Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Truman Taylor

Explosive eruptions do not generally come to mind when people think of Hawai‘i’s volcanoes. Their eruptions are typically characterized by the relatively quiet outflow of very fluid lava and by sometimes spectacular lava fountains.

Hawai‘i’s volcanoes have therefore become the textbook example of nonexplosive volcanism, and the term “Hawaiian type” is used to refer to such eruptions. Eruptions at Kilauea can often be observed safely at close range.  (USGS)

The late 1780s were years of great strife on the Island of Hawai’i. Kamehameha, who later became the first king of the Hawaiian Islands, was at war with his rival Keōua. After one of several indecisive battles, probably in 1790, the balance was suddenly tipped in favor of Kamehameha when a natural disaster struck.

As a large group of Keōua’s warriors traveling with their families passed the crater of Kilauea Volcano, there was a sudden explosive eruption of searingly hot ash and gas. At least 80 and perhaps hundreds of people were killed in the deadliest historical eruption to occur in what is now the United States.  (USGS)

During 18 days in May 1924, hundreds of steam explosions from Kilauea hurled mud, debris, and hot rocks weighing as much as 8 tons as far as two-thirds of a mile from the center of Halema‘uma‘u the current crater within the larger volcanic depression (caldera) at Kilauea’s summit.

Columns of volcanic ash and dust rose more than 2 miles into the air, at times turning day into night at the town of Pahala, nearly 20 miles downwind.

Only one person was killed during this eruption, a photographer who ventured too close and was struck by falling rocks and hot mud.  (USGS)

The largest explosive event in 1924, on May 18, ejected blocks toward the southeast, including the eight-ton block, and killed Truman Taylor. (Pacific Parks)

Taylor Stearns notes in his autobiography, “[WO] Clark told me how he had brought Taylor, a clerk about twenty-seven years old from Pahala [he worked on the C. Brewer plantation], up to the volcano. Miss Bradfield, the local nurse, and her companion [Miss Peck] had been with them.”

“Taylor had borrowed Clark’s camera and tripod to take a close-up shot. [When the explosion began, Ted] Dranga and the two nurses ran to the Essex car nearby, which they had left running so as to make escape easy [those were the days of hand cranks].”

“When they reached the car the [others] wanted to start right away but Miss Bradfield said she didn’t want to leave with Taylor out there. She made them wait a minute, and then as the stones began to fall around them she decided it would be better to leave Taylor than for all to be killed.”

Per, “Ruy Finch, in the HVO journal: 10:36 a.m. With L.A. Thurston and W.O. Clark of Pahala. Large puffs of steam; rumbling, earthquake. Went to sand spit above Algae [an area of algae growing on the south-facing cliff, then known as the Italian cliff, that forms the south side of what is now known as Sand Spit] and sat down on a boulder which had been ejected at 12:30 p.m.”

“May 17. Numerous quakes and rumbling. Sent T. Dranga Jr., to get Thurston who was with Carlsmiths. A wave of increased air pressure that decidedly hurt my head, was felt at 11:09 a.m. Jumped and exclaimed, ‘Here comes a terrible one.’”

“The air pressure was felt several seconds before rocks appeared and two or three seconds before the explosion cloud cleared the rim. Started to take picture but saw rocks of great dimensions high in the air headed toward our locality.”

“Ran to cliff and slid down a wash. A rock, judging from its air appearance to have weighed over 300 lbs [135 kg] cleared the cliff and landed on 1921 lava. Left Thurston, Clark and ladies of Carlsmith party on cliff.”

“O Emerson in the afternoon reported a 10-ton rock on airplane landing-field [on Sand Spit], found while searching for possible killed or wounded soldiers. Two men were seen on rim of pit a short time before 11:09 a.m. explosion.”

“TA Dranga Sr. came across crater floor but said that Mr. Truman Taylor of Pahala, who was with him on the way up to crater, had left him 10 minutes before the explosion”

“Went back to find missing man with Clark, Dranga Jr. and Dranga Sr. Taylor was discovered with legs crushed by fallen bowlders about 125 feet from old parking place.”

“Dranga Sr. started to get car seat, to use as stretcher, when another explosion came. Dranga Jr. and I carried Taylor to road where he was put into car.”  (USGS)

“Truman A Taylor, bookkeeper at Pahala, died at 11:30 o’clock last night [May 18, 1924] at Hilo Hospital from hemorrhage and shock.  One leg had been amputated at the ankle after it had been crushed by a shower of rocks from the volcano.”

“Taylor was found shortly before noon yesterday by an unidentified man who heard screams.  He was covered by burning ash, and both legs were crushed.”

“First aid was given by Capt PK McKenzie, surgeon at Kilauea Military Camp and the injured man was rushed in Army ambulance, accompanied by Miss Molly Thomas, Hilo nurse, to Hilo Hospital.”

“Taylor was from Chicago, and had been in Pahala about two months, after a stay of three weeks in Honolulu. He wore a tag bearing the legend, ‘USA 3422044.’” (SB, May 19, 1924)

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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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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

All We Really Need To Know …

All we really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be we learned when we were young.
Think what a better world this would be if we:
  • Share everything
  • Play fair
  • Don’t hit people
  • Put things back where you found them
  • Clean up your own mess
  • Don’t take things that aren’t yours
  • Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody
  • Wash your hands before you eat
  • Flush
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you
  • Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some
  • Take a nap in the afternoon
  • When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together
  • Be aware of wonder
  • Things die; So do we

These words convert into “adult-like” references and they apply to our lives today – family, personal relationships, community, business, etc.  Everything we need to know is in there somewhere: The Golden Rule, love, basic sanitation, ecology, politics, equality and sane living.

We already know most of what’s necessary to live a meaningful life – it isn’t that complicated.  The challenge is living it.
Special thanks to Robert Fulghum, author of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” for keeping life in perspective.

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Police

King Kamehameha III established the office of the Marshal of the Hawaiian Islands on April 27, 1846. By 1859, the Marshal was designated the Chief of Police of the Kingdom, and he remained as such through the Republic and Territorial periods. During the last period he was known as the High Sheriff.

The island sheriffs, whose offices also originated in 1846, were his subordinates until 1905, when their offices were incorporated into the newly-established county governments. The Marshal was responsible for nominating to the island governors persons to be appointed by the governors as island sheriffs. (HSA)

Among other things, the Marshal was responsible for instructing the island sheriffs in their duties, as executive officers of the courts of record, as conservators of the peace, as trustees of jails, prisons and places of public correction, as safekeepers of prisoners, as executors or criminal sentences …

…  as the executors of executive mandates issued by the King, island governors or executive department heads, as commanders of the civil posse, as the apprehenders of fugitives from justice, including deserters from ships, as the detectors of crimes and misdemeanors, and as coroners.

The sheriffs were subordinate to the island governors, were permitted to appoint deputies and were accountable for all escapes and unnecessarily harsh treatment of prisoners. (HSA)

With the Organic Act of 1900, Congress transferred Hawaii’s sovereignty to the United States, making it a US territory, and defined its territorial government. Hawaii would have an appointed governor, a judiciary, and a bicameral legislature with popularly elected senators and representatives. (US Capitol Visitor Center)

The Organic Act also renamed the Marshal as the High Sheriff and sustained the existing organization and functions of the police.

Act 39 of 1905 (the ‘County Act,’ effective July 1, 1905) established counties within the Territory of Hawaii. One result of this act was to place the island sheriffs within the county governments and subordinate to the respective boards of supervisors, rather than to the High Sheriff. (HSA)

The law was not without its critics, “To multiply offices and opportunities for politicians, and increase taxation in a diminutive territory that long ago was ridiculed by Mark Twain who likened the official machinery of Hawaii to that of the Great Eastern in a sardine box.” (Thrum, 1906)

At the same time, Act 41 of 1905 established boards of prison inspectors for each judicial circuit, and made the boards responsible for jails and prisons within their circuits.

The High Sheriff was made responsible to the Board of Prison Inspectors of the First Judicial Circuit for Oahu Prison, and he was potentially responsible to other boards for territorial-level prison facilities in other circuits.

The High Sheriff was de facto Warden of Oahu Prison, and he was indexed as such in the Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1925, although he was never designated as such by statute.

That situation was changed by Act 17, 1st Special Session, 1932, which created a separate office of Warden of Oahu Prison and removed from the High Sheriff the responsibility for territorial prisons and prisoners. (HSA)

Then, the legislature started authorizing county Police Commissions.  A police commission was set up in Honolulu in 1932; Maui was given a police commission in 1939.

Kauai was technically authorized next, before Hawaii County; on April 19, 1943 the legislature approved a Kauai police commission and on April 21, 1943 they  approved a Hawaii County Police Commission. (HTH, April 21, 1943)

C&C Honolulu

In the late 1920s and early 1930s crime was on the rise in Honolulu.  Due to increased pressure from a group of prominent women in the community Governor Lawrence M. Judd appointed a Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime.

This committee recommended that “there should be a police commission appointed by the Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, with the approval of the Board of Supervisors …”

“… whose duty it would be to appoint a Chief of Police and to supervise the operating of the police department” and that “the office of the Sheriff be retained and that the Sheriff be charged with the duty of serving civil process, maintaining the Honolulu Jail, and to act as Coroner.”

Governor Judd convened a Special Session of the Legislature and on January 22, 1932, it passed Act 1, carrying out the recommendations by the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime.

Act 1 established the Honolulu Police Commission and provided for an appointed Chief of Police. The Commission immediately appointed businessman Charles F Weeber to be the first Chief of Police. (Hnl PD)

Maui County

In 1939, several actions happened legislatively for Maui, “The laws making the island of Lanai a new district in Maui County and authorizing creation of new jobs for that district, as well as the act setting up a Maui police commission were … milestones in county legislation.” (SB, May 27, 1939)

In addition, legislation created a “Maui police commission of five members appointed by the governor; alteration of the whole Maui police system to conform with the new police commission law; creation of the office of police chief and abolition of the sheriff’s office.” (SB, May 27, 1939)

Then, “George F Larsen Jr, captain of detectives, Honolulu police department, was appointed as the new Maui chief of police by the Maui police commission”. (SB, June 27, 1939)

Kauai County

Following the authorization of a police commission on Kauai (and the Big Island), “Sheriffs and deputy sheriffs now serving in Hawaii and Kauai counties will be eliminated as soon as the new commission is appointed.” (SB, May 25, 1943)

“Members of the [Kauai] commission, appointed by the governor are: Caleb Burns Jr, for a term to expire June 30, 1947; former senator Charles A Rice, for a term to expire on June 30, 1948; Sinclair Robinson, for a term to expire June 30, 1949 and John F Ramsey, for a term to expire June 30, 1946.” (HTH, June 26, 1943)

Governor Stainback also appointed Joseph S Jerves for a term that ran to June 30, 1945.   Charles A Rice was elected chairman of the board.

“Edwin K Crowell, Kauai sheriff, was appointed the Garden Island’s first chief of police by the unanimous vote of the new Kauai police commission at its organization meeting in the county building.” (SB July 1, 1943)

Hawaii County

On June 11, 1943, Governor Ingram M Stainback announced the appointment of the Hawaii County Police Commission; this included Willis C Jenning, manager of Hakalau Plantation, who had been designated as chairman.

Other initial commissioners were Carl E Hanson, manager of the Hilo branch of Bishop National Bank; Nicholas Lycurgus, manager of the Volcano House; Thomas Strathairn, manager of the Hilo office of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co and the Hilo office of Hawaiian Airlines; and Robert L Hind, head of Puuwaawaa Ranch. (HnlAdv, June 11, 1943)

On June 24, 1943, it was reported that George F Larsen Jr, chief of police of Maui county (who had been Maui Chief since 1939, and prior to that was captain of detectives in Honolulu), had been appointed chief of police of Hawaii county by the recently appointed Big Island police commission. (SB, June 24, 1943)

The High Sheriff continued as the Chief of Police of the Territory, responsible for the public peace, the arrest of fugitives, etc., until 1959, when his office was abolished by Act 1, 2nd Special Session, 1959 (the “Reorganization Act”). (HSA)

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