Prominent People | Page 7 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

July 9, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Halo

“My father came from Shimane-ken in 1906 with his wife. Shimane ken is on the Japan Sea side below Tottori-ken. … My mother was his second wife and they were already married when they arrived.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

“When I was young, I was a bit on the rascal side, a free spirit you might say. I grew up doing some crazy things. … [Kiyoshi] Nakama and I grew up together. We started swimming from around age 3 or 4. He was a prankster too, a Kodomo Taisho who never got caught. I was not so lucky.”

“He was a natural athlete, the best in any sport we played. He was quarterback in barefoot football, shortstop in baseball, forward in basketball (I was standing guard). We always won in the Maui community/school competitions. Except, one year Haiku beat us in barefoot football.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

Takashi ‘Halo’ (pronounced ‘Hollow’) Hirose was one of the fastest swimmers in the world. (Nakama, Advertiser)

While he was a notable swimmer, in his youth he was not necessarily that great at baseball. They put him in the outfield … when the ball came to him it went through him. His friends gave him the nickname ‘Hollow.’

Fast forward to his adult life when he joined the Army … they asked him his name, he didn’t want to be known by some abbreviation of Takashi or other Japanese reference, so he wrote ‘Halo’ in the paperwork. (He wasn’t a very good speller either.) The name stuck. (Sono)

“He learned to swim in the irrigation ditches of Maui’s Pu’unene’s sugar plantation, where his parents worked as laborers. Watching over him and the other kids was Soichi Sakamoto, one of their elementary school teachers. Sakamoto knew nothing about swimming, but in time, he would come to be regarded as a coaching genius.” (ISHOF)

At age 15, Hirose placed second in the 200-meter freestyle and fourth in the 100 free at the National AAU meet. Also that year, 1938, Hirose was a member of the United States’ 400-meter freestyle relay team that set a world record in Germany. (Nakama, Advertiser) He earned a lot more accolades as he continued his swimming career.

“People say and write that swimming was our ticket out of the plantations, to go to college. That was what motivated us. But when we were in the water swimming, things like that never crossed our minds. We just swam and had fun until Coach came along. Then it was hard work every day.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

“Lacking formal swimming facilities that were reserved for only wealthy white men, Sakamoto would train his swimmers in the nearby irrigation ditches on the plantation and in the process develop revolutionary training techniques still in use today in competitive swimming.”

“[The] swimmers [were brought] to local, national, and international prominence, defying the racial odds stacked against them.” (Nakamura)

“Coach was a genius. One summer two college students who were swimming for the University of Hawaii swim team came home for the summer. Coach made a challenge to have us … swim against them. And he made sure the plantation bosses would be there as fans. …”

“I was still in 8th grade. But we trained very hard to win. When the time came for the big event, we gave it all we had and beat them right in front of everybody including the big bosses. Then, they built the second pool for us.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

“Actually, [we lived] in Camp 5. That’s something really unusual. Four guys living as neighbors, making a relay team and breaking the national record. I don’t think anything like that has ever happened before even to this day.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

The 1940 Olympics had been canceled because of World War II. “When the war broke out in 1941, I volunteered for the army and got into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.”

“Later, the 100th Battalion was short of men [and I] decided to volunteer to join the 100^th… [O]ne day this major came to see me and said ‘You must be an important person, Division Headquarters want to see you.’ So I got dressed and his jeep took me up there.”

“When I got there, Captain Kometani was there, and he told me that they had made a call for all swimmers to sign up for the Allied Olympics in Rome. …[W]e all went to Rome for 45 days and had a great time.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

After the war, Hirose enrolled at Ohio State University and became a three-time All-American for the Buckeyes. (Nakama, Advertiser)

“One of the highlights in my life was that trip to Egypt …. In June 1946, I left Ohio State University to go the Grand Prix in Paris where I was invited to compete in a swim event. There, I met an Egyptian Prince whose was chauffeured around in the #4 Royal Limousine.”

“His name was Prince Lazuli Ratib and he was a member of the fourth family in succession to the thrown occupied by King Farruk. He was there with the Egyptian team, a swimmer and a diver. We stayed at the same hotel and got along great.”

“After the Grand Prix, there was an exhibition swim event in Morocco that we had to participate in. From there, I was supposed to return to Paris for the trip back to the United States. But, the Prince invited me to visit Egypt so I happily joined them on their flight to Cairo.”

“When we got to Cairo, they took care of all my expenses and showed me all over Egypt. They showed me the pyramids, the sphinx and all those ancient things and places you read about in the history books. I had a great time and it was an education I will never forget. I stayed there for almost a couple of months.”

“When I finally got back to Columbus, Ohio, it was March 1948. More than eight months had elapsed on this trip and the OSU officials didn’t appreciate it. I had to be reprimanded for violating some NCAA rule on travel. I don’t remember the specifics of the rule, but the trip was a great experience that I’ll never forget.” (Hirose, HawaiiSwim)

After earning his degree in 1949, Hirose did graduate work in California and eventually returned to Hawai’i, where he was assigned to the 1st Circuit Adult Probation Division. Hirose later became the state’s chief probation officer and retired in 1982. (Nakama, Advertiser) He died August 24, 2002.

For The Record, Halo achieved the following: 1938 National AAU Meet: 2nd (200m freestyle); 4th (100m freestyle); 1939 National AAU: 4th (100m freestyle); 1940 National AAU: 2nd (100m freestyle); 1941 National AAU: 1st (100m freestyle, 800m freestyle relay); 1940-44 Member of the Mythical Olympic Team, which was not able to compete due to the war…

1946 Big Ten: 1st (100yd freestyle), NCAA: 1st (100yd freestyle), Ohio State University: Won Big Ten, NCAA and AAU Team Championships, 3 Time All-American; 1987: Inducted into Ohio State’s Sports Hall of Fame; 2017: Inducted into International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF).

July 8, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Origin of Species

Charles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species (1859,) introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.

The Galapagos Islands are associated with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution; however, “(Hawaiʻi) is where modern evolution started, and people don’t know it.” (Jones, Star-Bulletin)

John Thomas Gulick did the first modern evolutionary study on Hawaiian land snails. Gulick discovered dramatic differences in snails in valleys only short distances apart and developed a theory about speciation, or new species emerging through evolution. (Altonn)

Gulick had been a collector of land snails since his teen years and became a convert to evolutionary thinking even before reading On the Origin of Species.

An acute observer, he noticed that many species and varieties of snails were often restricted to very geographically-limited ranges. (Smith)

He came “to place great emphasis upon every form of isolation or prevention of mingling, and also to emphasize the great significance for evolution of many factors that are of internal origin, such as the unknown intricacies of the process of heredity, and the effects of new choices made by the evolving creatures…” (Addison Gulick; Smith)

“In Manoa there were a number of kukui trees which were the favorite places of one species of the shells. A little beyond, in Makiki, a half mile or so, hardly that, there was a different species.”

“In Pauoa there was a still different species, while in Nuʻuanu there were landshells of allied form, but which had changed their habits, living on the hau trees in preference to the kukui trees, which were the favorites of the Manoa shells. This was in 1852 and 1853.”

“I knew that these shells didn’t come from Noah’s ark. They couldn’t have even come from the other islands. Right here in Manoa we had what you might call a special creation. In Makiki Valley we had another special creation. And yet we had every reason to believe that all were allied. (Gulick, Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1912)

“I began to have the idea that I had found a place of creation. I found out that the shells had no ability to travel from valley to valley. Those which lived on ridges were diffused over a larger area, but would have perished in the valleys. Those in the valleys could not have lived on the ridges.”

“If heavy rains washed some down from the valleys to the plains, they died in a few hours, or a few days at the most. If they were washed out to sea, of course they did not live. We tried to keep Manoa Valley shells alive at the school, but could not do it. They were as completely isolated in each locality as if they had been on separate islands.” (Gulick, Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1912)

Gulick was among the first to recognize the critical role for geographical separation in the diversification of ecologically similar Hawaiian land snails. His ideas were discussed by Darwin, as well as leaders in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis who saw an important role for geographical isolation in speciation. (Rundell)

“Darwin’s book, ‘Origin of Species,’ was published in ‘59, the year I left college. My mind was ripe for it and had already got started on this subject. I accepted largely the theories of evolution. I accepted natural selection, but in addition I saw the necessity of isolation.” (Gulick, Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1912)

Gulick’s theory of the species-differentiating effects of isolation was regarded by many as a more complete theory of speciation than Darwin’s and others as correcting a fundamental deficiency in Darwin’s theory, namely how groups of organisms diversify one from another.

With his concepts of cumulative segregation (geographical isolation), indiscriminate isolation (the Founder effect) and coincident selection (the Baldwin effect), we should recognize Gulick as one of the earliest and most original and innovative evolutionary biologists. (Hall)

Gulick extended his ideas to societal evolution in human beings. (Smith)

While a leading biologist, an interesting aspect of Gulick’s beliefs is that he was a son of a Hawaiʻi missionary, and was a missionary himself, going to China and Japan under the American Board of Commissions for Foreign Missions (ABCFM – the same organization who sponsored the Hawaiʻi missions.)

Gulick was born March 13, 1832, at Waimea, Kauai, son of Peter Johnson and Fanny (Thomas) Gulick. He first married Emily De la Cour September 3, 1864, at Hong Kong, China, who died in childbirth in 1875 (no children,) then remarried Frances A Stevens May 31, 1880, at Osaka, Japan (they had two children, Addison and Louise.)

Gulick continued a family tradition by attending theological school and then did missionary work in China and Japan for over thirty-five years. But he also carried on a parallel career as a naturalist and, somewhat strange to say, Darwinian evolutionist. (Smith)

One of the world’s foremost scientists, Gulick, peer of Darwin, whose theories he accepted and advanced, and while a missionary still espoused the cause of Darwin and added to the doctrine of evolution the theory of isolation. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1912)

Later in 1905, Gulick returned to Hawaiʻi and sold his shell collection to Charles Montague Cooke, Jr the new curator of the Bernice P Bishop Museum. He remained there until his death, on April 14, 1923 in Honolulu. He and his second wife are buried in the Mission Houses cemetery.

John Tomas Gulick circa 1858, age 25–26-Hall

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An engraving from 1847 of Gulick’s birthplace, Waimea, Kauai

Tree snails on the trunk of a guava tree-Hall

The head of Wailupe Valley on Oahu showing on the right the silvery foliage of groves of the kukui-Hall

Gulick-Evolutionist and Missionary-Part_1-Hall

Retired evolutionist and missionary-John Gulick-Hall

JohnThomasGulick gravestone-MissionHousesCemetery

July 1, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Dartmouth

“It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!” (Daniel Webster)

The rolling hills and plentiful foliage of New Hampshire are home to over 20 colleges and universities. New Hampshire’s first school, founded seven years before the country, is Dartmouth College, an Ivy League institution along the banks of the Connecticut River in the small town of Hanover. (Messier, SeaCoastOnLine)

Dartmouth’s first classes, consisting of just four students, were held in a single log hut in Hanover in 1770. (LOC) The college was named in honor of William Legge, the British Earl of Dartmouth, a friend of Wentworth’s and an important benefactor.

Dartmouth College has its origins in More’s (later Moor’s) Indian Charity School, an educational enterprise established in the year 1754 at Lebanon, Connecticut, by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, a minister of the Congregational faith and a graduate of Yale. (Christopher DeLuca)

“Wheelock … first founded a private ‘Latin’ school, aimed at educating both colonists and natives in the classics, including a young Samson Occom, a Mohegan who became trained as an excellent minister.”

“In time, Wheelock realized his passion, founding Moor’s Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut. The sole purpose of this small school was to prepare students to become Protestant missionaries, including Natives among their own tribes and colonists where Native numbers were lacking.”

“This school was open to male and female students of many ages and was free to attend, operating upon donations (both monetary and farm product-based). Despite English being the only language necessary to preach, Wheelock insisted upon teaching his pupils Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well. “

“The Reverend also taught his charges farming and agricultural skills, despite complaints from some students’ parents, who were themselves farmers. Underlying the obvious paternal motivations behind these curricular choices, we can see the nucleus of what would become a liberal arts curriculum.” (Dartmouth Review)

“[T]he Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, of Lebanon, in the colony of Connecticut, in New England, aforesaid, now doctor in divinity, did, on or about the year of our Lord 1754, at his own expense, on his own estate and plantation, set on foot an Indian charity school …”

“… and for several years, through the assistance of well-disposed persons in America, clothed, maintained and educated a number of the children of the Indian natives, with a view to their carrying the Gospel, in their own language, and spreading the knowledge of the great Redeemer, among their savage tribes …”

“[T]he said Eleazar Wheelock thought it expedient, that endeavors should be used to raise contributions from well disposed persons in England for the carrying on and extending said undertaking …”

“… and for that purpose the said Eleazar Wheelock requested the Rev. Nathaniel Whitaker, now doctor in divinity, to go over to England for that purpose, and sent over with him the Rev. Samson Occom, an Indian minister, who had been educated by the said Wheelock.”

“… considering the premises and being willing to encourage the laudable and charitable design of spreading Christian knowledge among the savages of our American wilderness, and also that the best means of education be established in our province of New Hampshire, for the benefit of said province …”

“… do, of our special grace, certain knowledge and mere motion, by and with the advice of our counsel for said province, by these presents, will, ordain, grant and constitute that there be a college erected in our said province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College …”

“… for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes in this land in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing children of pagans, as well as in all liberal arts and sciences, and also of English youth and any others.” (Dartmouth Charter)

Fast forward … “Since 2012, the Native and Indigenous Pre-Orientation program has served incoming Indigenous students in their transition to Dartmouth.”

“As our community continues to grow, and increasingly represents more and more Indigenous communities, we are dedicated to building a Native and Indigenous Pre-Orientation program that meets the changing needs of Indigenous students.”

“The purpose of the Native and Indigenous Pre-Orientation is to connect incoming Native American, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, and Indigenous first year students with the key offices and resources that will guide and support them throughout college.”

“The Native American Program in collaboration with the Admissions Office, works with various campus partners to provide community-based resource structures and programs that holistically support our students, in their total academic, social, and emotional wellbeing.” (Dartmouth)

“Hōkūpa‘a is a student-led organization at Dartmouth greatly supported by the Native American Program (NAP). It was created by and for students who are from or are connected to the Pacific Islands.”

“‘Hōkūpa‘a,’ meaning ‘steadfast star,’ is the name of the North Star, Polaris, in the Hawaiian language. This particular star has great importance to traditional seafaring and navigation — Indigenous Islanders throughout the Pacific relied on this star to find their way about the ocean.”

“We bring light to the story behind the name Hōkūpa`a to reiterate our commitment to our pan-Pasifika family and our time-honored interconnectivity. Navigation, the ocean, and the stars are some of the main connecting forces of the Pacific Islands and its peoples. As an organization, Hōkūpaʻa aims to create a similar space for Pacific Islander students on Dartmouth’s campus.”

“The Dartmouth Lūʻau is an annual event that celebrates the existence and representation of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander identity on the Dartmouth campus. Since its initiation, the Dartmouth Lūʻau has brought together communities from across campus, as well as regionally, to celebrate, honor, educate, and share their Native heritage.” (Dartmouth)

The college as it stands today almost ceased to exist in the 1800s, when the state of New Hampshire attempted to change Dartmouth’s original charter to make it a state university.

The case of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward eventually worked its way up to the US Supreme Court, where Dartmouth College prevailed under the leadership of alumnus and lawyer Daniel Webster, who re-founded the college in 1819. (Messier, SeaCoastOnLne)

As of 2023 there were approximately 4,500 undergraduates and 2,200 graduate students enrolled in the four-year, private, liberal arts college.

The school has more than 40 undergraduate academic departments and programs in the arts and sciences. Dartmouth College is the home of one the nation’s oldest professional schools of engineering, the first graduate school of management, and one of the nation’s top medical schools. (LOC)

June 23, 2025 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

The Macfarlanes

This summary is a little bit about some places and events that the Macfarlane family was involved with – some generally known and with us today, some long gone, but the history helps give us some added perspectives.

Henry (Harry) and Eliza Macfarlane settled in Hawaii at Waikiki in 1846, coming from Scotland by way of New Zealand. They purchased/leased the ‘ili of Kaluaokau sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, eventually raising six children there (George Walter, Frederick W, Richard H, Edward Creamer, Helen B (later Cornwell) and Clarence William.)

One lasting legacy at their Kaluaokau home is the banyan tree Henry and Eliza planted – we now more commonly refer to the former home site as the International Market Place.

Among other things, the Macfarlanes owned and operated hotels. One, the Commercial Hotel in downtown Honolulu, has a notable claim to fame – Macfarlane brought gas lighting to Hawaiʻi, hanging the first gas lamps over the billiard tables in his Honolulu saloon.

“On Tuesday evening last Mr. E. Burgess opened his spacious billiard saloon at the Commercial Hotel, which was well attended, no doubt the novelty of the room being lit up with gas proving a great attraction. There are four burners … and they filled the large room with a most brilliant light.”

“Mr. Macfarlane is deserving of great credit for his indefatigable exertions in being the first to introduce gas on this Island”. (Polynesian, November 6, 1858) (The next year, Honolulu Gas Company formed and lit-up more of Honolulu.)

The Commercial Hotel was one of Honolulu’s earliest hotels to advertise hot and cold water for baths and showers. It operated as a hotel and saloon until 1903, when the building was torn down. (Hibbard)

They had other property, in Waikīkī. Son, George is credited with building one of the first hotels in Waikīkī (his home turned to hotel) – the Park Beach Hotel near Kapiʻolani Park. CN Arnold later leased the Macfarlane property in 1888.

By 1899, the hotel failed and Macfarlane sold the lease to James Castle, who built Waikīkī’s most impressive mansion, a lavishly furnished four-story home with extensive grounds, an ocean pier and other amenities. He called it Kainalu.

When Castle died, his widow found the beachfront property more than she wished to keep up. Impressed by the charitable work being done by the Elks (the Honolulu Elks Lodge 616 was established on April 15, 1901,) in 1920 she sold them 155,000-square feet on the beach at Waikīkī complete with lavish home, for $1 a square foot.

Between 1954 and 1956, Outrigger Canoe Club made several offers to purchase about half of the Elk’s property. All were refused. Eventually, in 1955, the Elks agreed to lease property to Outrigger. Negotiations continued, and a lease was signed effective November 17, 1956. (In 1958, the Elks razed Kainalu and built a new lodge.)

In 2007, a rent dispute between the Elks and Outrigger Canoe Club was settled by a three-member arbitration panel. Terms of the new rent between the next-door neighbors were not disclosed because of a confidentiality agreement (the Elks, the landowner, were seeking up to $1-million or more a year in rent from the canoe club for a 99-year lease that was renegotiated midway through the term.)

The Macfarlanes had other Waikīkī property. Nearby in Helumoa, the Macfarlanes had other hotel property – the Seaside Hotel. (There is now another “Seaside Hotel” in Waikīkī, but that’s different from the hotel we are discussing here. That other “Seaside” was built in 1970 and has been used by United Airlines as a perk for employees and company retirees.)

Likewise, the Seaside was the annex for the “Royal Hawaiian Hotel;” not the one in Waikiki, the original Royal Hawaiian was in downtown Honolulu located at Richards and Hotel streets. In the 1890s, son, George, ran the Royal Hawaiian and the Seaside Hotels.

It was later acquired by Alexander Young’s Territorial Hotel Company, which operated the Alexander Young hotel in downtown Honolulu. After the lease expired, Matson Navigation received a new lease from landowner Bishop Estate and built what we refer today as the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

One more thing about George Macfarlane, he was Chamberlain (an officer whose function is in general to attend to the personal needs of the King and regulate the etiquette of the Palace) and Private Secretary to King Kalākaua (and served as the medium of communication between the King and his Ministers.)

When times were tough, George was entrusted with the responsible task of negotiating and floating the first Hawaiian loan in England. The $2,000,000 loan bore interest at 6 per cent per annum; within six months, the bonds commanded 15-per cent premium. (The Morning Call, December 25, 1890)

Son Clarence (in addition to supporting the family operations) also has a notable and lasting claim to fame. A competitive sailor, Clarence invited West Coast sailors to race to the Hawaiian Islands from San Francisco.

The race start was set for summer of 1906; he took his yacht, “La Paloma,” from Honolulu to San Francisco Bay and found the city lying in ruins following the great earthquake 27-days earlier. He changed the starting point to Los Angeles. The starting line is now off the bluffs of Point Fermin in San Pedro and the finish is off the Diamond Head Lighthouse, about 2,560 miles.

The race, the longer of the two oldest ocean races in the world, continues today – we now call it the Transpacific Yacht Race (TransPac.)

Others in the family participated in the family business activities. Likewise, they had property on the Island of Hawaiʻi and operated the Puʻuloa Sheep and Stock Ranch Company (partnership of the Macfarlane family.)

7,000-sheep ran over fee and leased land, including 4,000-acres of the ahupuaʻa of ʻŌuli, extending from the sea, near Kawaihae, to the top of the Kohala range of mountains, as well as other land nearby.

The family left several lasting legacies in the Islands.

Colonel G. W. Macfarlane, King Kalakaua, Major R. H. Baker-Schweizer

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MacFarlane_Clarence-HawaiiSportsHallOfFame

Macfarlane-LaPaloma-Examiner

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Downtown and Vicinity-Dakin-Fire Insurance- 10-Map-1891-Commercial Hotel-noted

Macfarlane-Commercial_Hotel-Burgess_No_3-1854

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Guests walking toward Seaside office and entry-(SagaOfSandwichIslands)-1913

Advertisement_for_Seaside_Hotel-1908

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Park Beach Hotel, Diamond Head

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June 11, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Posing for a Statue

John Tamatao Baker “was born at [Wailupe], Oahu, in 1852, and was educated at Lahainaluna school on Maui. He began life by entering plantation work on that island, later coming to Honolulu.” (Jean Charlot)

“Baker was of Hawaiian, haole, and Tahitian descent, his grandfather having come to Hawaiʻi from Tahiti with the missionary William Ellis.” (Kanaeokana)

“He became attached to the household of King Kalakaua and married [Chiefess Ululani Lewai Peleioholani]. On Feb 12, 1878, he was made a captain in the household guard and in 1884 was made adjutant of the military police. During the same year he became a member of the privy council.”

“King Kalakaua appointed Baker high sheriff of Hawaii in 1887, his wife having been made governess of that island the preceding year. After the office of governess was abolished, he was named governor, retiring from that post in 1893.”

“In later years of his life, Baker traveled a great deal, visiting Europe and the South Seas islands. He always took an interest in politics and was notes as a scholar in both the English and Hawaiian languages.”

“He is best known, perhaps, as the original of the statute of King Kamehameha, for which he was asked to pose, due to the striking likeness to the ancient ruler.” (Advertiser, Sep 8, 1921) “Likeness refers to a likeness of features rather than of body.” (Charlot)

“Gibson refers to Robert Hoapili Baker in different terms: ‘The artist has copied closely the fine physique of Hoapili of whom photos were sent by the committee and it presents a noble illustration of superior Hawaiian manhood.’” (Charlot)

Actually, Baker, his brother Robert Hoapili Baker and an unnamed fisherman served as models for the Kamehameha Statue. The imagery used by the sculptor was a composite of the three.

(John and Robert were raised as brothers but they were ‘step’ brothers – their mothers were sisters and had both married Captain Adam Baker, yet John is the only biological son of Captain Baker, so they were cousins. (House of Kamakahelei))

A layman, looking at the photo “posed by John T. Baker, is struck by its obvious resemblance to the finished statue and considers this to be a clinching argument.”

“A practicing artist, however, knowing the many successive steps that go into the making of a statue on a heroic scale, knows that this cannot be the whole story.”

“[T]he sculptor, Thomas R. Gould, required much more than the surface data offered by [the single photograph]. To take a famous example of a sculptor’s point of view, in the 1890s Auguste Rodin started working on his statue of Balzac by doing a number of studies after the nude model.”

“Only as a final step did he wrap around the body a loose dressing gown that hides all his hardwon anatomical knowledge, only the head of his Balzac left visible.”

“Gould, an older man, nurtured on classical art, similarly required at the start factual data concerning the Polynesian body, as distinct from the Greco-Roman body he knew so well from statues.”

The initial “photos arrived in April 1879. Gould acknowledges receipt to Brewer, who acted as an agent for [Walter Murray] Gibson: ‘(Received) five photos, three of them being a nude native Hawaiian, and the other two a Hawaiian in the royal feather cloak and baldric, with helmet and spear, countersigned by the King.’” (Jean Charlot)

“Bronze casts by sculptor Thomas R. Gould from the original 1881 mold are now located in Kapaʻau, Hawaiʻi Island, Honolulu, Hilo and in the Hall of Statues in the United States Congress building in Washington, D.C.”

“As was the convention of the time, John [Baker] posed in full Hawaiian attire, but wearing dyed-brown long-johns covering his skin. The photographer minimized this fact, though the covering on the right wrist is quite distinct.”

“Gould worked from a pastiche of the brothers’ photographs and probably another photograph of a muscular man modeling for the legs.”

“The photograph shows the composite model image as Kamehameha in aliʻi (chiefly class) feather robe, helmet, and breechcloth and a holding a lance.” (BOH, Honokaa, NPS)

At the request of the monument committee, statue designer Thomas R Gould modified the features to make the king seem about 45-years old. The intent was a bronze statue of ‘heroic size’ (about eight-and-a-half-feet tall.)

‘Boston Evening Transcript’ of September 28, 1878, noted “It has been thought fitting that Boston, which first sent Christian teachers and ships of commerce to the Islands, should have the honor of furnishing this commemorative monument.”

While Gould was a Bostonian, he was studying in Italy, where he designed the statue; ultimately, the statue was cast in bronze in Paris.

It was shipped on August 21, 1880, by the bark ‘GF Haendel,’ and was expected about mid-December. On February 22, 1881, came word that the Haendel had gone down November 15, 1880, off the Falkland Islands. All the cargo had been lost.

However, the original statue had been recovered and was in fair condition. The right hand was broken off near the wrist, the spear was broken and the feather cape had a hole in it. It was taken to a shed at Aliʻiolani Hale to be repaired.

As for the original statue (which had been repaired,) it was dedicated on May 8, 1883 (the anniversary of Kamehameha’s death) and is in Kapaʻau, North Kohala outside Kohala’s community/senior center.

Meanwhile, on January 31, 1883, the replica ordered by Kohala arrived. On February 14, 1883, the replica statue was unveiled at Aliʻiolani Hale during the coronation ceremonies for King Kalākaua.

The resemblance of the statute to Baker followed him; “John Baker has come to San Francisco to be a human being for a change, instead of a statue. Baker made his home in Honolulu for many years.

“In the islands he is a most famous character. For it was Baker who posed for the celebrated statue of King Kamehameha, because of the strong resemblance he bore to the ancient ruler of the tropic isles.”

“But when tourists saw the statue and then saw him, it often became uncomfortable, for he was frequently taken for the real article by those who did not know that the Kamehamehas have long since ceased to walk the earth.”(San Francisco Daily News, Nov 1915; SB Sept 07, 1921)

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