sovereignty had been restored.” (Greer)

Later, the Kingdom was looking for ways to replenish a budget shortfall. “In its search for additional funds, the official eye rested on Kulaokahu‘a, also called the Waikiki Plain or just The Plain.”

“This unpalatable stretch of real estate sprawled between the American mission and Makiki Stream. An area which an overheated promoter might have referred to as one of sweeping vistas, Kulaokahu‘a was best known for dust storms and impressive nothingness.”

“It was so empty that after Punahou School opened in July 1842, mothers upstairs in the mission house could see children leave that institution and begin their trek across the barren waste. Trees shunned the place; only straggling livestock inhabited it.” (Greer)

The government proposed to raise funds by selling lots in Kualokahu‘a and placed an advertisement in the Polynesian, “Building Lots – The Minister of the Interior is prepared to sell or lease Building Lots between Honolulu and Waikiki, on application being made according to law. [Nov. 14,1846]”

“In advance of this announcement, the government had built three roads with arched stone bridges. The former were extensions of King, Young, and Beretania Streets; the bridges spanned Makiki Stream. At about the same time certain lots were surveyed and numbered”.

“These preliminary sales hardly constituted a stampede. At this rate, great civilizations might have waxed and withered away ere the Waikiki Plain became a blooming, peopled suburb.” (Greer)

“Hoping to project a more urban image of The Plain, government decreed that after May 4, 1850 no horses, cattle, or other animals could run at large there. The creatures thus addressed could not decipher this message, and more than 30 years later agents were being appointed to take up strays.”

“As 1853 ended, the lots were ‘not in demand,’ a phrase repeated by Bishop in April 1855. Apparently Kulaokahu‘a’s desert environment transmitted dry rot to land values there.”

“Bishop wrote in 1856 that he had sold his two lots at auction for $25 each. Kulaokahu‘a plots were in mid-1858 almost worthless, only two or three of all sold having been improved.”

“In the early 1850s, some ceremonies celebrated the Restoration, but the practice faded away. As a recreational mecca, the dusty waste of the Square had the pull of a sauna in the Sahara. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser in 1864 called for a public park.”

“The unfenced and unimproved Thomas Square could have been made into an ornament of the city and a lever to raise property values around it. But this decorative hoist did not materialize. Nine years later, some small prospect of a park appeared.” (Greer)

“Honolulu now had a paper park in a paper subdivision.”

“But events move slowly in this Kingdom, except in the way of contracting debt, and for a long time Thomas Square was only a name.”

“In 1882 the Legislature appropriated a small sum of money for the improvement of Thomas Square, and every session since then money, in scant supply, has been voted for the same object.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 7, 1887)

“Very fortunately the control of Thomas Square was given to the Hon. A. S. Cleghorn, whose knowledge of landscape gardening is only equalled by his desire to beautify all public parks and grounds about Honolulu.”

“In the sixties little or no attention was paid to it, and it was soon overgrown with weeds. About 1875 I took charge and had the Square laid out and piped for water, and also had a band stand erected.” (Cleghorn; Thrum 1909)

“The Banyans now growing there are from ‘Ainahau,’ while most of the other trees are from the Government Nursery. There were crotans planted round the band stand and also in clusters about the grounds.” (Cleghorn; Thrum 1909)

“The square of seven acres had been laid out to scale in circles and half circles by the Hon. Robt. Stirling, and Mr. Cleghorn worked upon these plans.”

“Walks were laid out; valuable trees, flowering shrubs and flowers were planted, and an untiring supervision was given to the work, until today Thomas Square, at a trifling expenditure of money, is one of the most agreeable places of public resort to be found anywhere in the world compressed into the same limited space on a dead level.”

“But this did not suffice. Mr. Cleghorn, when the grounds had been sufficiently improved, went around among his friends in the city and raised sufficient money to build a grand stand for the band and provide seats for several hundred people in the grounds.”

“The grand stand was erected by Mr. F. Wilhelm, and is in every respect an improvement upon that in Emma Square. It is about double the size of the latter, and has a ceiling and sounding board.”

“There are thirty-four seats on the ground, ten of which are iron, recently imported from England. The remainder are of wood and were made to order here. They are fixtures.”

“The seats were placed in position yesterday. Hon. Mr. Cleghorn personally superintended the distribution of the seats, which afford shade during the day and an opportunity of enjoying the music by night. As a convenient and agreeable resort for all classes of citizens Thomas Square will be found unrivalled.”

“A wide path, close to the outer fence on its four sides is being opened, so that pedestrians may enjoy the luxury of an agree able promenade instead of walking along the dusty road.”

“The Royal Hawaiian Band, as already stated, plays at Thomas Square for the first time this evening. We bespeak a large and enthusiastic attendance.”

“Only one word of warning: do not touch plant or flower. These are grown for public gratification and should be held sacred. Let persons in charge of children remember this.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 7, 1887)

In 1925, a Joint Resolution of the legislative session set aside Thomas Square as a public park and placed it under the management of the Park Board of the City and County of Honolulu. It remains this today. It was recently refurbished by the City and a statue of Kamehameha III erected.

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No._2._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_Catholic_church._(c._1854)-Honolulu_to_Waikiki

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Kawaiahao Church in 1885-Look towards Diamond Head

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Thomas Square-Historic Hawaii Foundation

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1843 (July) – May 1845 Early version of the present flag

July 26, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hapa-Haole Music

Traditional Hawaiian music was based upon mele oli and mele hula as performed in the pre-Western-contact era. Mele oli means plain chanting, while mele hula signifies chanting accompanied by hula.

Subsequently, mele hula kuʻi – chant and dance style with western influences – developed in the late-19th and early 20th centuries from mele hula. These three forms served as the foundations of authentic Hawaiian music.

In 1879 in Hawaiʻi, Portuguese musicians (Madeira Islanders) played on “strange instruments, which are a kind of cross between a guitar and a banjo, but which produce very sweet music” (this Madeiran guitar, the machete, was destined to become the Hawaiian ʻukulele.) (Hawaiian Gazette – September 3, 1879)

In about 1889, Joseph Kekuku began sliding a piece of steel across the strings of a guitar, thus inventing steel guitar (kika kila); at about the same time, traditional Hawaiian music with English lyrics became popular.

All of this helped set the foundational sound for a new music in Hawaiʻi.

From about 1895 to 1915, Hawaiian music dance bands became in demand more and more. These were typically string quintets. Ragtime music influenced the music, and English words were commonly used in the lyrics.

This type of Hawaiian music, influenced by popular music and with lyrics being a combination of English and Hawaiian (or wholly English), is called hapa haole (literally: half white) music.

In 1903, Albert “Sonny” Cunha composed “My Waikīkī Mermaid,” arguably the first popular hapa haole song; two years later he wrote “Honolulu Tom Boy,” which became immensely popular. (The earliest known hapa haole song, “Eating of the Poi”, was published in Ka Buke o na Leo Mele Hawaii…o na Home Hawaii in Honolulu in 1888.)

Sonny Cunha was also known as a talented pianist who incorporated the piano into a Hawaiian orchestra for the first time. As a composer, pianist and orchestra leader, Cunha attracted many audiences – residents and visitors alike – with his new type of music; although pure Hawaiian songs still retained their popularity among kamaʻaina residents.

The new style and tempo of Cunha’s music came to exert an enormous influence on another musician, Johnny Nobel (later called the ‘Hawaiian Jazz King;’) in 1918 Noble joined Cunha’s band on drums and xylophones, and thus embraced the new style of music. Nobel also learned composition from Cunha and began to compose in the new style of Hawaiian music.

Noble’s first rise to fame came as the leader of a major hotel orchestra, at the Moana Hotel. He felt that jazz and Hawaiian music blended beautifully and immediately began to shape the sound of the orchestra. With no brass in the orchestra, the mellow sound they produced became the standard of the time.

As a composer and arranger, Noble really became a great composer of hapa haole tunes including, “My Little Grass Shack”, “King Kamehameha” and “Hula Blues.” He was responsible for ‘jazzing up’ and making popular the traditional “Hawaiian War Chant” song.

In 1935, Noble became the first Hawaiian composer inducted into The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The hapa-haole sound was a “new wave” in the Hawaiian music scene. The new sound undeniably met the tastes and attitudes of the audience in Waikīkī in the first half of the twentieth century.

The lyrics usually expressed attractive images of Waikīkī – sand, surf, palm trees and hula girls. The new style of Hawaiian music responded to the transformation of the American pop music scene. From 1900 to 1915, it was based upon simple ragtime rhythms and sometimes upon waltz-like melodies.

The hapa-haole sound adopted jazz and blues from 1916 to the 1930s and then it incorporated the big-band sounds from the 1940s to the 1950s, rock ‘n roll in the 1950s and surf-style in the 1960s.

As time went by, the sound became less and less Hawaiian, despite its lyrics referring to Hawaiʻi.

At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, hapa-haole songs were featured in the Hawaii exhibits. The Hawaiian songs accompanied by ukulele fascinated the audience and triggered a Hawaiian boom on the mainland.

By 1916, there were hundreds of Hapa Haole (half “foreign”) tunes written. That same year, reportedly more Hawaiian records were sold on the mainland than any other type of music. And they came in all the popular styles of the day: in ragtime, blues, jazz, foxtrot and waltz tempos, as “shimmy” dances and–even–in traditional hula tempos, but jazzed up a bit.

In 1935, a radio program began, broadcasting live from the Banyan Court of the Moana Hotel on the beach at Waikīkī, and radios nationwide tuned in to hear “Hawaii Calls.” Not only did nearly every island entertainer cut his or her teeth on the program, many went on to become well known.

A number of non-Hawaiian continental musicians exploited the marketable commodity. Songs like “Yacka Hula Hicky Dula” and “Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo” reflected the Hawaiian vogue, but did not represent the hapa-haole sounds in the true sense.

In Waikīkī, composers and musicians carefully blended Hawaiian music with jazz and blues, and attached the music to the Waikīkī landscape.

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Hapa Haole Music Festival (PAI_Foundation)

Alfred Apaka and his Hawaii Village Sernaders. Tapa room late 1950’s >>> Property of The Honolulu Advertiser

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July 23, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Wailuku Civic Center Historic District

The Wailuku Civic Center Historic District is comprised of several buildings (recognized on the State and National Registers of Historic Places) that generally front on South High Street and constitute the core of governmental structures in Wailuku, the Maui County seat.

Following annexation, the Territorial government passed the County Act in 1905, establishing county governments on the four largest islands in the Hawaiʻi chain.

The act named Wailuku the County seat of Maui, although a number of people were advocating that Lāhainā, the former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, be accorded this right.

The citizens of east and central Maui, who comprised three quarters of the island’s population, reasonably argued that with the growth and dominance of sugar production on the island, Wailuku had replaced Lāhainā as Maui’s center of wealth, business and population.

Wailuku originally was a Hawaiian settlement. In 1832, a mission was established there under the leadership of Jonathan S. Green.

Very little development occurred, however, until after the Wailuku Sugar Company commenced its operations in 1862. This led to the growth and eventual prosperity of the town.

Following the naming of Wailuku as Maui’s County seat, the first substantial government building erected in the town was the district courthouse.

The county government remained housed in leased commercial space, a small wooden office building and the community hall, until 1925 when the current Police Station was built to accommodate the demand for adequate office space.

The construction of this building was hailed by the local press as, “another step in the establishment of an attractive civic center,” and the writer looked forward to the day when, “all the civic needs will be appropriately housed in one center.”

The construction of the public library in 1928 was another step in reaching this desired goal, and the Territory’s decision to purchase a corner of the property owned by Kaʻahumanu Church for the construction of the Territorial Office Building in 1930, assured the civic center.

The buildings within the district house State and County government offices, courts, and the public library, and serve as a hub of governmental activity for the island of Maui.

Built within a twenty-four year period, the historic structures represent the architectural aspirations of their time, employing the popular Beaux Arts revival, Mediterranean revival and Hawaiian styles.

These buildings are all of masonry construction and of one or two stories in height, which is in keeping with the scale of most of the city.

The oldest of the buildings is the County Courthouse, erected in 1907. Designed by Honolulu architect H. L. Kerr, it is a Beaux Arts inspired building constructed of cast hollow concrete block which mimetically perpetuates dressed stone.

Next to, and set back from, the Courthouse is the County Office Building, a nine-story building constructed in 1972.

Standing on the other side of the County Office Building is The Police Station. Built in 1925, this reinforced concrete building was designed in a simple Mediterranean style by Maui architect William D’Esmond.

Across South High Street on either corner of the intersection with Aupuni Street stand the Wailuku Library (completed in 1928) and the former Territorial Building (completed in 1931, it now houses the State’s judiciary.) Both of these Mediterranean revival/Hawaiian style buildings were designed by CW Dickey.

Other sites in the vicinity, but not part of the formal “Historic District” include Halekiʻi – Pihana Heiau, Kaʻahumanu Church and Hale Ho‘ike‘ike/Old Bailey House.

Haleki‘i and Pihana Heiau are the most accessible of the remaining pre-contact Hawaiian structures of religious and historical importance in the Wailuku-Kahului area; they are located along the west side of Iao Stream.

Traditional history credits the menehune with the construction of both heiau in a single night; other accounts say they were built under the rule of Kahekili.

In 1832, Queen Kaahumanu visited a religious service by Jonathan Smith Green, and later requested that a more permanent church structure be named for her; ultimately, Reverend Edward Bailey fulfilled her request in 1876 when the current structure was built.

Hale Ho‘ike‘ike, the Old Bailey House, is a combination of four structures built between 1835 and 1850. Originally built as a parsonage for the ministers of the Wailuku Church, it’s now operated by the Maui Historical Society as a museum.

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