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April 30, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Keaīwa Heiau

The name Keaīwa has been translated as mysterious or incomprehensible. Perhaps, this name refers to the fact that one could not explain the powers of the kahuna and the herbs used in healing.

“In this old society there was also a group of intelligentsia or experts. These were experts in all fields such as canoe-building, bird experts, fishing experts, etc. These experts were known as kahunas.”

“The top expert in the healing profession was known as the kahuna lapaau. He was the best-versed in herb knowledge and the most capable of alleviating suffering of people when they were sick. Recognized in the community as a man of parts, he was one of five chosen to be on the council of the top leader, the alii aimoku.”

“His training began in some instances at the time of his birth, when in some communities if certain things happened at the time of his birth, it was decided that the gods had decreed that this individual should become a kahuna lapaau.”  (John Desha; Larsen)

Keaīwa Heiau is a medicinal or healing heiau (temple) known as a heiau ho‘ola. At this site, the kahuna (priest, expert) specializing in healing would diagnose and treat various illnesses and injuries.

“The healing heiau was sacred above all others, for it gave life from God. Health was important, for without health the ‘land is worthless.’”

“The Hawaiians say that the art of the kahuna lapaau died out because ‘the sharp-tempered’ were never taught the art. Only the good and kind could be given the knowledge. There is no cure for a ‘sharp temper.’”

“The Hawaiians, in asking Ku and Hina to bless the plants being taken for medicine, always prayed aloud so the person for whom the medicine was intended would not become suspicious.” (George Kahoiwai; Larsen)

“The stones of the heiau lay in rows. Formerly the walls had measured nine feet high, but now they were only three to four feet in height and five to seven feet in width. The rocks, covered with verdant rust of time, were each a weathered gem. The time of the building of this ancient temple had long since disappeared in the mist of forgotten years.”

“The tall trees – mango, kukui, ironwood, Norfolk Island pine – stood up out of a jungled mass of hau trees like a close-formation honor guard. The rectangular enclosure of the shrine measured 168 feet in length and 94 in width. Across one end, and again along the south wall, were stone platforms about one foot high and six feet wide.”

“On these platforms had once stood certain structures, perhaps a tower, perhaps grass huts. The whole inner floor had been paved with flat stones, now showing only here and there.” (Larsen)

The kahuna would also train haumana (students) in the practice of la‘au lapa‘au, medicinal healing using plants, fasting, and prayers. Women were not allowed in the heiau but could receive training outside the heiau.

An apprentice learned the art of diagnosis by practicing on pebbles which a kahuna laid out on a mat in the form of the human body. Pupils learned in this way how to feel out with their fingers the symptoms of the various illnesses. It might take 15 years for a student to become fully trained in the art of healing.

Many of the plants and herbs were collected from the neighboring forest while others were planted around the heiau.

The heiau was badly damaged during World War II when soldiers camping nearby took many stones from the heiau to build a road. The heiau was “rededicated” in 1951 and an effort was made to re-establish the historical setting with plantings of medicinal plants.

“This medicinal temple known as Keaiwa Heiau at the top of Aiea Heights is so ancient that the history of its early construction is not known. It is called Keaiwa after the medicinal god of early times. The outer walls of the heiau were broken down when the adjacent land was subdivided into houselots. The stones were used for road-building and housebuilding.”

“Also the grass house where the god was placed was cut down for road development. What remains of this heiau is the inner platform. At one time this platform was over nine feet high. Again during World War II, much stone was removed from the heiau and used in various military constructions at that time.” (George Kahuiwai; Larsen)

Much of this area was replanted by foresters in the late 1920s. The lemon eucalyptus trees give the air a light citrus fragrance. Stands of Norfolk Island pine trees mark the lower end of the trail.

It is unknown when this heiau was built but one source suggests that it was constructed in the 16th Century by Kakuhihewa, an ali’i (chief) of Oʻahu, and his kahuna Keaīwa.

The 4-foot high stacked rock wall encloses the sacred area that measures 100 by 160 feet. Within the enclosure was a halau (large thatched structure) built for the master kahuna to store the medicinal implements and train the students. Other features might include hale (small thatched structure) and a puholoholo (steam bath).

The heiau is at the top of ‘Aiea Heights Drive at the Keaīwa Heiau State Recreation Area  and the ‘Aiea Loop Trail, a 4.8-mile trail that begins and ends in the park. This trail runs along the ridge on the west side of Halawa Valley and offers views from Pearl Harbor (Pu’uloa) and the Wai’anae Range to Honolulu and Diamond Head (Le’ahi).  (State Parks)

The following was published by Clarice B. Taylor in the 1950s; she got her information from several reliable sources, including Mary Kawena Pukui and Anne Peleioholani Hall.

Taylor wrote this entry entitled “Keaiwa Heiau, the Medical School.”  At the time the Keaiwa heiau at the top of Aiea Heights was discovered in 1951 to be the ruins of an ancient medical center, few Hawaiians knew of its ancient usage.

Eminent anthropologists acknowledged that they had never heard of such centers but were convinced when several Hawaiians independently told of them.

In telling of these centers, Mrs. Mary Kawena Pukui, associate in Hawaiian culture at the Bishop Museum, translated the name Ke-a-iwa as “Incomprehensible.”

The thought being that no one could explain the powers of the priests or the herbs used in healing.

She said Ke-a-iwa came from an obsolete word aiwa-iwa which means the mysterios or the incomprehensible.

Further confirmation of the use of Ke-a-iwa has lately been given to me by Paul Keliikoa, a Hawaiian livingin Aiea. Mr. Keliikoa has the story from his grandmother Kamoekai.

In her day Ke-a-iwa was interpreted as “a period of fasting and meditation” and the heiau was so named because novitiates in the art of healing spent long hours in fasting, praying and meditation.

Kamoekai also told her grandson that the very young were taken to Ke-a-iwa to be trained as kahuna lapaau. There they were taight the prayers needed to compound medicines and heal the sick. They cared for the great herb gardens which lay beyond the heiau walls.

After the novice learned his first steps in the art of the kahuna lapaau, he was sent out to other medicinal centers to learn the advanced art of diagnosis and other treatments.

Mr. Keliikoa’s interpretation of the name means a change in the pronounciation. Not Ke-a-iwa,but Ke-ai-wa. Ke-ai is the Hawaiian word for fasting. (Clarice B. Taylor, “Tales About Hawaii,” The Saturday Star-Bulletin, February 28, 1959) (KS) (Information is from State Parks, Larsen, Kamehameha Schools)

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names Tagged With: Hawaii, Heiau, Aiea, Medicine, Laau Lapaau, Keaiwa Heiau

April 3, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Camp Smith

A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia to draft a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces with the fleet.  November 10, 1775, the Marine Corps was born.

The Treaty of Paris in April 1783 brought an end to the Revolutionary War and as the last of the Navy’s ships were sold, the Continental Navy and Marines went out of existence.  (They were formally re-established as a separate service on July 11, 1798.)

Today, the US military organizational structure is a result of the National Security Act of 1947. This is the same act that created the US Air Force and restructured the “War Department” into the “Department of Defense.”

Headed by a civilian Secretary of Defense, there are three military departments: the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy and the Department of the Air Force. Within these, there are five military branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard (the Coast Guard is under the Department of Homeland Security.)

In Hawaiʻi, on March 17, 1941, an act of Congress approved the purchase of a sugar cane field for a Navy hospital. Construction commenced in July. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, construction of the planned 1,650-bed facility was rushed to completion. The hospital was commissioned on November 11, 1942, but continued expansion was necessary due to the demands of the war.

Known as Aiea Naval Hospital, it was built to serve thousands of WWII wounded Sailors and Marines.  As for the capabilities of the hospital, they correlated directly with the war.

In 1943, the number of staff and facilities grew tremendously. New wards were constructed to better support the waves of casualties, numbering in the hundreds, arriving from the Solomon, Gilbert and Marshall Islands.

On January 1, 1944, Admiral Chester W Nimitz personally presented awards to the many combat-wounded service members at the hospital. Patients were assembled in front of the hospital where 632-men who fought during the Battle of Tarawa received awards.

The hospital expanded again in 1944, adding staff and temporary wards to hold up to 5,000-patients.  Of the 41,872-admissions in 1944, 39,006 patients were relocated to the mainland or returned to duty.

Aiea Naval Hospital had improved efficiency for admitting patients by the time casualties began arriving from Saipan, Guam and Tinian in the Mariana Islands.

February and March of 1945 was the hospital’s bloodiest months, when nearly 5,700-servicemen from the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa received medical care simultaneously.

Until the mid-1980s, there was a bowling alley there, used by Aiea Naval Hospital as therapy for patients injured during WWII and  was once the primary rear-area hospital for the Navy and Marine Corps during that war.

“Down where Bordelon Field is, a lot of the areas here on the camp were used as gardens. The patients would go work in the gardens. They’d use the food from the gardens to feed the patients, but that was more a rehabilitation-type activity.”  (Stubbs, marines-mil)

Decommissioned on May 31, 1949, four years after the end of WWII, the hospital was deactivated and the Army and Navy medical assets were moved to what is now Tripler Army Medical Center.

“It sat idle for a long time and they were in the process of selling all the property. General Smith came up and looked at it and decided this was what he wanted for the home of the (Fleet Marine Force Pacific) headquarters.”  (Stubbs, marines-mil)

A year later, the Territory of Hawaiʻi began plans to claim the old hospital for a tuberculosis sanitarium. However, in 1955 the Marine Corps purchased it for the future home of the Fleet Marine Forces Pacific.

On June 8, 1955, it was renamed Camp HM Smith (named for General Holland McTyeire (HM – nicknamed “Howlin’ Mad”) Smith, the first commanding general of Fleet Marine Force Pacific, it became a strategic command base for the largest field command in the Marine Corps, now known as US Marine Corps Forces, Pacific (MarForPac,) with an area of responsibility covering more than half the Earth’s surface.

After purchasing the land, the first Marines arrived in October 1955. The camp did not become fully operational until two weeks before its dedication, January 31, 1956.

Camp Smith today consists of 220-acres at Camp Smith proper, 137-acres at Puʻuloa Rifle Range in ʻEwa Beach and 62-acres in Mānana Housing. Camp Smith is unique in that it’s the only Marine Corps installation that supports a unified commander, Commander, Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM.)

(A unified combatant command is a US joint military command composed of forces from two or more services, has a broad and continuing mission and is organized either on a geographical basis or on a functional basis.)

The new headquarters for the US Pacific Command (USPACOM) located on Camp Smith, accommodating more than 1,350-personnel for the US Pacific Command and the Special Operations Command, Pacific, was recently dedicated.

Named the Nimitz-MacArthur Pacific Command Center (NMPCC), the six-story, 274,500-square-foot facility overlooks Honolulu and replaces a nearly 60-year-old structure originally built as a hospital during WWII.

The NMPCC is one of the nation’s premier facilities for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) systems. C4I plans were developed around the “battle cell” concept for distributed command and control.  (Lots of information and images here from marines-mil.)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Hawaii, Oahu, Aiea, Tripler Army Medical Center, Aiea Naval Hospital, Marine Corps, Camp Smith

November 26, 2013 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

ʻEwa

Today, you don’t necessarily use the words ʻEwa and Kalo in the same sentence – we tend to think of the ʻEwa district as dry and hot, not as a wetland taro production region.  Some early written descriptions of the place also note the dry ʻEwa Plains.

In 1793, Captain George Vancouver described this area as desolate and barren:  “From the commencement of the high land to the westward of Opooroah (Puʻuloa – Pearl Harbor) was … one barren rocky waste, nearly destitute of verdure, cultivation or inhabitants, with little variation all to the west point of the island. …”

In 1839, Missionary EO Hall described the area between Pearl Harbor and Kalaeloa as follows: “Passing all the villages (after leaving the Pearl River) at one or two of which we stopped, we crossed the barren desolate plain”.  (Robicheaux)

However, not only was ʻEwa productive, its taro was memorable.

Ua ʻai i ke kāī-koi o ‘Ewa.
He has eaten the kāī-koi taro of ‘Ewa.

Kāī is O‘ahu‘s best eating taro; one who has eaten it will always like it. Said of a youth or maiden of ‘Ewa, who, like the Kāī taro, is not easily forgotten.  (ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, 2770, Pukui)

The island of Oʻahu is divided into 6 moku (districts), consisting of: ‘Ewa, Kona, Koʻolauloa, Koʻolaupoko, Waialua and Waiʻanae. These moku were further divided into 86 ahupua‘a (land divisions within a moku.)

‘Ewa was divided into 12-ahupua‘a, consisting of (from east to west): Hālawa, ‘Aiea, Kalauao, Waimalu, Waiau, Waimano, Mānana, Waiʻawa, Waipi‘o, Waikele, Hōʻaeʻae and Honouliuli.

‘Ewa was at one time the political center for O‘ahu chiefs. This was probably due to its abundant resources that supported the households of the chiefs, particularly the many fishponds around the lochs of Puʻuloa (“long hill,) better known today as Pearl Harbor. (Cultural Surveys)  ʻEwa was the second most productive taro cultivation area on Oʻahu (just behind Waikīkī.)  (Laimana)

The salient feature of ‘Ewa, and perhaps its most notable difference, is its spacious coastal plain, surrounding the deep bays (“lochs”) of Pearl Harbor, which are actually the drowned seaward valleys of ‘Ewa’s main streams, Waikele and Waipi‘o…The lowlands, bisected by ample streams, were ideal terrain for the cultivation of irrigated taro.  (Handy, Cultural Surveys)

‘Ewa was known for a special and tasty variety of kalo (taro) called kāī which was native to the district. There were four documented varieties; the kāī ʻulaʻula (red kāī), kāī koi (kāī that pierces), kāī kea or kāī keʻokeʻo (white kāī), and kāī uliuli (dark kāī.)  (Handy)

Handy says about ‘Ewa:
The lowlands, bisected by ample streams, were ideal terrain for the cultivation of irrigated taro. The hinterland consisted of deep valleys running far back into the Koʻolau range. Between the valleys were ridges, with steep sides, but a very gradual increase of altitude. The lower parts of the valley sides were excellent for the culture of yams and bananas. Farther inland grew the ‘awa for which the area was famous. The length or depth of the valleys and the gradual slope of the ridges made the inhabited lowlands much more distant from the wao, or upland jungle, than was the case on the windward coast. Yet the wao here was more extensive, giving greater opportunity to forage for wild foods in famine time. (Handy)

Earlier this century, a few fishermen and some of their families built shanties by the shore where they lived, fished and traded their catch for taro at ‘Ewa. Their drinking water was taken from nearby ponds, and it was so brackish that other people could not stand to drink it.  (Maly)

An 1899 newspaper account says of the kāī koi, “That is the taro that visitors gnaw on and find it so good that they want to live until they die in ‘Ewa. The poi of kai koi is so delicious”. (Ka Loea Kalai ʻĀina 1899, Cultural Surveys) So famous was the kāī variety that ‘Ewa was sometimes affectionately called Kāī o ‘Ewa.

“I think it (wetlands) went all the way behind the Barbers Point beach area. … We’d go swim in the ponds back there, it was pretty deep, about two feet, and the birds were all around. … It seems like when there were storms out on the ocean, we’d see them come into the shore, but they’re not around anymore.”

“The wet land would get bigger when there was a lot of rain, and we had so much fun in there, but now the water has nearly all dried up. They even used to grow wet-land taro in the field behind the elementary school area when I was young. (Arline Wainaha Pu‘ulei Brede-Eaton, Maly Interview)
 ”… Bountiful taro fields covered the plain and countless coconut palms, with several huts in their shade beautified the country side. … The taro fields, the banana plantations, the plantations of sugar cane are immeasurable.” (A Botanist’s Visit to Oahu in 1831, Journal of Dr FJF Meyen, Maly)

“This district, unlike others of the island, is watered by copious and excellent springs that gush out at the foot of the mountains. From these run streams sufficient for working sugar-mills. In consequence of this supply, the district never suffers from drought, and the taro-patches are well supplied with water by the same means.”  (Commander Charles Wilkes, 1840-1841, Maly)

“Rev. Artemas Bishop, in the summer of 1836, removed with his wife and two children from Kailua, Hawaii, to Ewa, Oahu.  … Throughout the district of Ewa the common people were generally well fed. Owing to the decay of population, great breadths of taro marsh had fallen into disuse, and there was a surplus of soil and water for raising food.”  (SE Bishop, The Friend, May 1901)

As in other areas, kalo loʻi converted to rice patties.  “These days at ‘Ewa, the planting of rice is spreading among the Chinese and the Hawaiians, from Hālawa to Honouliuli and beyond. There will come a day when the mother food, taro, shall not be seen on the land.”  (Ka Lahui Hawaii, May 3, 1877, Maly)

Of course, in our discussion of the ʻEwa Moku, we need to remember that it ran from Hālawa to Honouliuli and circled Pearl Harbor.  Much of the watered wetland taro was produced off of streams from the Koʻolau; however, there is considerable mention of the wetland taro of Honouliuli (what we generally refer to today as ʻEwa.)

The image shows the ahupuaʻa within the Moku of ʻEwa over Google Earth.  In addition, I have included other related images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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© 2013 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Place Names, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Oahu, Honouliuli, Pearl Harbor, Halawa, Waipio, Aiea, Ewa, Puuloa, Kalauao, Hoaeae, Waimano, Waiau, Manana, Waimalu, Waiawa, Waikele

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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