Hawaii | Page 328 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 7, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Hitachi Tree

Moanalua Gardens is a 24-acre privately-owned public park in Honolulu. The park is the site of Kamehameha V Cottage which used to be the home of Prince Lot Kapuāiwa, who would later become King Kamehameha V.

Moanalua Gardens is also the home of a large monkeypod tree (about 130-years old) that is known in Japan as the Hitachi Tree, one of the most recognizable corporate icons in Japan.

The Hitachi Tree first originated through a TV commercial for Japanese electronics manufacturer Hitachi, Ltd that first aired in Japan in 1973. The Hitachi tree, a large monkeypod tree with a distinctive umbrella-shaped canopy, grows in the middle of a grassy area in the middle of the park.

The tree is registered as an exceptional tree by the City and County of Honolulu and cannot be removed or destroyed without city council approval.

An earlier agreement between the Damon Estate and Hitachi gave Hitachi exclusive worldwide rights to use the tree’s image for promotional purposes in exchange for annual payments.

It was previously reported that Hitachi Ltd, has agreed to pay the owner of the Moanalua Gardens $400,000 a year for 10 years to use the garden’s famous monkeypod tree in its advertising.

The tree symbolizes the “comprehensive drive” and the “wide business range” of the Hitachi Group. It continues today as an image of the Hitachi Group’s working for communities through leveraging of its collective capacities and technologies, and the dedication of the individuals that the Group comprises.

The tree is widely recognized, especially in Japan, and has become an important symbol of the Hitachi Group’s reliability, and earth-friendliness. It also enhances Hitachi’s brand value as a visual representation of its corporate slogan: “Inspire the Next.”

Over the past 40 years, the Hitachi Tree has become a valuable Hitachi Group asset as a familiar and respected image in Hitachi’s expanding messages globally.

It symbolized the Group spirit of bringing its whole strength to a wide variety of business fields in Japan in order to contribute to society. In Hitachi’s view, how better to portray this spirit than with a mighty tree?

Since then, the Hitachi Tree advertisements focused on the domestic market, have continued in various forms, including newspapers and magazines, on public transport, in picture books and through photography competitions on the theme of trees.

As such, the Hitachi Tree plays an important role connecting customers and the Hitachi Group

Monkeypod is native to Central and South America and widely distributed in subtropical areas. The leaf shape is similar to that of fern fronds, and the leaves open at sunrise and close in the afternoon. Flowers bloom twice a year, around May and November.

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Moanalua_park_Hitachi_tree

The Hitachi Tree

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Hitachi’s_tree

The Hitachi Tree-size

August 6, 2019 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Waimānalo Sugar Plantation

High Chief John Adams Kuakini Cummins was born on Oʻahu on March 17, 1835, the son of High Chiefess Kaumakaokane Papaliʻaiʻaina and Thomas Jefferson Cummins, Jr. His mother was a cousin of King Kamehameha I. His father was a wealthy and aristocratic Englishman, born in Lancashire and reared in Massachusetts, who came to the Islands in 1828.

Thomas Cummins first acquired interests in land in Waimānalo (meaning potable water) on March 27, 1842, when High Chief Paki leased Cummins a parcel of land on which to build a house (that he named Mauna Loke, or Rose Mount)

On November 25, 1850, Cummins leased 970 acres in the same vicinity from King Kamehameha III. This property extended from Popoʻokaʻala Point to the hills of Kaʻiwa and Kaʻakaupu of the Koʻolau district. Over the years more land was acquired. In 1890, Cummins leased nearly 7,000-more acres for his sugar operation.

The land was first used as cattle pasture and horse breeding ranch. After attending the Royal School, Cummins worked on his father’s ranch, becoming manager in 1855.

One of the goals in horse breeding related to racing, an item of interest to the royalty and elite in Honolulu. Cummins had one of the largest stocks of race horses (and introduced some blooded stock to the islands) and was a promoter of horse racing. In about 1872, a horse racing track was laid out at Kapiʻolani Park. He was a Charter member of the Hawaiian Jockey Club in 1885.

John Cummins was elected representative for his Koʻolau district in 1873 and assisted in the election of King Lunalilo that same year. The following year, he aided in the election of King Kalākaua.

Cummins was instrumental, in helping King Kalākaua effect a reciprocity treaty with the United States in 1874, after which the sugar industry prospered.

Cummins conceived the idea of converting the ranch into a commercial sugar venture in 1877, two years after King Kalākaua had concluded a reciprocity treaty with the United States, greatly enhancing the sugar industry in the kingdom. Its first mill started grinding cane in January 1881.

The mill stood near Poalima Street behind present-day Shima’s Market on Kalanianaʻole Highway. Homes were on both sides of the highway. Rail tracks were laid out and three locomotive engines were brought in to haul cane to the mill and the wharf.

The sugar industry became a huge success.

The sugar plantation required more water than was easily available and a ditch was built to divert water from Maunawili Stream to Waimanalo. Two million gallons of water per day was pumped through a 2-mile long tunnel through Mount Olomana and into a reservoir where it was tapped to Waimanalo Sugar Company until the 1950s.

In the 1870s, Waimānalo Sugar Company built a 700-foot pier, Waimānalo Landing (near what is now the intersection of Huli Street and Kalaniana’ole Highway,) to use to transport the sugar, as well as serve as a landing for inter-island steamers (it was dismantled in the early 1950s.)

The railroad tracks from the mill culminated at a long wooden pier; at the end of the pier, winches and cranes lifted the bags of sugar onto the vessel alongside. Today, the line of broken pilings and all the landing’s machinery and crane and rigging, lies submerged beneath 12-15 feet of water at Waimānalo Beach Park.

The 86-foot ocean steamer “SS Waimānalo” (later renamed “SS John A. Cummins” or “Kaena”) owned by John Adams Cummins of the Waimanalo Sugar Plantation Company, made trips twice a week between stops in Koʻolaupoko (Heʻeia and Waimānalo) and Honolulu, exporting sugar and returning with supplies and goods.

Control of the plantation passed to W. G. Irwin and Co. in 1885, with Cummins continuing as manager. Cummins was ahead of the time in adopting a sort of “social welfare” plan for his employees, building a large structure containing a reading room and a section for dances and social gatherings for the plantation laborers.

It was decorated with Chinese and Japanese fans on the ceiling and pictures of King Kalākaua and other members of the royal family on the walls, and contained books, tables, an organ and singing canaries.

John Cummins left the sugar business to William G. Irwin, agent of Claus Spreckles, and developed a commercial building called the Cummins Block at Fort and Merchant streets in Downtown Honolulu.

In 1889 he represented Hawaiʻi at the Paris exposition known as Exposition Universelle. On June 17, 1890 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kalākaua’s cabinet, and thus was in the House of Nobles of the legislature for the 1890 session.

He died on March 21, 1913 from influenza after a series of strokes and was buried in Oʻahu Cemetery.

Due to security concerns, an Executive Order from President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 significantly changed Waimānalo and Waimānalo Sugar Company – more than 1,500-acres belonging to the Waimānalo Sugar Company were converted to a military reservation.

In 1947, the plantation was shut down.

One lasting remnant of those plantation days is the Saint George Catholic Chapel. It is among the oldest parishes in Waimānalo. Built in 1842, it still has a sizable congregation, many of them descendants of the Portuguese and the Filipinos who worked for the sugar company.

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Waimanalo Sugar Plantation c1890s

1941_01_00 – Waimanalo sugar? SB BW photo.

Small flat cars piled high with sugarcane-(Smithsonian)

Plantation field worker hauling sugar cane up a handmade ramp onto the 4-wheel flat car-(Smithsonian)

‘Olomana’ and ‘Pokaa’ (Chloe) at work in Oahu on the Waimanalo Plantation

Locomotive ‘Thomas Cummins’ at Waimanalo

Hauling sugarcane to mill-(Smithsonian)

Engineer guiding train over temporary tracks-(Smithsonian)

Cars being hauled over temporary track-(Smithsonian)

14-1-14-38 =waimanalo plantation mill j.a.cummins photog- Kamehameha Schools Archives

John Adams Kuakini Cummins’ 80-foot steamer ‘Waimanalo’ anchored off the Waimanalo Sugar Company’s pier

Aerial_view_BellowsField_(note_sugar_cultivation)-1942

The old St George Church, ca. 1933 (StGeorgeChurchWaimanalo)

August 5, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Makauwahi Cave

The Makauwahi Cave (“fear, break through”) is the small portion of the largest limestone cave found in Hawaii.

It lies on the south coast of the island of Kauai, in the Māhāʻulepū Valley close to Māhāʻulepū Beach, and is important for its paleoecological and archaeological values.

It is reached via a sinkhole and has been described as “…maybe the richest fossil site in the Hawaiian Islands, perhaps in the entire Pacific Island region”.

The pale rock ridge that houses the sinkhole started as a field of sand dunes.

Over time, rainwater seeped through the sand, converting it chemically into limestone rock.

Underground water ate away at the lower parts of the limestone, forming an extensive complex of caves, and finally one large section of cave roof collapsed, creating a feature known as a sinkhole.

The feature is as much as 100 yards long from the entrance to the most distant known cave, and as much as 40 yards wide, but it may contain other caverns whose entrances are buried.

Paleoecological and archaeological excavations of the sediment that has filled the pond in the sinkhole put its age at some 10,000 years.

More importantly, the findings show how the first humans that inhabited Kauai affected the pre-human natural environment.

It is one of only a handful of sites in the world that show such impact.

Before the first Polynesian settlers set foot on Kauai, Hawai‘i was a strange Eden, empty of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, because none had ever made it across the vastness of the Pacific to these remote islands.

The sinkhole contains nearly 10,000-years of sedimentary record; since the discovery of Makauwahi as a fossil site, excavations have found pollen, seeds, invertebrate shells and Polynesian artifacts, as well as thousands of bird and fish bones.

An array of native birds that had evolved in splendid isolation filled every kind of niche.

More than 40 species of extinct native bird fossils have been excavated from Makauwahi, including an odd long-legged owl, which specialized in hunting small forest birds, and a nocturnal duck with shrunken eyes.

Among the bones discovered at Makauwahi were those of one lumbering flightless duck with a heavy bill designed to graze like a tortoise on short, tough grass and vegetation from rocks.

Bones of the endangered Hawaiian hawk and Laysan duck have also been discovered at the sinkhole. Today, these two species survive on single islands distant from Kauai, but the fossil discoveries suggest they were once more widespread throughout Hawaii.

Evidence from a full millennium of human activity chronicles the details of life nearby and its considerable impact on the island environment.

The Makauwahi Cave site provides a rich record of life before and after human arrival, and preserves many artifacts and food remains, including perishable cultural items.

Oral traditions said to extend back as far as the fourteenth century in some cases show good agreement with the archaeological and paleoecological record.

Following European contact, additional environmental impacts, including a drastic increase in erosion and many additional biological invasions, are documented from the site.

Paleoecologist David Burney and his wife Lida Pigott Burney, with help from hundreds of local volunteers, has found 10,000-year-old buried treasure in the Makauwahi Cave and wrote a book on the subject, Back to the Future in the Caves of Kauai, A Scientist’s Adventures in the Dark.

Makauwahi Cave is one of the Points of Interest in the Holo Holo Kōloa Scenic Byway. We assisted Mālama Kōloa and Kōloa Community Association with the preparation of the Corridor Management Plan for the Scenic Byway.

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Makauwahi Sinkhole

An active archeological dig with 10,000 years of preserved fossils found. The entrance requires crouching and head bumping is an initiation injury.

Makauwahi Sinkhole

Makauwahi Sinkhole (TGI)

A view of the open-air cave from the entrance.

Makauwahi Sinkhole (hawaii-edu)

Makauwahi Cave-Image-Map-(cavereserve-org)

Mahaulepu_Heritage_Trail-(7-Makauwahi_Cave)-Map

August 4, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Haleuluhe

Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III, stepped into the position of King at age 10 (in 1825,) upon the death of his brother Liholiho.

Boki, governor of the island of O‘ahu, built a Honolulu royal residence called ‘Haleuluhe’ (fern house) for the young King at ‘Pelekane’ (Britannia … i.e. Beretania) in the vicinity of the site of the present St. Andrew’s (Episcopal) Cathedral.

The Rev. Charles S. Stewart, who returned to Hawaii in 1829 as Chaplain of the US ship-of-war “Vincennes,” provides a good description of this palace. His October 15, 1829 description of Haleuluhe Palace is most complete:

“The king’s establishment, but lately erected, is quite in the outskirts of the town – having the open plain towards Punchbowl Hill immediately in the rear.

“On entering it (the main entrance of the palace grounds was closed by a large white gate,) we found ourselves in a spacious yard of some acres …”

“… enclosed on all sides by a well-constructed and high fence, and furnished with two other gates similar to that through which we had passed-one, on another street, in the direction of the residences of most of the chiefs in the neighborhood of the chapel and mission houses, and the other, inland towards the hill and valleys.”

“Everything within, appeared exceedingly neat. On the side of the square at which we entered and near the gate, there are three or four good sized houses, but not differing, externally, from most of the better kind of native dwellings. These, we were informed, are the dining and sleeping rooms, offices, etc., of the king and his household.

“At a considerable distance, on the opposite side, stands the palace – a fine lofty building of thatch, some hundred or more feet in length, fifty or sixty broad, and forty or more high …”

“… beautifully finished and ornamented at the corners, from the ground to the peak, and along the ridge of the roof, with a rich edging of fern leaves (uluhe fern: Dicranopteris linearis, also known as false staghorn fern]”.

“It is enclosed by a handsome and substantial palisade fence, with two gates-one large, in front, and a smaller at the side and a pebbled area within.”

“All the timbers in sight, the numerous posts, rafters, and centre pillars, are of a fine substantial size, and of a dark hard wood, hewn with the nicest regularity. The lashing of sinnit [sennit], made of the fibres of the cocoanut bleached white, are put on with such neatness, and wrought into so beautiful a pattern, at close and regular intervals …”

“… as to give to the posts and rafters the appearance of being divided into natural sections by them; and to produce, by the whiteness and nice workmanship of the braid, in contrast with the colors of the wood, an effect striking and highly ornamental.”

“But that, which most attracted my admiration in the building, is an improvement – a device of native ingenuity – of which I was told, we then saw the first specimen, and which gives to the interior a finish, as beautiful as appropriate, to such an edifice.”

“It is a lining between the timbers and the thatch, screening entirely from sight, the grass of which the external covers is composed; and, which always gives an air of rudeness, and a barnyard look, even to the handsomest and best finished of their former establishments.”

“The manufacture is from a small, round mountain vine, of a rich chestnut color (some say the stem of the uluhe fern) – tied horizontally, stem upon stem, as closely as possible, in the manner, and probably in imitation, of the painted window blinds of split bamboo, brought from the East Indies, once much in fashion and still occasionally seen in the United States.”

“The whole of the inside, from the floor to the peak of the roof – a height of at least forty feet – is covered with this, seemingly in one piece; imparting by the beauty of its color and entire effect, an air of richness to the room, not dissimilar to that of the tapestry, and arras hangings of more polished audience chambers.”

“The floor also is a novelty, and an experiment here: consisting – in place of the ground strewn with rushes or grass, as a foundation for the mats, as was formerly the case – of a pavement of stone and mortar, spread with a cement of lime, having all the smoothness and hardness of marble.”

“Upon this, beautifully variegated mats of Tauai (island of Kauai) were spread – forming a carpet as delightful, and appropriate to the climate, as could have been selected.”

“Large windows on either side, and the folding doors of glass at each end, are hung with draperies of crimson damask; besides which, and the mats on the floors, the furniture consists of handsome pier tables, and large mirrors; of a line of glass chandeliers suspended through the centre … and of portraits in oil of the late king and queen, taken in London, placed at the upper end, in carved frames richly gilt.”

“In the middle of the room, about sixty feet in front, or two thirds the length of the apartment, the young monarch was seated, in an armchair, spread with a splendid cloak of yellow feathers.”

“His dress was the Windsor uniform, of the first rank, with epaulettes of gold – the present of George IV – and an undress of white, with silk stockings and pumps.”

“On a sofa, immediately on his right, were Ka‘ahumanu, the regent, and the two ex-queens, Kīna’u – at present the wife of General Kekūanaō‘a and Kekauruohe (Kekauluohi).“ (Information here is from ‘Palace and Forts of the Hawaiian Kingdom.’)

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August 3, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

John Papa ʻĪʻī

John Papa ʻĪʻī, one of the leading citizens of the Hawaiian kingdom during the nineteenth century, was born at Waipi‘o, Oahu, on August 3, 1800.

At the age of ten John was brought to Honolulu and became an attendant of Kamehameha I and later became a companion and personal attendant to Liholiho (later King Kamehameha II.)

Upon the arrival of the missionaries in Hawai‘i in 1820, John ʻĪʻī was among the first Hawaiians to study reading and writing with the missionaries, studying under the Reverend Hiram Bingham.

As time passed, John ʻĪʻī divided his time between the ruling Kamehamehas and the missionaries, particularly Reverend Bingham. John soon became an assistant to Bingham and a teacher at the latter’s school.

Ultimately, John ʻĪʻī served Kamehameha I, II, III and IV. He also was selected to be kahu of the students (effectively a vice principal) at the Chiefs’ Children’s School in 1840 (effectively serving the next generations of the Kamehameha dynasty.)

By 1841, John ʻĪʻī was general superintendent of O‘ahu schools and was an influential member of the court of Kamehameha III.

In 1842, he was appointed by the king to be a member of the new Treasury Board. This Board was empowered to set up a system of regular and systematic account keeping.

In 1845, as a member of the Privy Council, he was appointed with four other men to the Board of Land Commissioners.

In 1852, as a member of the House of Nobles, he was selected to represent that body in drafting the Constitution of 1852.

John ʻĪʻī’s service in the House of Nobles was from 1841 to 1854 and from 1858 to 1868. He served as a member of the House of Representatives during the session of 1855.

He lived in an old fashioned cottage where the Judiciary building now stands. His home was named “Mililani,” which means exalted or lifted heavenward.

In addition to his duties in the two legislative houses of the kingdom and his service on various governmental commissions, John ʻĪʻī served as a Superior Court judge, as well as on the Supreme Court.

His lifetime spanned many years of the Kamehameha Dynasty, beginning with the autocratic rule of Kamehameha I, extending through the transition period of rule by king and chiefs and continuing into the rule by constitutional monarchy.

He was raised under the kapu system and his life ended with him in service of the Christian ministry.

Mary A. Richards in her “Chiefs’ Childrens’ School” says, “Through the perspective of a century, John ʻĪʻī stands as one of the most remarkable Hawaiians of his time.”

The Reverend Richard Armstrong had this to say about him, “John ʻĪʻī, a man of high intelligence, sterling integrity and great moral worth.”

At nearly seventy years of age, after a life devoted to the furtherance and development of Christianity in Hawai‘i and the development of a democratic form of government, John ʻĪʻī died in May 1870.

With rare insight into the workings of the monarchy as well as the common people, ʻĪʻī did just that, contributing regularly to the Hawaiian language publication Ka Nupepa Ku‘oko‘a from 1866 until his death in 1870.

The articles – first-hand accounts of life under the Kamehameha dynasty and detailed descriptions and observations on cultural practices, events, social interactions and other topics – were collected and translated by Mary Kawena Pukui and Dorothy Barrere in the 1959 publication “Fragments of Hawaiian History,” a standard resource for historians and students. (I have a copy and often refer to this book for information.)

Here’s a link to a YouTube video of a Mission Houses Oʻahu Cemetery Theatre portrayal of John Papa I’i (1800-1870) (portrayed by William Hao:)

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