Chinatown | Page 3 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

June 28, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawaiʻi Theatre

The Hawaii Theatre is celebrating its 90th anniversary. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its excellent architectural and interior design, craftsmanship, and detailing.

The theater is a rare example of eclectic architecture that was relatively common to this area of Honolulu prior to World War II.

The theater, historically, had two primary functions. During its early years it was both a live center for the performing arts and a motion picture theater, its dual uses gradually shifted, and in later years it functioned solely as a motion picture theater.

In March, 1920, the Honolulu architectural firm of Emory and Webb was commissioned to do the design plans. On June 9, 1921, a construction contract was awarded to Pacific Engineering Company, another Hawaiian company.

Official opening of the theater was held on September 6, 1922, and was attended by Governor Wallace R. Farrington and members of the Territorial government, and members of social circles.

It is the oldest theater still remaining in Honolulu and the State of Hawaiʻi that was originally planned, built and used as a legitimate theater and concert hall.

Great pride was expressed that “the finest theater in Honolulu…is a home product.”

“Honolulu is to be congratulated on what is being done for the entertainment of its residents and visitors. It has now a most attractive and well conducted amusement place in Aloha Park and its new Hawaii Theater is as if one of the best and most attractive from the white light district of New York had been carried bodily across the continent and out into the Pacific to the Paradise of the Pacific.” (Maui News, October 3, 1922)

The theater was built at a cost of a half million dollars and was ranked with the most modern theaters in America for that period.

It was equipped with air conditioning, indirect lighting, a fire/emergency exit system, wicker chairs in the balcony and a seating capacity for 1,726 persons, and was the largest and the first modern theater in the Territory of Hawaiʻi.

The Hawaii Theatre is situated at the southwest corner of the intersection of South Pauahi and Bethel Streets in Downtown Honolulu and abuts the Chinatown Historical District.

The Hawaii Theatre opened as a showplace for vaudeville, silent films, plays, musicals, and Hawaiian entertainments. It slowly evolved into a plush movie palace until it fell on hard times in the 1970s, when Waikīkī became the entertainment destination for locals and tourists alike.

In the 1980s, concerned citizens banded together around the mission to preserve and restore the Hawaii Theatre and formed the Hawaii Theatre Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that owns and operates the historic Hawaii Theatre.

The Hawaii Theatre hosts approximately 100,000 patrons annually showcasing the finest in local, national, and international entertainments.

Each year the Hawaii Theatre Educational Programming Project reaches thousands of Hawaii’s children through programming geared specifically for student matinee performances. The Hawaii Theatre Center SHOWTIME! Student matinee series has drawn thousands of students to the historic theatre to experience the wonders of performance.

In 2005 the League of Historic America Theatres named it the “Outstanding Historic Theatre in America”; in 2006 the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave Hawaii Theatre its highest “Honor Award” for national preservation; and in 2006 the Hawaii Better Business Bureau presented its “Torch Award for Business Ethics” to the Hawaii Theatre Center, the first small nonprofit to receive that award.

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June 25, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Honolulu Chinatown

We associate and call the approximate 36-acres on the Ewa side of Downtown Honolulu, “Chinatown.” But it wasn’t always called that; and, the Chinese were not the only group to occupy the place.

In ancient times, the area fronting Honolulu Harbor was said to be called “Kou.” Back then, the shoreline was along what is now Queen Street (in the 1850s-60s, the reef was filled over to make the Esplanade – where Aloha Tower now stands.)

Honolulu Harbor, also known as Kuloloia, was entered by the first foreigner, Captain William Brown of the English ship Butterworth, in 1794. He named the harbor “Fair Haven.” The name Honolulu (meaning “sheltered bay” – with numerous variations in spelling) soon came into use.

To the left of Kou was “Kapuʻukolo;” beginning near the mouth of Nuʻuanu Stream, makai of King Street was “where white men and such dwelt.” Of the approximate sixty white residents on O‘ahu in 1810, nearly all lived in the village, and many were in the service of the king.

Among them were Francisco de Paula Marin, the Spaniard who introduced and cultivated many of the plants commonly associated with the Islands, and Isaac Davis, friend and co-advisor with John Young to Kamehameha.

Marin arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1793 or 1794; Kamehameha granted Marin a couple acres of land Ewa of the King’s compound on the Honolulu waterfront (near Nuʻuanu Stream.)

He planted a wide range of fruits and vegetables, vine and orchards – his “New Vineyard” grapevines were located Waikīkī side of Nuʻuanu Stream and makai of Vineyard Street; when a road was cut through its mauka boundary, it became known as Vineyard Street

In 1809, Kamehameha I moved his compound here, to an area referred to as Pākākā fronting the harbor (this is the area, in 1810, where negotiations between King Kaumuali‘i of Kaua‘i and Kamehameha I took place – Kaumuali‘i ceded Kauaʻi and Ni‘ihau to Kamehameha.)

By the late-1830s, some 6,000 people lived in the town proper, with perhaps another 3,000 in the suburbs. Foreigners numbered 350-400 – about 200-250 were Americans, 75-100 English, 30-40 Chinese and the remainder, a thin sprinkling of French, Spanish, Portuguese and other nationalities.

Hawaiians’ houses, estimated to number 600, were chiefly of the traditional “grass shack” type, vulnerable to occasional high winds that scalped, twisted, or even demolished them. A few foreigners lived in wooden or coral “stone” homes; most, however, inhabited houses built of adobes.

At the end of 1837, the Gazette complained about the mud walls encroaching on streets. Thoroughfares were reduced to skinny, zigzag alleys, and squares to “pig-sty corners” where pedestrians inched sideways.

The newspaper, campaigning for a regular plan, warned that neglecting this matter would make it “… an expensive and difficult task for the future population to rectify the mistakes of their ancestors.” 1838 is remembered as the year Honolulu got real roads.

By 1848, the city was regularly laid out with principal streets crossing at right angles, cut up into regular squares – “making it easy to find the way from one part to another without difficulty.” The most of the streets are wide and pleasant (however, the white adobe walls fronting the streets “when the sun is bright the reflection of this light and heat is very unpleasant.”)

While the first Chinese arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1789, it wasn’t until 1852 that the Chinese became the first contract sugar plantation laborers to arrive in the islands.

With the growth of the sugar industry, the need for plantation laborers became imperative, and China was selected as the best source of immediate cheap labor due to proximity and the interest of the Chinese in coming to Hawaii to work.

Between 1852 and 1876, 3,908 Chinese were imported as contract laborers, compared with only 148 Japanese and 223 South Sea Islanders. Around 1882, the Chinese in Hawaii formed nearly 49% of the total plantation working force, and for a time outnumbered Caucasians in the islands.

It had been noted, according to one observer in 1882, for the fact that the great majority of its business establishments “watchmakers’ and jewelers’ shops, shoe-shops, tailor shops, saddle and harness shops, furniture-shops, tinshops, cabinet shops and bakeries, (were) all run by Chinamen with Chinese workmen.”

By 1884, the Chinese population in Honolulu reached 5,000, and the number of Chinese doing plantation work declined. As a group they became very important in business in Hawaii, and 75% of them were concentrated in the 25 acres of downtown called Chinatown where they built their clubhouses, herb shops, restaurants, temples and retail stores. In 1896, there were 153 Chinese stores in Honolulu, of which 72 were in Chinatown.

In 1886, calamity struck Chinatown when a fire raged out of control and destroyed the homes of 7,000 Chinese and 350 Native Hawaiians, and most of Chinatown. The fire lasted three days and destroyed over eight blocks of Chinatown.

Then, again, in 1900, the area burned when deliberate fires set to wipe out the bubonic plague spread through Chinatown.

The highest proportion of Chinese inhabitants in this area, as recorded by an official census, was 56.3 percent in 1900, just three months after the second devastating Chinatown fire, and this ratio dropped to 53.8 percent in 1920 and still further to 47.0 percent in 1930.

By 1940, Japanese had exceeded the number of Chinese residents, and by 1970, persons of Chinese ancestry made up less than 20 percent of the inhabitants of the area.

Honolulu’s Chinatown is one of the oldest Chinatowns in the Western Hemisphere. Inspiration and information here comes from chinatownhi-com.

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Chinatown was enclosed with a fence and access was restricted until May 17, 1900, no building was permitted.

River Street looking toward Punchbowl from King Street

Chinatown from King and River Streets. Only the shells of Kaumakapili Church and the fire station remain standing

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View_of_Honolulu_Harbor_and_Punchbowl_Crater._(c._1854)

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April 16, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Bubonic Plague

Sand Island was known as Quarantine Island during the nineteenth century when it was used to quarantine ships believed to hold contagious diseases. One such was the plague.

The plague is caused by bacteria; it is usually spread by fleas. These bugs pick up the germs when they bite infected animals like rats and mice. (WebMD)

They then pass it to the next animal or person they bite. You can also catch the plague directly from infected animals or people.

Bubonic plague is the most common type. It causes buboes, which are very swollen and painful lymph nodes under the arms, in the neck, or in the groin. Without treatment, the bacteria can spread to other parts of the body. (WebMD)

The bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that can kill an infected victim within three to seven days. Symptoms include red spots on the skin that later turn black, bloody vomit and decaying skin.

The first recorded incidence of this disease in Hawai‘i occurred at the close of the nineteenth century with the diagnosis of bubonic plague affecting Yon Chong, a Chinese bookkeeper in the old Chinatown section of Honolulu, who became ill on December 9, 1899.

The Board of Health, after a special meeting on December 12, 1899, announced the presence of the Bubonic Plague in the city, following an autopsy of the first victim.

The “Black Death,” or Bubonic Plague, had struck Honolulu.

Its presence caused pause in the opening months of 1900 and was on everybody’s mind, with good reason; the same disease had decimated a third of the world’s population during the fourteenth century.

Schools were closed, and Chinatown, with its 7,000 inhabitants, was placed under quarantine. In hopes of containing plague only within Honolulu, the Board of Health (BOH) closed the port of Honolulu to both incoming and outgoing vessels.

All foreign ships already docked at the wharf were ordered to move the vessels away from the dock and grease all mooring lines and attach funnel (rat-guard) on each mooring line anchored to the shore.

From the onset, three human cases of plague were recorded in the official BOH records. Later examination of other case records showed that in actuality two earlier cases were misdiagnosed and were therefore unrecorded as plague.

Inasmuch as no further human cases of plague were detected following the initial episode, the BOH (possibly because of economic pressure) lifted the quarantine of Chinatown and Honolulu Harbor on December 19, 1899, a dramatic error in judgment, as was later evidenced.

On December 24, 1899, only five days following the lifted quarantine, the plague epidemic in Honolulu erupted in full force with additional cases occurring at the end of the year.

In a matter of 19 days, a total of 12 cases of plague were diagnosed, leading to 11 fatalities.

On December 30, 1899, the BOH, with recommendations from a special commission, as well as from resolutions from the Medical Society and private citizens, chose fire as the final method of plague.

As more people fell victim to the Black Death, on January 20, 1900, the Board of Health conducted “sanitary” fires to prevent further spread of the disease.

Because of the size of the area, the entire fire department, with all four of its engines, was on the scene. The fire was ignited at 9 am and all went well for the first hour … until the wind shifted.

One fire, started between Kaumakapili Church and Nu‘uanu Avenue, blazed out of control, due to the change in wind. The fire burned uncontrollably for 17 days, ravaging most of Chinatown. People trying to flee were beat back by citizens and guards into the quarantine district.

The extent of the fire and the estimates of the area ranged from 38-65 acres. The fire caused the destruction of all premises bounded by Kukui Street, River Street, Queen Street (presently Ala Moana Boulevard) and Nu‘uanu Avenue.

No lives were lost in the fire, but 4,000 people were left homeless, without food and with little of anything else.

Following the Chinatown fire of January 20, 1900, cases of plague on O‘ahu began to appear in other previously uninfected areas, and spread as far off as Waialua.

The spread of plague on O‘ahu was traced to the railroad linking Honolulu with the plantation towns of Aiea, Waipahu and Waialua.

The spread of bubonic plague to the neighbor islands from Honolulu was quite rapid following the unfortunate lifting of the quarantine on December 19, 1899 of Honolulu Harbor.

The Honolulu epidemic was not halted until March 31, 1900, during which time a total of 71 cases of plague were diagnosed, leading to 61 deaths.

During this re-emergence of plague, the port of Honolulu was again quarantined, until the official reopening on April 30, 1900.

Because the fire displaced the residential population of Chinatown, as the area was rebuilt, the Chinese only rebuilt their businesses in the neighborhood – not their homes.

The last recorded case of plague on O‘ahu (a rodent case) was recorded from Aiea in 1910 after which time it has never been found again.

(Lots of good info and images for this summary came from: “A Brief History of Bubonic Plague in Hawai‘i,” DLNR and ChinatownHonolulu-org.)

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January 20, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Chinatown Evacuations to Kawaiaha‘o Church

“Chinatown is no more. …”

“It was intended by the Board of Health that that portion of Block 15, between Kaumakapili Church and Nu‘uanu street and mauka from Beretania, should be given to the flames, as has been done with several other plague spots.”

“The Fire Department proceeded as usual to carry out the instructions of the Board. Chief Hunt, with the entire Fire Department forces, and four engines, got to work at about 9 o’clock yesterday morning (January 20, 1900).”

“A fair northeast wind was blowing across the city at the time, and realizing the danger from a break away should the wind rise, one engine (No. 1) was placed at the Intersection of Maunakea and Beretania streets while the others obtained connection with the water mains along Beretania street.”

“It was intended that the fire should eat its way back against the wind toward Kukui street and with this object in view a two-story frame structure back of the church was selected as the best situated for the application of the torch.”

“All went well for about an hour, when the wind began to rise and changed about two points eastward. This combination carried the blazing embers upon the dry roofs of the closely packed buildings in the vicinity”.

“The high wind fanned the flames till they took leaps of fifty and sixty feet along the doomed buildings of Block 1, from which the occupants had hastily removed, carrying as many personal effects as could be collected, and in many cases returning three and four times for more.”

“The Fire Department, as soon as it was discovered that the flames were beyond control …” (Hawaiian Gazette, January 23, 1900)

“Four thousand three hundred and twenty-five men, women and children, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians and white were rendered homeless by the flames today.”

“Tonight they are the wards of a community which has risen to the humanity and generosity demanded by the emergency and with an energy seldom equaled has provided shelter and food and made the refugees as comfortable as it is possible under the circumstances.” (Hawaiian Star, January 20, 1900)

“Japanese and Chinamen are being marched by the hundreds to Kawaiaha‘o church yard, guarded all the way from Nu‘uanu street by a line of volunteer citizen guards. There they will remain until some accommodations can be prepared for them.”

“Included in this mass of Asiatics are a great number of women with their children and all that can be done for them is being done.”

“The citizens have the situation well in hand. Every man is out with some kind of a club and there is a set determination that there shall be no outbreak from Chinatown.” (Evening Bulletin, January 20, 1900)

“No church ever held a more extraordinary assemblage than that which gathered in Kawaiaha‘o when the tired inhabitants of Chinatown reached there after their march of four blocks between lines of Honolulu citizens armed with clubs.”

“The march was a very hard one for some of the people who were compelled to move, and the line was a most pitiful spectacle as it moved along King street.” (Hawaiian Star, January 20, 1900)

“‘Women first’ was the natural order, as soon as the business of getting people into the church was begun. In two hours the big-church was packed up stairs and down with Chinese women and children. They occupied all of every pew.”

“The big place of worship was so crowded that those who had seats could not even turn in their places. The gallery held a throng that filled nearly all the aisles and the reception rooms, as well as the auditorium, was the same.”

“Still women were coming and asking for places, and a thousand men were outside with no place to do anything but sit down and await developments. Inside the church the women and children sat and waited for what was coming.”

“Some of the mothers walked up and down the aisles trying to quiet infants that cried for food, while Board of Health men ran up and down doing all they could to help their charges.”

“It was a pitiful scene of suffering, as a climax to what the victims have suffered in the quarantined district ever since the beginning of the dread visitation of black plague. The Chinese Consul and the Japanese Consul were both in the building, watching the efforts that were being made to look after their countrymen.” (Hawaiian Star, January 20, 1900)

“Under the shadow of the clouds of smoke and fire the hordes of Chinatown stood in mute terror. Depressed by their long quarantine, when the literal baptism of fire came, it found them without spirit.”

“Beyond the confines of the district, particularly along the main thoroughfares of King and Beretania, they beheld not only the guardsmen with bayonetted guns, but a mass of people which must have overawed them by its very numbers.”

“Hundreds of these citizens had voluntarily offered their services to hold the Chinese and Japanese of the plague-infected district in check, should the advancing fire cause a riot before the unfortunate could be brought out in an orderly manner.”

“There was very little time for the quarantined people to gather their personal belongings. As the first of them came along King street the novelty of their appearance attracted great attention.”

“Stout little (Japanese) carried sewing-machines on their shoulders, and beside them brown infants bobbed up and down on the backs of mothers. Bundles of every conceivable description were carried, some large, some small, but everybody able to lug a parcel had his or her hands employed.”

“Veritable hordes of Asia, they marched along, casting frequent glances back at the red tongues licking up their homes. But there was no wailing – no loud complaint that might have made a bad situation worse.”

“Following the first batch of Chinese and Japanese – men, women and children, who were led out of the burning district down King street, came others from Beretania street down around Nu‘uanu street into King and hundreds of Hawaiians from toward the waterfront …”

“… all being led by guards into King street and along that thoroughfare down past the Executive building gates to the spacious grounds of Kawaiaha‘o Church, at the corner of King and Punchbowl streets.”

“In through the wide gates they passed, the women and children being allowed to take possession of the big stone church building, while the men swarmed over the grounds. Guards were immediately placed along the stone wall surrounding the premises, and crowds of curious people filled up the adjoining streets.”

“The church and the adjacent streets presented a scene of great animation from about 1:30 o’clock in the afternoon, when the quarantined Asiatics first began to arrive there, until a late hour last night.”

“At 5 o’clock in the afternoon the guardsmen and volunteers who patrolled the outer edge of the church premises were relieved by Batteries R and K of the Sixth Artillery, USA …”

“… who, in khaki uniforms and with rifles, took up the work of keeping the Chinese and Japanese within the church yard. The soldiers cleared the sidewalks of spectators and loungers and went at their task of patrolling like veterans.”

“Some of the most prominent men in the city volunteered to assist in looking after the unfortunates, and getting them settled.”

“The Chinese Consul deserves great praise for his efforts, which went far toward bringing order out of chaos. Toward evening it was ascertained that 1,780 Chinese, 1,025 Japanese and about 1,000 Hawaiians were within the walls of Kawaiahao Church yard.”

“These figures did not include the Japanese and Chinese women and children in the church building, estimated to number fully half a thousand.”

“The hospitality and liberality of the people of Honolulu was never before so much in evidence. Soon after it was learned that the thousands of homeless Chinese and Japanese were at the Kawaiaha‘o Church, transfer wagons, trucks and carriages began to arrive there in great number, with supplies of provisions.”

“Tons of cooked rice and other victuals were received through the gates, Mr. George Carter and a number of other gentlemen directing the work or receiving and distributing the provisions.”

“A large awning belonging to the church was also brought into use. Inside the church building the women and children were well provided with mattresses and blankets. No army brigade was ever so comfortably sheltered and fed, in so short a time, as these thousands of Chinese and Japanese were looked after last night.” (Hawaiian Gazette, January 23, 1900)

“In 1886 Honolulu was visited by a fire almost as disastrous as the Chinatown plague fire of last January. The ancient fire occurred in that section of the town now known as the burnt district, and it served to clear out blocks of miserable hovels and to clean up the most filthy section of the city.”

“Prior to the visitation the streets in Chinatown were only 36 feet wide. The houses were of a miserable character, mere shacks, and more suited for stables than the abode of human beings. Honolulu’s greatest cesspool had been cleared out and great chances for improvement were admitted to have been given the city.”

“The men in power at the time were not long in seizing the opportunity. Streets were widened to 50 feet and the majority of the houses were built of brick.” (Honolulu Republican, December 22, 1900)

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January 3, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘In Celestial Slums’

“A Health Inspection In Chinatown … Cholera’s Breeding Grounds and Fever’s Spawning-Beds Vile Sights and Smells Abound” as reported in the Hawaiian Star in 1893 …

“This morning a Star reporter accompanied Health Officer McVeigh on his daily trip through Chinatown. The Board of Health has been insisting on the observance of sanitary regulations as laid down in the Code, and of late, has been making raids on Chinese who were not obeying them.”

“‘Now the first place I will take you to is the public washhouse,’ said the officer. ‘Here is the worst cholera breeder there is in this city. Look through the cracks in this floor.’ The reporter looked through and saw a mass of green mud which the tide could not wash away.”

“‘We are expecting to get a new washhouse soon,’ said the officer, ‘but as it is now we are doing the best we can. The Board is looking for ways and means to erect a structure near the new market at the foot of Alakea street. But the way affairs are now only about half the laundrymen use this place as we have no room for any more.’”

“The stench that arises from under and around this washhouse is something terrible and the waters of the Nu‘uanu stream seem to have no effect upon the mass of slops that falls through the floor cracks into it.”

“The next place visited was Leleo Lane, just off King street, near the washhouse. Although the Health officer visits these pest holes every day, it is almost impossible to get the Chinese, (Japanese) and natives who live in them to recognize in the least any necessity for cleanliness.”

“Over sixty eight new cesspools have been built in the last few months and hundreds of ventilator pipes erected where there were none before, but it doesn’t half fill the bill.”

“Decayed poi, the sewage from outhouses and the slops thrown out by inmates have made the places underneath some of these tenements simply unbearable. These places are chiefly owned by Akana, a Chinaman.”

“The next place visited was the notorious ‘Bay View’ resort. This property, until lately overhauled by the health officers, was in a disgusting state. It is under lease to a Chinese procurer named Sam Kow.”

“Kekaulike street is another offshoot from King street and is environed by some of the broken down Chinese tenements, the yards of which smell to heaven.”

“The microbes and bacteria could be caught floating around in the air, while the effluvia was loathsome. These tenements are owned by Low Chung, of the Wing Wo Tai Co.”

“Coming through on Maunakea street the eye, as well as the nose, is assailed by the most loathsome sights and smells. The wash houses and vegetable shops are rivals as to which can emit the foulest odors. This property is owned by JF Colburn.”

“When the officer went into a tenement the other day in this locality, he ran across a trap and opened it and found a cesspool. Lighting a match he threw it into the pool when an explosion took place and blue flames mounted to the roof.”

“There are some exceptions to the rule of poor buildings in this place for ES Cunha is putting up on Maunakea street a one story brick block, with plenty of drains and cesspools, and he thinks it will pay better than the old ramshackle buildings that are around him.”

“Kikihale district was next taken in by the officer. This is the resort of the worst of Honolulu’s submerged classes.”

“Depraved native women without pretention of moral or physical cleanliness are lying about in one-story whitewashed tenements, disputing possession with the mangy curs that flock around them.”

“The outhouses are in the customary Cape Horn condition and the officer warns the occupants to use ‘more lime,’ which he forces them to have continually on hand. Ching Wa of the Sing Chong Co. is the principal owner of tenements in this district.”

“On the corner of Smith and Pauahi streets there are a lot of dives that have got to be watched continually by the officer. They are owned by Ho Sam, a wealthy rice planter at ‘Ewa, and A Aio, a Chinese merchant.”

“The officer was now approaching the sacred precincts of Kaumakapili Church, and quite within its shadow, descending a few steps near Nu‘uanu stream, off Beretania street, he presented to the reporter an opium den in full blast.”

“Officer McVeigh had evidently intended this as his last scene. Here were fully thirty Chinamen and natives sucking away at the demon pipe right in the shadow of Kaumakapili!”

“Near this place, seated on the ground, was an emaciated Chinaman in the last stages of berri berri, swollen beyond recognition.”

“This ended the journey for this day.” (Hawaiian Star, May 27, 1893)

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