Prominent People | Page 74 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 28, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale o Nalii

On July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China to initiate the war in the Pacific; while the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 unleashed the European war.

As to Hawaiʻi, War Department message of November 27, 1941 read as follows: “Negotiations have come to a standstill at this time. No diplomatic breaking of relations and we will let them make the first overt act. You will take such precautions as you deem necessary to carry out the Rainbow plan [a war plan]. Do not excite the civilian population.” (Proceedings of Army Pearl Harbor Board)

Oʻahu held a position of the first importance in the military structure of the US before and during WWII. During the prewar years, Oʻahu and the Panama Canal Zone were the two great outposts of continental defense. (army-mil)

A key goal in the Pacific was to hold Oʻahu as a main outlying naval base and to protect shipping in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands.

In the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American strategists developed a strategy that focused on “Germany first.” In the end, that was what occurred with the American war effort. Then, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the US entered the war.

But for much of 1942 and well into 1943, the US deployed substantially greater forces to the Pacific than to Europe. This was in response both to political pressure from the American people and the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Pacific over the first six months of the war.

On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000-Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

General Dwight D Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000-ships and 13,000-aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe.

The final battles of the European Theater of WWII, as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, took place in late-April and early-May 1945.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

During World War II, Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the rare five-star rank of General of the Army. Eisenhower oversaw the invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany.

Following the war, Eisenhower served as Army Chief of Staff; in the spring of 1946 he toured military facilities in the Pacific and elsewhere, including Hawai‘i.

The Commander at Kilauea Military Camp (KMC), who at the time was working on post-war closing up and returning schools, warehouses, land, and even the Saddle Road which had been built by the military to the community (as well as providing military help in cleaning up following the April 1946 tsunami), got word that Eisenhower was coming for a five-day visit, for rest, after a tour of the Pacific nations.

Eisenhower was looking for “quiet time, no protocol, no attention.”

At the time, KMC “was ceasing to be only for war-weary soldiers for rest, relaxation and recreation. The camp still had a contingent of 10 officers and 148 enlisted men; three Red Cross hostesses, a Librarian and a good jazz band.”

“There were 12 good riding horses, 4 pack mules for trips to the summit of Mauna Loa, a number of bicycles, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a fine library, and a first-class bakery in a building by itself. Never-the-less KMC personnel got to work sprucing up the place, the General was coming.”

Eisenhower stayed in Cabin 44; it was called Hale-o-Nalii (house of the chief – it served as quarters for general’s at KMC). It was later renamed Eisenhower House, due to the fact that ~that~ general slept there.

On one night, Eisenhower “was feeling very rested and would enjoy some entertainment and asked for suggestions.” He was offered, “‘How about a party with cocktails, dinner and a Hawaiian troop of dancers and musicians?’”

“The idea was accepted, but that meant we had only one day to prepare for everything.” (Pauline Wollaston, the KMC Commander’s wife, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Dec 14, 1986)

“All went well. The general ordered several highballs, the dinner was superb, and he loved the entertainment. While this was going on I happened to glance at one of his aides – a gray-haired, battle-worn general. Tears were streaming down his face.”

“I asked him what was the matter, could I do something for him. He answered, ‘Oh, you all already have! When I see this great man enjoying himself, I can’t control my emotions.’”

“Gen. Eisenhower left the next morning; and all along the roadway, from KMC to the airport, there were children and adults waving and cheering.” (Pauline Wollaston, Hawaii Tribune Herald, Dec 14, 1986)

Eisenhower also served as president of Columbia University (1948–1953) and as the first Supreme Commander of NATO (1951–1952). He was elected the 34th President of the United States (January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961). (Lots of information here from KMC, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, army-mil and GlobalSecurity.)

May 27, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Communists in the Union in the Islands in the 1930s and 40s

In 1951 in Washington, DC, Jack Kawano (former President of ILWU) gave a US House Congressional Committee On Un-American Activities details on the Communist Party activities in Hawai’i. Kawano stated, in part:

I am not a Communist. However, I was a member of the Communist Party. I joined the Communist Party because some individual Communists were willing to assist me inorganizing the Waterfront Union.

I decided to quit the Communist Party because I found that the primary existence of the Communist Party was not for the best interests of the workingman but to dupe the members of the union, to control the union, and to use the union for purposes other than strictly trade-union matters.

The Communists play rings around the rank and file members of the union and their union’s constitutions, by meeting separately and secretly among themselves and making prior decisions on all important union policy matters, such as the question of strikes, election of officers, ratification of union agreements, the question of American foreign policy, and all other important matters of the Union.

Primarily all of these decisions are made on the basis of what is good for the Communist Party and not what is good for the membership of the union.

In 1934, on the water front, when I was first employed there, there was no union; and in order for one to get a job and be able to hold on to it, it was almost an impossibility unless he brought gifts and bribes to his foreman.

Discrimination, favoritism, no job security, low wages, speed-ups, dangerous working conditions were all part of a daily routine. The workers’ need for a union was so great that it was not funny.

In October 1935, when the West Coast Firemen’s Union opened a hiring hall in Honolulu, and later when the same hiring hall was shared by the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the officers of both the Firemen’s Union and the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific paid for and reserved a small space in the same hiring hall for an organizing committee.

This organizing committee was headed by Maxie Weisbarth, who was then agent for the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, and Harry Kealoha, a member of the Marine Fireman, Oilers, and Water Tenders Union at that time.

The first organizing drive among longshoremen was launched by Weisbarth and Kealoha, aided by others like Charlie Post, and so forth. However, I did not join the union at that time because they did not permit workers of oriental descent to become members of that organization.

I joined the Longshoremen’s Association of Honolulu in November 1935, when the organizers changed their policy and made it possible for workers of oriental extraction to become members of the union.

Several organizational meetings were called, and they were fairly well attended. However, then efforts in organizing was defeated when the water-front employers offered Thanksgiving turkey to the workers on Christmas, and the workers were told that the turkey was a present to them from the company, and if they did not listen to the radical agitators from Sailors’ Hall they would be getting better things from the company in the future.

I was one of the few who ignored the company’s advice, and continued my membership in the union until I got fired in 1936. I was not fired long before I talked my way back on the job.

When I was reemployed, I got fired again because the company found that I did not quit the union. This time I was fired until the end of the 1936-37 Pacific coast maritime strike, which ended in February 1937.

At the end of that strike, with the aid of some members of the sailors’ union and the firemen’s union, I managed to get my job on the water front back again.

So I went back to work on the water front in early February 1937. However, because I could not get transferred to my former sugar gang, I left the water-front job in July 1937 to work full time as a water-front organizer for the union without pay.

Organizing in those days was very difficult. I used to talk to workers on then way to and from work; visited them at their homes and talked to them; signed up and collected dues from some of them; but because we were not able to show any encouraging results, these people gradually dropped out of the union.

I used to borrow Willie Crozier’s p. a. system (public-address system) to organize mass meetings along the water front in the mornings.

I used to make leaflets and distribute them among workers on the water front in the mornings and afternoons.

But because the employers had organized a company union, sports clubs, and so forth, to divert the attention of the workers elsewhere, and because they used the leaders of this company union to discriminate and threaten organizers and members of the union …

… and because through their company union they raised the wages from 40 to 50 cents during the 1936-37 strike, we were never able to get the majority of the employees into the union at any one time during those days.

This situation continued from 1935 on until we finally got organized and won our first agreement on the water front in the spring of 1941.

There were many enthusiastic organizers in the beginning, but as time went on, and no organizational results showed, these organizers and union leaders gradually dropped out of existence. Some of these organizers and leaders were: Maxie Weisbarth, Harry Kealoha, Edward Berman, Levi Kealoha, Jack Hall, to mention a few.

However, Frederick Kamahoahoa and I kept plugging until we finally organized the water front with the aid of some of the more active union men on the water front.

Some of the more active union men who played an important part in assisting us organize the water front were Takeshi Yamanchi, Chujiro Hokama, Kana Shimiabakuro, Naoji Yokoyama, Kiheji Nishi, Daniel Machado, Jr, Francis Perkins, Ben Kahaawinui, Lefty Chang, William Halm, William Piilani, John Akin, Solomon Niheu, and a few others.

While we were organizing, there was a strike of sugar workers on the Puunene plantation in 1937. The strike lasted for 2 to 3 months. When the strike began, Maxie Weisbarth sent a man by the name of Ben Shear from Honolulu to assist the sugar workers in their strike and to help them along. The idea was to try to get them to join the HLA, Honolulu Longshoremen’s Association.

These plantation strikers and their leaders seemed to be very interested, but because we were not able to give them any substantial financial assistance the strikers decided to stay independent from HLA and did not affiliate themselves with HLA, Honolulu Longshoremen’s Association.

Just about the same time the longshoremen in Port Allen, Kauai, went on strike. They demanded recognition of their union, adjustment of grievances, and better wages.

Ben Shear, who was at that time in Maui, was pulled out from Maui, and he, together with George Goto, was assigned to go to Kauai and assist the strikers in Kauai. Ben Shear and George Goto did a great deal in building up the strength of the longshore union in Port Allen und in Akukini.

Meanwhile, Bill Bailey, a Communist, was sent from Honolulu to Maui, to assist the strikers there. He stayed with the strikers until the strike, was finally settled without any written agreement, and as a result of that the Plantation Union was broken after the end of the strike.

Now comes my first Communist meeting. The first Communist meeting that I attended was held. I believe, in the room on Emma Street near Beretania Street occupied by William Bailey.

I was escorted to this meeting by Edward Berman, who was at that time a nominal organizational head of the union in Honolulu. At this meeting, Bailey gave a lecture that lasted anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

He issued us membership cards in the Travelers’ Club, otherwise known as a Communist card. He told us that as long as we carried that card we would be respected by all good union men from the mainland, and we could count on Harry Bridges to help us. He also asked us to volunteer in the Spanish Loyalist Army, but no one volunteered.

From what I understand, [the Travelers Club] was a membership book signifying that you are a member of the Communist Party. I understood there is a slight difference between those people who carry Communist Party book offshore and inshore.

In this case it was an offshore group, and it was impossible for them to belong to one unit, because seamen travel all over the country, so to make them eligible to attend meetings wherever they go, in every port, they have one unified card system, and I think that was supposed to be this Travelers’ card system.

A man carrying a Travelers’ card from New York would be eligible to attend a meeting in Honolulu, and vice versa.

[At the meeting,] the general trend of thought was like this – that the bosses are no good; that workers can live without the bosses, and we should try to get rid of the bosses by forming an organization and fighting the bosses, first through the union and later through the revolution, or something like that.

I think everybody signed up in the Communist Party through the Travelers’ Club who attended that meeting ….

[Kawano noted, as a union organizer, he attended a Communist Party school stating,] Around the latter part of the summer of 1938, Jack Kimoto [an Japanese language interpreter and the one who set up the Communist Party in the Islands] urged me to consider going to San Francisco to study labor economics at one of the special schools conducted by the Communist Party of the USA in California.

He told me that it was only a 5-week course, and that I could learn a lot, and I would be able to do a more effective job of organizing after I returned from school. …

The following year, 1939, Ichiro Izuka and Jack Hall also attended a Communist Party school in California. They went from Honolulu. Robert McElrath also attended the school, from California, but by using Hawaii’s credit.

Oh, it wasn’t only Kawano who told of the Communism-Union link …

Dan Inouye noted in his 1967 biography, “No one with any sense of political reality denied that there were probably some Communists in the ILWU. … There were those who felt that the Democrats’ Party, by logical extension, was also controlled by Communists.” (Dan Inouye (former US Senator); reported by Borreca, Star Bulletin)

“Later, in 1975, Governor John Burns, who in the 1950s was a Democratic Party organizer and delegate to Congress, would reflect that perhaps there were Communists within the union …”

“‘Every guy in the ILWU was at one time or another a member of the Communist Party of America. This is where they got their organizational information and how to organize, and how to bring groups together and how to create cells and how to make movements that are undetected by the bosses and everything else. … I know what they were about. I said this is the only way they are going to organize.’” (John Burns (former Hawaii Governor); reported by Borreca, Star Bulletin)

To be clear, neither Kawano nor anyone else said all union leaders and members were communists.

But, as Kawano stated, “In view of the world situation, where our country is at war with communist forces in Korea, I cannot see myself assisting Communists or community in any way, particularly when you consider them to be enemies of our country. Therefore, I feel I owe it to my country to bring to light all I know about Communist activities in Hawaii.”

Read Kawano’s full testimony here (all here, except the Borreca quotes, are quoted from his testimony):

Click to access hearingsregardinhaw1951unit.pdf

After Kawano’s testimony, seven Hawai‘i residents – Jack Hall, John Reinecke, Dwight James Freeman, Charles Fujimoto, Eileen Fujimoto, Jack Kimoto and Koji Ariyoshi were arrested under the Smith Act in August 1951.

They were charged with conspiracy for their communist way of “thinking.” They were called the ‘Hawaii Seven’ and they were convicted and sentenced to prison. They appealed.

The Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco overturned the convictions on January 20, 1958 on the basis of a previous Supreme Court decision that the abstract teaching of communism did not constitute conspiracy to overthrow the government by force as defined by the Smith Act. (Tagaki-Kitamura)

May 20, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Call of the Sea

“It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats.” (London)

In 1906, Jack London announced he was planning a trip on a boat – the Snark – he was to build and do blue-water sailing on a round-the-world cruise. (The Snark was named after one of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems.)

“‘Honolulu first,’ said London yesterday. ‘After that we are not very definite. Everybody’s in good health, the bourgeoise tradesmen have finally freed us, the boat is staunch, the weather fine. What more a man wants I don’t know.’”

“‘Meet me in Paris,’ called Mrs. Jack London back through the megaphone as the boat disappeared. ‘Isn’t it glorious? Good-by, everybody!” [April 23, 1907]

“The remaining members of the crew of the Snark are: Captain Rosco Eames, under whose personal direction the Snark was built; Herbert Stoitz of Stanford University; Martin Johnson, cook, and Hideshisa Hochigi. Cabin boy.”

“Flying from her mainmast the red flag of Socialism, Jack London’s Snark, towed by a gasoline launch, passed through the Oakland estuary shortly after noon yesterday.”

“She had been freed from Federal surveillance and scores of the author’s friends thronged her deck as she lay at Franklin-street wharf to bid godspeed to him and his wife on their long cruise.”

“Cheer after cheer rent the air as the Snark moved down the channel and passed out into the bay, on her way to Bonita Cove, near Sausalito, where she will await the ebb tide this morning before sailing through the Golden Gate.”

“In the farewell levee on the deck leaders in Socialism hobnobbed with literary workers and a staid burgher friend or two mingled in the gathering with men of the professions. But for the most part the throng that gathered was made up of workingmen as negligee in attire as the author himself.”

“They all called him ‘Jack,’ and he seemed to know them all. They cheered when the two banners of red, the one bearing the initial S. for Snark and Socialism: the other, a black and white star, the London emblem,” were hauled by Captain Eames to the masthead.”

“There they will fly until the cruise is done, carrying the message of Socialism to the people of the seven seas.” (PCA, April 30, 1907)

“The arrival of Mr. Jack London in the Snark is looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by certain society folk who will doubtless wine and dine him most hospitably.”

“After many rumored departures, he is said to have really sailed from San Francisco and may be expected here shortly, wind, weather and his navigating officer permitting.” (PCA, April 28, 1907)

“Folks flocked down to the waterfront to get a glimpse of the little craft which was designed to circumnavigate the globe.”

“A glimpse was all they got, for the Snark gave a line to Young Brothers’ tug Waterwitch and was towed to Pearl Harbor, where she dropped anchor off the Hobron place, and will probably remain there for the best part of the next two months.”

“Mr and Mrs London made up their respective and collective minds to spend at least two months in the waters of Pearl Lochs and to take their residence ashore in the TW Hobron cottage. They yearn for the shore awhile and want to be quite.”

“‘We are here for work,’ said Mrs London when the Londons were visited by a representative of the Star shortly after their arrival here at 11:20 o’clock this morning [May 20, 1907]. Continuing Mrs. London stated that her husband intended to put in a lot of time writing and that they could not Image a quieter place than Pearl Lochs.”

“They will not go to Honolulu today. They do not want the distractions of the city, preferring, for the present at least, the peacefulness of the Hobron cottage, whither the typewriter has already been transferred from the cabin of the Snark and where

its click will be heard until late in July.”

London noted, “‘Pearl Harbor is a dream. The coming through the breakers into the placid water of the lagoon is a sight I shall never forget. We shall remain here and work as quietly as may be. I’m sick of the hotels and steamships.’”

“There are years of adventure and romance before the people of the Snark and the beginning has been auspicious. The Snark has proved herself to be everything that London claimed she would be.”

“‘We’ve come 2600 miles In twenty-seven days,’ said the captain, ‘and while not tired of the trip must say that land looks mighty good to me. We went south in order to fall in with the dolphins and flying fish and latterly bore southwest for the wind as far as the nineteenth longitudinal.’”

“‘We loafed along the whole way, with more wind the first four days out than we had all the rest of the trip. The voyage was singularly devoid of Incident. Three days out a ship was sighted, after which nothing was seen till Sunday, when we saw a steamer hull down.’

“The Snark is thirty tons gross and ten tons net; fifty-one feet in length, fifteen and five-tenths beam and seven and fieve-tenths in depth of hold. Her foremast is much taller than the main and she carries a big bowsprit. Her deck is flush and living apartments occupy the whole vessel from stem to stern.”

“The Snark, according to present plans, will leave here in about twenty days for Hilo. From Hilo the South Seas, Australasia and the Orient, and the rest of the world, will be checked off the Snark’s chart.” (Hawaiian Gazette, May 21, 1907)

Charmian London (Mrs Jack London) made a couple of books about the two years’ with her husband in the forty-five-foot ketch Snark into the South Seas, by way of the Hawaiian Islands.

The seafaring portion of her notes was published in 1915 as “The Log of the Snark.” The record of five months spent in the Paradise of the Pacific, Hawaii, she made into another book, “Our Hawaii,” issued in 1917. Jack London had previously passed through Honolulu in 1893.

The South Sea trip was meant to be just the beginning of the cruise. London dreamt of threading the Arabian Sea and traversing the Mediterranean and the Atlantic but ultimately it was the savage climate of the south Pacific that did for him.

After about 2-years of sailing, at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands London became afflicted by a skin disease which meant his hands swelled up and chunks of skin fell off. Without his hands he could not write and earn the money to fund the voyage and, after seeking medical advice, he was urged to abandon the trip.

It was a devastating decision for London, and he and Charmian were distraught, as Jack recalled: “In hospital when I broke the news to Charmian that I must go back to California the tears welled into her eyes.”

“For two days she was wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.” Thus one of the most offbeat and pioneering cruises ended rather abruptly. Once the voyage was called off, Snark was sailed to Sydney and sold there. (Jefferson)

May 14, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

City Mill

“The articles of incorporation of the City Mill Co, Ltd., were approved (June 13, 1899.) The names that appear are as follows: Wong Leong, CK Ai, WW Ahana, C Mun Kai, Pang Chong and Ho Fon. The capital stock is $60,000 to be divided into 60 shares at $100 per share.”

The officers were: Wong Leong, president; Chung Kun Ai, vice president, treasurer and manager; C Mun Kai, secretary; WW Ahana and Yeong Chee, auditors and Pang Chong, foreman.

“The company intends to carry on the business of rice millers, rice merchants, planing mill, builders and contractors, lumber merchants and dealers in builders’ and contractors’ supplies and any other business that can be carried on in connection therewith.” (Evening Bulletin, June 14, 1899)

So it began; and it continues to provide much of the same core services it started with over a century ago. Let’s look back.

In 1879, at 14 years of age, Zhong Wenyu (better known in later life as Chung Kun Ai or CK Ai and his father sailed for Hawaii on a three-masted German schooner from the port of Whang Poo near Canton, China. (Rhoads)

Chung Kun Ai’s father had been to Hawaiʻi eleven years earlier and was a merchant in Kona, Hawaiʻi. With a prospering business, he returned to China to bring his family to their new home.

As a young teenager, and speaking neither English nor Hawaiian, Chung Kun Ai enrolled in ʻIolani where he spent two years (his only formal schooling.) It was here that Ai converted to Christianity, which was to remain the central force in his life.

It was also at ʻIolani where he met and developed a lasting friendship with a fellow student, Sun Tai-Cheong, later known to the world as Sun Yat Sen, father of the Chinese Republic.

Their friendship provided a foundation to formulate the principles of the Chinese Republic. On his third trip in Hawaiʻi (on November 24, 1894) Sun established the Hsing Chung Hui (Revive China Society,) his first revolutionary society. Among its founders were many Christians, one of them being Chung Kun Ai.)

Years later, Chung Kun Ai received the highest medal of honor from the Chinese government for his recognition of the needs of the people.

Following his education at ʻIolani, at the age of 17, Ai’s father bought him a partnership in a tailor shop. However, the business did not appeal to Ai and he left the business in 1887. That same year, at the age of 21, Ai joined the firm of James Isaac Dowsett as a secretary, clerk and bookkeeper.

Dowsett (said to have been the first white child, not of missionary parentage, born in Hawaiʻi) was engaged in a conglomerate of activities in the islands.

Dowsett had first worked for the Hudson Bay Company; then, in the early-1860s he entered the whaling business, owning a fleet of whaling ships. Besides his whaling activities, Mr. Dowsett engaged in the lumber business and owned a fleet of schooners and small steamers operating between the islands.

Dowsett also had extensive ranching interests; properties now occupied by Schofield Barracks, Fort Shafter and Lualualei were once pastures for Dowsett’s cattle and horses.

Ai eventually became Dowsett’s protégé, earning his respect for his careful management skills. As a result, Dowsett allowed Ai to use a portion of his warehouse, and Ai started importing cigars, tea, peanut oil, shoe nails and other items.

Then, following Dowsett’s death, Ai and others started City Mill, a rice milling and lumber importing business in Chinatown, Honolulu. Unfortunately, within 8-months after opening, it succumbed to the 1900 Chinatown fire.

Without insurance, they raised the necessary funds, rebuilt and added new product lines. However, again, in 1919, a fire burned City Mill. Fortunately, this time, insurance covered the damage.

By the early 1920s, City Mill was so successful that Ai ventured into the pineapple business, and formed the Honolulu Fruit Company, which owned 5-pineapple fields and a cannery. (It did not survive the Great Depression of the 1930s.)

In 1926, City Mill took an interest in the Vigilant (a 244-foot sailing ship built in 1920) and placed her in service to carry lumber from Puget Sound to Hawaiʻi (it was capable of carrying 2,000,000-board feet of lumber each trip.) (Gibbs; Caphoneirs)

Prior to World War II, in conjunction with its building supplies, City Mill had the distinction of having the only rice mill in Honolulu and having the largest rice mill in Hawaiʻi.

The war forced City Mill to abandon its rice operation and to concentrate on providing construction materials for the armed forces and civilians. By the war’s end, City Mill emerged as one of the largest building materials suppliers in the Pacific.

Along the way, Chung Kun Ai also ventured into other types of businesses with varying degrees of success in laundry, fishing, tobacco and oil drilling.

In 1950, Chung Kun Ai opened the present City Mill store on Nimitz Highway. The building was dedicated to James I. Dowsett, Ai’s mentor, friend and benefactor.

In 1956, in recognition of his exemplary family life, Chung Kun Ai was awarded “Father of the Year” by the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. In 1957, Governor Samuel Wilder King bestowed upon Chung Kun Ai the “Order of the Splintered Paddle” for Ai’s outstanding service to mankind.

In the summer of 1980, after 81-years of operation, City Mill phased out its Wholesale Division; this allowed City Mill to concentrate its energies on the expansion of its retail home centers.

With the success of the retail home centers, City Mill expanded into the Honolulu suburbs. The first branch store opened in Kāneʻohe in 1960; then Waipahu (1967,) Waimalu Shopping Center (Pearl City)(1975,) Kaimuki (1984,) Hawaii Kai and Mililani Town Center (1993,) Waianae (1999,) and relocation of the Waipahu store to Laulani Village Shopping Center in Ewa Beach (2012.) (Lots of information here from City Mill.)

May 12, 2022 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

George Robert Carter

George Robert Carter was born on December 28, 1866 in Honolulu, his mother was Sybil Augusta Judd (1843–1906,) daughter of Gerrit P. Judd, and his father was businessman Henry Alpheus Peirce Carter.

“His grandfather was Oliver Carter, an American sea captain engaged in the whaling industry, who first came to Honolulu during one of his whaling voyages in the late twenties or early thirties of the last century, and settled here in the thirties.” (Hawaiian Star, May 28, 1904)

“Carter went to school first in Nuʻuanu Valley … later he attended St. Alban’s College (forerunner to ʻIolani) and attended Fort Street School (which eventually became McKinley High School.)” (Hawaiian Gazette, November 24, 1903)

From the Honolulu schools Carter went to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and graduating there in 1885, entered the Sheffield Scientific school of Yale University where he finished a three years’ course in 1888.” (Hawaiian Gazette, November 24, 1903)

“Carter, always took a healthy interest in athletic sports and while at Yale was a member of the Varsity football teams of ’86, ’87 and ’88 and was also a member of the Yale boat crews of ’87 and ’88.” (Hawaiian Gazette, November 24, 1903)

He formed a rowing club with a few friends, including a friend from Hawaii Hiram Bingham III (my great uncle.) (Yale-edu) (Hiram Bingham III married into the Tiffany fortune, taught history and politics, and on July 24, 1911 rediscovered the “Lost City” of Machu Picchu – and, reportedly, was the inspiration for the Indiana Jones character.)

Carter married Helen Strong, daughter of Eastman Kodak president Henry A Strong on April 19, 1892. They had four children: Elizabeth (born August 25, 1895), Phoebe (born September 27, 1897), a daughter who died on June 17, 1903, and George Robert, Jr. (born November 10, 1905).

In 1895 Carter returned to Hawaiʻi to become the cashier of C Brewer & Co., where his father had been a senior partner from 1862 to 1874. From 1898 to 1902, he helped organize and manage the Hawaiian Trust Company, and was managing director of the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company. In addition, he served as a director for Bank of Hawaii, C. Brewer and Alexander & Baldwin.

Carter was elected to the Hawaii Territorial Senate, representing Oʻahu, in 1901. While a territorial senator, he was sent to Washington as an unofficial agent to discuss territorial matters with President Teddy Roosevelt.

Roosevelt later appointed Carter Secretary of the Territory in 1902 and then Territorial Governor in 1903, succeeding Sanford B. Dole who resigned to become a federal judge (Carter was Governor from 1903 – 1907.) (Yale-edu)

In 1905, during Carter’s administration, the current system of county governments was created; the five county governments (Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi and Kalawao) took effect on January 1, 1906. (Oʻahu County later became the City and County of Honolulu in 1909.)

In the late-1920s, Carter built ‘Lihiwai’ (water’s edge) with 26 major rooms and over 26,000-square feet under roof, it is reportedly “the largest and finest private residence ever constructed in Hawaiʻi (with the exception of ʻIolani Palace.)” (NPS)

Two waterways (an ʻauwai and Nuʻuanu Stream) flow through the property, thus the property’s name. You cross the ʻauwai over a coral bridge.

Completed in 1928 (and occupied by the Carters from 1928-1945,) the home was designed by Hardie Phillip (he was the architect for the Honolulu Academy of Arts (built at the same time (1927-28), and the C. Brewer and Co. Building (1929.))

The entire building is built of shaped bluestone set in concrete and steel reinforced cement, and all the perimeter walls are 2 – 3-feet thick with the exception of the end walls, which are 6-feet thick.

Originally, the building was connected to two smaller structures — by a breezeway on the eastern side and by the porte-cochere on the western side (these structures were separated in 1957.)

The roof over the front portion of the house is a double pitched hipped style roof made of flat Spanish terracotta tiles. The beams in the attic that support the roof are all steel I beams, and the hand carved eave beams (and supporting wood) are all teak. One concrete chimney rises from the roof and serves all 3 interior fireplaces.

The floors of the vestibule, downstairs foyer, upstairs foyer, upstairs hallways, and upstairs rear balcony are made of stone. The drawing room floors are ʻōhiʻa (ʻŌhiʻa lehua) parquet, and the formal dining room, music room, and upstairs bedrooms and guest suites have ʻōhiʻa strip flooring; slate is in other rooms.

The property was originally 10-acres, all professionally landscaped, but the estate was subdivided and sold in 1945 after the death of Helen Strong Carter. Today, the property includes the original house on a little over 1-acre.

Carter died February 11, 1933; he is buried at Oʻahu Cemetery. (Lots of information from Yale-edu and NPS.)