“Honolulu like other and larger cities, has its street characters. They are, fortunately, but few, which fact renders them perhaps all the more familiar to residents and noticeable to strangers.” (Thrum)
“Jose de Medeiros, 1880(?)-1932, popularly known as ‘Joe the Statue Worshipper,’ kept an almost daily vigil in front of the Honolulu statue for about 35 years. In tattered clothes he would shuffle back and forth in front of the South Iolani Palace gate.”
“Sometimes he would cross the street to stare fixedly at the statue and go through various obeisances.” (Adler)
He “began his strange veneration in 1896, when he was sixteen. Daily he would appear in early morning before the monument.”
“He would shuffle back and forth or stand in apparent rapture staring at the bronze figure. He would depart in late afternoon.” (The Bend Bulletin, August 19, 1932)
“Once a reporter asked him if he liked to see Kamehameha every day, and he answered: ‘He step down some day. Then I see him.’”
“Joe became a familiar sight to townspeople, many of whom gave him gifts of clothes or food or cigars.”
“Former Mayor John H. Wilson remembered seeing him in front of the statue as early as 1896. By 1930 Joe was missing from his usual post, and it turned out he was sick. He died in July, 1932.”
“How account for his strange behavior? As a child of two, Joe came to Honolulu in 1882 with his Portuguese immigrant parents on the Earl of Dalhousie, the same ship that brought the damaged original statue. He may have been influenced by the awed superstition of the immigrants toward it, or by remarks of his parents.” (Adler)
“Old Joe, who truly was one of the extraordinary characters of the Pacific, possessed an endurance record that put in the shade the activities or such persons as marathon dancers, pole sitters, pie-eating champions and the like.”
“He stood voluntary guard before the gilded statue of Kamehameha the Great in the plaza between ‘Iolani Palace and the Judiciary Building, Honolulu for thirty-four years.”
“As to way he stood there day after day, year after year, no one ever found out.”
“That was the mystery of Joe.”
“All that the oldest residents of Honolulu ever knew Joe to say was that ‘Someday he step down – then we talk.’ The ‘he’ was the great bronze Kamehameha effigy of the first of the line of Hawaiian kings, the ‘Napoleon o’ the Pacific’ who united the group in government and whose intellect was said to have been proportionate to his mighty stature of seven feet.”
“Kamehameha reigned about the time the American Colonies were setting their faces against kings in general.”
“The gilt statue of the great king stands today in the middle of Honolulu and is the tribute of this age to a man whose tactful efficiency made a true golden one of his reign a century and a half ago.”
“Hence, the legend rose that perhaps Joe Medeiros. Whose family came from the Azores, was the reincarnation of some far-wandering Portuguese seaman who landed in Hawaii when Kamehameha was king and remained there to live and love as his heart dictated.”
“Some, however, said that the reason poor Joe stood there before the statue was that he in his youth on the Island of Hawai‘i had been kicked on the head by a calf.”
“For some years, Riley H. Allen, Editor of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, as a test of ingenuity, would send new members of the staff from the mainland to interview old Joe.”
“But with one exception, there was uniform failure.”
“Joe would accept a cigar or maybe a half dollar, regard the donor tolerantly and return to his ‘job.’”
“Old Joe lived with his sister in that section of Honolulu between the palace and the Ala Moana, and, contrary to general opinion, he never married. He was fifty-two years old.” (Noted within Goodrich)
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