General | Page 163 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 24, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bingham Girls Return

“Honolulu Female Academy (is) another of the schools provided by Christian benevolence for the benefit of the children of this highly favored land. This institution will, it is hoped, supply a felt need for a home for girls, in the town of Honolulu, yet not too near its center of business.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 13, 1867)

“The inception of this school emanated from Mrs Halsey Gulick. In 1863, when living in the old mission premises on the mauka side of King street, she took several Hawaiian girls into her family to be brought up with her own children … The mother love was strong in that little group as some of us remember.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

The usefulness of such a school became evident; as the enrollment grew, the need for a more permanent organization was required. It became known as Kawaiahaʻo Female Seminary.

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – an organization consisting of the children of the missionaries and adopted supporters) decided to support a girls’ boarding school.

HMCS invited Miss Lydia Bingham (daughter of Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi) to return to Honolulu to be a teacher in this family school; she was then principal of the Ohio Female College, at College Hill, Ohio.

“Her love for the land of her birth and Interest for the children of the people to whom her father and mother had given their early lives, led her to accept the position, and in March, 1867, she arrived on the Morning Star via Cape Horn.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

In January 1869, her sister, Miss Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu (Lizzie) Bingham, arrived from the continent to be an assistant to her sister. Lizzie was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and, when she was recruited, was a teacher at Rockford Female Seminary. (Beyer)

Later, Lydia and Lizzie’s niece (daughter of Hiram’s first child Sophia Bingham), Clara Lydia Moseley (later Sutherland), joined them at Kawaiaha‘o.

“It was my sister Mary that my aunt first asked for, and this was at least two years before she asked for me. But while Mary was considering the matter, along came a fine young man from Boston by the name of Charles Crocker. … He was a man of such fine character that we came to like him more and more, so how could my sister refuse him when he asked her to marry him?”

“It was quite natural that she should choose to marry him rather than go off to some little Island in the middle of the Pacific which very few people knew anything about at that time.”

“(B)efore I was fifteen, a wonderful thing happened to me which probably changed the whole course of my life. Two of my mother’s sisters, Aunt Lydia and Aunt Lizzie, returned to Honolulu, the home of their birth and engaged in teaching in a school for Hawaiian girls which was called Kawaiahaʻo Seminary.”

“It was located at that time on King St. just opposite the Old Mission house where the Mission Memorial Building now stands.”

“My Aunt Lydia was Principal of this school and she wrote to my mother asking if she couldn’t spare me and let me come out and teach music to her girls, knowing that I was musically inclined.”

“When my aunt wrote asking for me, she said she wanted me to have a teacher for a few months intervening before I should leave home, and she would pay for my lessons, so I took lessons … for about three months.”

“Of course my parents were willing to let me go, knowing it was too fine an opportunity for me to miss. A friend of my aunt’s, Miss Julia Gulick, was coming to the states that year so it was planned that I should go back with her.”

“Uncle Hiram (II) met us at the wharf that Sunday morning we arrived, and when we reached the house my three aunts gave me such a warm and cordial welcome that I was no longer homesick, but oh! so glad to be here on terra firma.” (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

It started with boarders and day students, but after 1871 it has been exclusively a boarding school. “Under her patient energy and tact, with the help of her assistants, it prospered greatly, and became a success.” (Coan)

“To those of us who were then watching the efforts of these Christian ladies the school became the centre of great interest. The excellent discipline, the loving care, the neatness and skill shown in all departments of domestic life …”

“… the thoroughness of the teaching and the high Christian spirit which pervaded it all caused rejoicing that such an impulse had been given to education for Hawaiian girls.” (Hawaiian Gazette, March 23, 1897)

“Every Sunday one of the teachers accompanied the Girls to Kawaiahaʻo Church diagonally across the street to the morning service.” (Sutherland Journal)

“Just across the driveway from the main house and close to the old Castle home was a long narrow adobe building known as the ‘Bindery’ as that is what it was originally used for by the early missionaries.”

“There were three rooms down stairs and these were occupied by my Uncle Hiram and Aunt Clara. At the head of the stairs, which were on the outside of the building was my Aunt Lydia’s room; then a dormitory where eight or ten of the older girls slept, and at the east end of the building, toward the Castle’s home was my room.” (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

“When Miss Bingham came to Hilo (on October 13, 1873 she married Titus Coan,) the seminary was committed to the charge of her sister (Lizzie), whose earnest labors for seven years in a task that is heavy and exhausting so reduced her strength, that in June, 1880 she was obliged to resign her post.” (Coan)

“I had planned to stay five years when I first went out to the Islands (however) ‘Old Captain Gelett) felt he must do something to change the course of my life. So he persuaded my aunts to let him send me away to school as soon as I had finished my third year at the Seminary.”

“Accordingly, in August, 1875, I sailed from Honolulu on the ‘DC Murray’ with a group of other young people who were going over to school. This sailing vessel was twenty one days in getting to San Francisco”. (Clara Lydia Sutherland)

At the end of the century, all the female seminaries began to lose students to the newly founded Kamehameha School for Girls. This latter school was established in 1894.

It was not technically a seminary or founded by missionaries, but all the girls enrolled were Hawaiian, and its curriculum was very similar to what was used at the missionary sponsored seminaries.

Since Kawaiahaʻo Seminary was located only a few miles from this new female school, it experienced the biggest loss in enrollment and adjusted by enrolling more non-Hawaiian students.

In 1905, a merger with Mills Institute, a boys’ school, was discussed; the Hawaiian Board of Foreign Missions purchased the Kidwell estate, about 35-acres of land in Mānoa valley.

By 1908, the first building was completed, and the school was officially operated as Mid-Pacific Institute, consisting of Kawaiahaʻo School for Girls and Damon School for Boys.

Finally, in the fall of 1922, a new coeducational plan went into effect – likewise, ‘Mills’ and ‘Kawaiahaʻo’ were dropped and by June 1923, Mid-Pacific became the common, shared name.

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October 23, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

First Flight

Elbert Tuttle would often say that the segregation cases were “the easiest cases I ever decided. The constitutional rights were so compelling, and the wrongs were so enormous.”

Tuttle, a Republican, was nominated on July 7, 1954, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to a new Fifth Circuit seat; he was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 3, 1954 and received commission the next day.

It was Tuttle who, as chief judge of the federal appeals court covering the Deep South, ensured that the promise of the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings became a reality. (Emanual)

By the time Tuttle became chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, he had already led an exceptional life.

He had cofounded a prestigious law firm, earned a Purple Heart in the battle for Okinawa in World War II, and led Republican Party efforts in the early 1950s to establish a viable presence in the South. But it was the intersection of Tuttle’s judicial career with the civil rights movement that thrust him onto history’s stage.

When Tuttle assumed the mantle of chief judge of the Fifth Circuit in 1960, six years had passed since Brown v. Board of Education had been decided but little had changed for black southerners.

In landmark cases relating to voter registration, school desegregation, access to public transportation, and other basic civil liberties, Tuttle’s determination to render justice and his swift, decisive rulings …

… neutralized the delaying tactics of diehard segregationists – including voter registrars, school board members, and governors – who were determined to preserve Jim Crow laws throughout the South. (Emanual)

But this story is about the teenage Tuttle and his brother Malcolm …

Bud Mars is credited as the first man to fly an airplane in Hawaii on December 31, 1910. But it was the Tuttle brothers who were the first to lift off the ground in a homemade glider.

Malcolm and Elbert Tuttle arrived in Honolulu on the SS Sierra, on September 23, 1907. They came with their father and mother, Guy and Margaret Tuttle. Before the boys were born, Guy Tuttle had worked in Washington, D.C. as a clerk in the War Department.

When an opportunity came for him to be transferred to California, to the Los Angeles area, he took it, and he worked there for the U.S. Immigration Service. The Tuttles lived in Pasadena where Malcolm was born on March 20, 1896 and Elbert on July 17, 1897. (Hylton)

The boys entered Punahou School, Elbert in the fifth and Malcolm in the sixth grades. That first year at Punahou gave Elbert a chance to prove how excellent a student he was and earned him the right to skip the sixth grade. Malcolm and Elbert were then to be in the same class through the rest of their school years.

After school let out that first summer, the Tuttle brothers learned how to surf. Their favorite place was Waikiki Beach. In the fall of 1909 the boys turned their attention from the water to the air.

Punahou allowed students to choose and area of study, and Malcolm and Elbert chose aviation. Using silk, bamboo, wire and an electric motor, they constructed a scale model of the Wright Brothers’ 1903 biplane.

Later, following a 1-page ‘How to Build a Practical Glider’ article in their mother’s ‘Woman’s Home Companion’ magazine, they built a forty-pound glider, fifteen feet long and eighteen feet across. Wooden supports separated two overlaid wings, and the lower wing had an opening with arm rests.

On Sunday, October 23, 1910, Elbert and Malcolm Tuttle, ages 13 and 14, carried their glider seven blocks up the street to the Kaimuki Crater, where along Reservoir Avenue the hills sloped into the wind.

Malcolm was ready to try out the new glider, Elbert took hold of the tail and held it up off the ground. Then Malcolm lifted the wings over his head and ran down the hill.

They thought that a long run would be necessary before the glider would fly, but they were wrong. After two or three steps, the aircraft jerked upwards, Elbert let go of the tail, and Malcolm lifted off the ground.

Malcolm’s first attempt to control the glider brought it down quickly. On Malcolm’s third try, he flew the glider ten feet into the air and 40 feet along the ground.

‘Honolulu’s First Bird-Men Take To The Air,’ announced a headline in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser on October 30, 1910. The first page article stated…

“The Tuttle brothers of Honolulu have become the contemporaries of the Wright Brothers of Dayton, Ohio, and their names will be perpetuated in history as the first aviators of the Hawaiian Islands.” (Hylton)

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Tuttle Brothers with Scale Model of 1903 Wright Brothers Biplane-Hylton

October 20, 2018 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Charter Fishing

The family hailed from San Diego – four boys, Herbert, William, Jack and Edgar, and older sister Edith. The family patriarch, John, had sailed through the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco from New Brunswick in 1849 then skippered the schooner Champion for several years along the West Coast.

The boys must have inherited this nautical bent because, at an early age, they were hiring themselves out for fishing trips using a small skiff that they sailed around the bay.

In the summer of 1899, all four boys ran a glass-bottomed boat excursion at Catalina Island. This marked the beginning of the famous glass-bottom boat rides which were to prove of such great interest and profit at Catalina.

“(P)aying customers were wanted, and the make the island a popular vacationing spot the Banning Brothers (the island’s owners) erected tents which could be rented for the season – from May to September.”

“(S)o, we hoisted sail one day, Herb and I, and went to Avalon, Catalina, where we immediately became engaged in taking fishing parties out daily, and conducting excursions to sunken gardens under the sea.”

“Business at Avalon was good. Possibly because we made a practice of taking parties of hotel employees for a moonlight rail several times a month, the guests usually found the ‘Santa Barbara’ most highly recommended and we never lacked for good crowds at two dollars a head on fishing and sailing trips.”

“In 1899 all four of us were on hand at the island. In addition to the marine garden excursions we offered the special attraction of exhibition diving … Herb would dress and go down. Picking up objects as souvenirs and catching brightly colored fish with a butterfly net for various shore aquariums.”

“Not averse to picking up a few dollars here and there, we four would often conduct parties to the sandab grounds. Sandab, a tasty fish and much in demand, were to be caught only in deep water … We caught then on lines with dozens of hooks each …” (William)

Then the Hawaiian Islands attracted their attention, and, as William put it, they “went with high hopes and the spirit of a pioneer toward strange lands and all the beauty of sky and sea in the blue Pacific.” (Herb and William were headed to Hawai‘i.)

“On January 9, 1900, we sailed out of Golden Gate toward the Great adventure …”

Then, on January 19, 1900, 29-year old Herbert and 25-year old William had their first view of Honolulu after a ten-day journey from San Francisco.

Shortly after, Jack, age 18, arrived on October 16, 1900; youngest of all, Edgar, arrived in July 1901 (but being only fifteen at the time, he attended McKinley High School before returning to California to study medicine.)

“For years we had heard tales of Hawaii; now at last we were to see it for ourselves. Every passing hour, every wave curling under our bows brought us so much nearer, and the eyes of youth, straining ahead of the ship, seemed almost to glimpse a palm-fringed shore where life was gay and living carefree.”

They started a charter boat company in Honolulu, for “Pleasure cruise or fishing, between the islands or whatever they want.” (Jack Jr) It was “an early sport fishing (service)”. (Krauss) The ‘Sea Scout’ was their charter boat. (Jack Jr) Some suggest this was the beginning of charter fishing in the Islands.

Looking at pictures “of a woman holding up fish. And a row of men holding up fish. It looks to me like those were people they took out, just like today in Kona you’ve got people standing there with their fish catch. When they corne back, they take their picture.” (Krauss)

They expanded into shark fishing … “Singularly enough, for the first time since I had become fired with the ambition to hunt sharks. I found myself giving little thought to the possibilities of shark fishing among the Islands.”

“The prospect of seeing and living in these elysian isles had unceremoniously overshadowed my original purpose in going there. I was, to put it mildly, all anticipation.” (William)

Shortly after arrival, the boys were “building a boat fitted in the bottom with a cased pane of the finest plate glass procurable, one-fourth of an inch thick. This will be so placed that it can be easily removed, as one of the most important conditions for success is that the glass be perfectly clean.”

“This kind of boat is much used on Catalina island.… With a glass bottomed boat, where the light from above is excluded be a wide awning the bottom may be inspected at from twelve to eighteen fathoms.”

The boys planned “to take passengers out to the reef surrounding the (Honolulu) harbor”. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, October 31, 1901)

They also added other adventure. “Professor PM Stewart who occupies one of the chairs of language in Cambridge University, England, has had an experience during his visit to Honolulu that probably never came to him before. He went shark fishing”

“On Friday he caught a shark. His wife who has attracted much attention in this city on account of being a very tall striking looking blonde with very ultra English appearance, accompanied him and to catch the first shark.”

“He hooked one shark yesterday morning and drew the shark close to the boat and then started to dispatch the sea wolf with a spade. The weapon was bent and then Professor Stewart took a hatchet to strike the monster. In his excitement the professor struck the line with the hatchet cutting the line and allowing the shark to escape.”

“Later in the day a second shark was caught near the bell buoy. This time the shark was dispatched without cutting the line and was towed in shore. The shark measured about 14 feet in length and was of the man eating variety.”

The boys “have hit on a new scheme for shark fishing. They are able now to take the sharks with a hook and line instead of harpooning them as was done formerly. Some very successful expeditious have been taken out by tile young men.” (Hawaiian Star, June 2, 1906)

They also looked at other fish activities …

It was the idea of Jack … “He has been plying the waters of the bay at all hours of the day and night for many years and had grown so accustomed to seeing the buzzing blue fish leap out of the water as his launch plowed past that he knew, almost to a foot, where every school of flying fish is between the bell buoy and Diamond Head.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, August 23, 1910)

“Yesterday a new sport was born; Waikiki bay was the birthplace, and HP Wood of the Hawaii promotion committee was the accoucheur. For the first time in the history of the field and gun were flying fish flushed with a steam launch and shot on the wing.”

“It was a brand new experience in the hunting line that a party of local nimrods and visitors indulged in yesterday morning, an experience that will undoubtedly be shared in by many others before long.”

“Taking pot shots at fish on the wing is sport of the first water, affording plenty of exercise in the good sea air, giving the opportunity for quick shooting, providing for the use of all the alertness contained within a man and being not too hard upon the fish.”

Oh, the boys of this story … the brothers, Herbert, William and Jack formed a company, Young Brothers; it eventually grew over the years into an active interisland freight company. (Jack, the youngest of the Young Brothers is my grandfather.)

In 1999, Saltchuk Resources, Inc of Seattle, Washington, the parent company of Foss Maritime, acquired Young Brothers and selected assets of Hawaiian Tug & Barge. In 2013, Hawaiian Tug & Barge was rebranded and incorporated into the Foss Maritime fleet, while Young Brothers remains a wholly owned subsidiary of Foss.

Currently, Young Brothers is undergoing a fleet modernization initiative to meet neighbor island cargo needs into the next generation. By the end of 2018, Young Brothers will have made capital investments of over $180 million in new vessels and shore-side equipment. (YB)

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Lucas_Tower_in_background-Young Brothers Launch ‘Sea Scout’ in Honolulu Harbor-PPWD-9-3-030-1905

Jack Edgar and Will Young 1903

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Young Brothers shark hunt

Honolulu Harbor Shark-Jack Young-PCA-June 14, 1907

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FLying Fish Shooting-PCA-Aug_23,_1910

October 19, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Waikīkī Beach Agreements

Waikīkī Beach was eroding.

As early as 1901, both the government surveyor and Lili‘uokalani had residences at Waikīkī Beach with walls across their seaward frontages that were in the ocean, blocking public passage along the beach.

Another Waikīkī residence and the Moana Hotel also had portions of their structures similarly situated in the water. By the late-1920s, walls were common along Waikīkī Beach.

A 1927 report by the Engineering Association of Hawai‘i pinpointed seawalls as the primary cause of erosion in Waikīkī. The report concluded that beach nourishment and groins could be used to rebuild the beach.

During the same time period, plans were underway to turn Waikīkī district wetlands into an urban community. The Ala Wai Canal was dredged from 1922 to 1928.

In 1927, the Territorial Legislature authorized Act 273 allowing the Board of Harbor Commissioners to rebuild the eroded beach at Waikīkī. By 1930, the Board of Harbor Commissioners reported on construction progress, which included 11 groins along a portion of the shoreline.

On October 19, 1928, property owners at Waikīkī signed the Waikīkī Beach Reclamation Agreement between the Territory of Hawai‘i and Property Owners – an agreement with the Territory of Hawai‘i to not build any obstructions on what would become Waikīkī Beach.

The agreement was to “forever thereafter keep the beach free and clear of obstructions and open for the use of the public as a bathing beach and for passing over and along the same on foot.”

The Beach Agreement illustrated the need to control and limit seaward development on Waikīkī Beach. The agreement establishes limitations on construction along the beach in response to the proliferation of seawalls and groins in Waikīkī.

The 1928 agreement consists of a) the October 19, 1928 main agreement between the Territory and Waikīkī landowners, b) the October 19, 1928 main agreement between the Territory and the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop and c) The July 5, 1929 Supplemental Agreement between the Territory and Waikīkī landowners.

The agreement provides that the Territory was to use “best efforts” to construct beach area 180-feet seaward for the purpose of beach erosion control together with “maintenance, preservation and restoration thereof as may be necessary from time to time.”

The expanded beach would “be deemed to be natural accretion attached to the abutting property, and title there to shall immediately vest in the owner or owners of the property abutting thereon in proportion to their sea-frontage, subject only to the easement in favor of the public as above stated.”

The private landowners agreed they “will not erect or place on any part of such beach so to be constructed as aforesaid within seventy-five (75) feet of mean highwater mark of such beach as it may exist from time to time …”

“… any building, fence, wall or other structure or obstruction of any kind unless such mean highwater mark shall be more than seventy-five (75) feet from the present line of mean highwater mark.”

The agreement covers the Waikīkī beach area including the area from the Ala Wai Canal to the Elks Club at Diamond Head. The Waikīkī Beach Reclamation Agreement of 1928 gave property owners title to beach fronting their seawalls.

According to the 1928 Waikīkī Beach Reclamation Agreement, no commercial activities are permitted to take place on Waikīkī Beach. All commercial activities originate from private property and people traverse the beach to gain access to the water.

As part of the 1928 Beach Agreement, eleven groins composed of hollow tongue and concrete blocks were built along Waikīkī Beach with the intent of capturing sand. (SOEST)

A lot of the sand to build the beach was brought in to Waikīkī Beach, via ship and barge, from Manhattan Beach, California in the 1920s and 1930s.

As the Manhattan Beach community was developing, it found that excess sand in the beach dunes and it was getting in the way of development there. At the same time, folks in Hawai‘i were in need for sand to cover the rock and coral beach at Waikīkī.

In addition, the segment between the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Moana Surfrider (Surfrider-Royal Hawaiian Sector Beach Agreement) is the subject of a separate agreement between the Territory and the subject Waikīkī landowners entered into on May 28, 1965.

State law states that the right of access to Hawai‘i’s shorelines includes the right of transit along the shorelines. (HRS §115-4)

The right of transit along the shoreline exists below (seaward of) the private property line (generally referred to as the “upper reaches of the wash of waves, usually evidenced by the edge of vegetation or by the debris left by the wash of waves.”) (HRS §115-5)

Waikīkī Beach is unique because the State does not own all of the land in front of the Royal Hawaiian, Outrigger Waikīkī and Moana Surfrider hotels.

The 1965 agreement between the State and the hotel landowners gave the owners of the abutting hotels 75-feet of the beach in exchange for cooperation with the State’s proposal to extend Waikīkī Beach up to 120 feet from the existing shoreline.

The abutting private beach land is subject to a 75-foot public right of way for the public to pass along the Beach, sunbathe or do other beach activities. The easement in favor of the public restricts commercial activities in the right-of way.

According to the agreement, the State is responsible for maintaining and policing the easement. This easement would be extinguished upon the State building 75-feet of beach seaward of the existing beach, but since that has never happened, the easement remains in effect. (DLNR)

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October 18, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hygienic Dairy

“Sugarcane was introduced to Ko‘olaupoko in 1865, when the Kingdom’s minister of finance and foreign affairs, Charles Coffin Harris, partnered with Queen Kalama to begin a partnership known as the Kāne‘ohe Sugar Company.”

“After Queen Kalama passed away in 1870, Mr. Harris purchased the land from her estate to continue the sugar production, which, by 1880, was yielding as much as 500 tons of sugar annually. At about this time, the He‘eia Agricultural Company (HAC) was also cultivating about 250 acres of sugarcane”.

“To transport the sugar, HAC built a pier in Kāne’ohe Bay (He‘eia Kea pier) so that rail cars could take the sugar out to ocean vessels for transportation to Honolulu harbor.”

“The ocean steamer ‘J.A. Cummins’, owned by John Adams Cummins of the Waimanalo Sugar Plantation Company, made trips twice a week between He‘eia and Honolulu, exporting sugar and returning with supplies and goods.”

“After almost four decades of a thriving sugar industry in Ko‘olaupoko, the tide eventually turned bad and saw the closures of all five sugar plantations by 1903. The closures were due to poor soil, uneven lands, and the start-up of sugar plantations in `Ewa, which were seeing much higher yields.”

“As sugar was on its way out in Ko‘olaupoko, rice crops began to emerge as the next thriving industry. The demand for rice in Hawai‘i increased as the number of Asian sugar workers migrating to the islands from Japan and China increased. In the upland areas of Kāne‘ohe and He‘eia, Chinese farmers converted terraces and abandoned taro patches (lo‘i) to rice paddies.”

“Another agricultural crop, pineapples, emerged throughout Ko‘olaupoko in the early 1900s as sugar and rice steadily declined. From 1901 to 1925 lands in several ahupua`a previously unused for agriculture were now being covered up with pineapple fields, especially the hillsides and upslopes.”

“It was estimated that approximately 2500 acres of land throughout the Ko‘olaupoko region was converted to pineapple cultivation. A pineapple cannery along with numerous old-style plantation houses popped up in 1911, and became known as ‘Libbyville’ (named after its owners, Libby, McNeill, and Libby).”

“The pineapple industry in Ko‘olaupoko did not prosper as well as those on the ‘Ewa plains of central O‘ahu though, and the result was the closure of the cannery in 1923.”

“After the closure of the cannery, the pineapple fields were left to grow over and was then converted to grazing pasture land for cattle.”

“By the mid-1920s, large landholdings were converted to ranch land, such as the Judd Family’s Kualoa Ranch, the McFarlane Family’s Dairy in Ahuimanu, and the ranch lands of the Kāne‘ohe Ranch Company, which was originally a part of 20,000 acres belonging to Queen Kalama.” (History of Ko‘olaupoko)

“Today Ahuimanu is proud of the fact that it has one of the best dairies on Oahu. This dairy is called the Hygienic Dairy and is visited by many people. The dairy was started in 1924 by Mr Young.”

“At that time it was called the Ahuimanu Stock Farm. It was located below its present site. Mr. Young raised cows, pigs and chickens. There were about ninety milking cows in his herd.”

“In 1927 Mr. Young shifted his dairy to the present site. In 1930 he sold it to (Col Charles E) Davis.” (Hawaii Educational Review, 1938)

“Work is being rushed on the new hygienic dairy which the Ahuimanu stock farm is building on its property in windward Oahu. A milk house and a milking barn are under construction.” (Star Bulletin, June 23, 1931)

Apparently, the operation fell under hard economic times and in November 1931, creditors were organizing and bankruptcy was contemplated. In 1932, the dairy property was sold at auction to Shattauer, the former manager.

“Located in the very heart of the picturesque Ahuimanu Valley, a section of Oahu rich in legends and Hawaiian folklore, lies the Hygienic Dairy, one of the most up to date and modern in the territory.”

“Ownership of the dairy was taken over the first of the year by Herman von Holt and GW Knowles, who have been sparing no expense in making constant improvements. The herd now consists of many high grade cows. (Advertiser, February 12, 1934)

“The Hygienic Dairy, Ltd., has acquired 5,000 acres of land at Ahuimanu on a long term lease from the He‘eia Co., according to Herman von Holt, president of the dairy.”

“The estate adjoins 2,000 acres already controlled by the dairy, in addition to 1,000 acres at Kaneohe. The company therefore has 8,000 acres of grazing land for a herd of 1,000 cattle.”

“GW Knowles Is vice president and general manager of the dairy company. The New Fair Dairy Is the distributing agency. (Nippu Jiji, February 12, 1937)

The remaining remnant of the Hygienic Dairy (reportedly once the largest dairy in the state) is the Hygienic Store. “Simon Chong, took over the store from the dairy in 1950”.

“(It) was a full-service gas station and general store, complete with fresh meat and produce, hardware and rubber boots. In the late ’70s, the Chongs leased the store to Millie Kim, who ran it with her son Michael through 2003, when So Cha Hashimoto took over.” (Keany; Honolulu)

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