Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Reclamation” Projects – Early-1900s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

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)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

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)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

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.)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

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.