“Kalihi used to have a – you won’t believe this – but sort of a country club atmosphere because homes weren’t all crowded the way they are now. There were open spaces. When you flushed your bathroom toilet, you didn’t have to worry about your neighbor hearing it.”
“You could raise your voice a little bit and nobody was close enough to hear you. Everybody knew who everybody else was. Of course, that’s all gone. There’s no empty space in Kalihi anymore, except a few parks maybe, school grounds.”
“Used to be vegetable gardens, flower gardens, taro patches, grazing land, chicken farms. Not anymore. Even the hillsides are covered now with homes.”
“But it used to be a quiet, really quiet, open area. You could walk to any place you wanted to go. No place was too far to walk, that is, within Kalihi. But today, well, it’s just grown, that’s all.” (Adolph ‘Duffie’ [rhymes with ‘Goofy’] Mendonca, UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
Kalihi, a multi-ethnic working-class district located west of downtown Honolulu, has a long history as a home of island immigrants. In the early years of this century, Kalihi, then a residential district of middle- and upper-class Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians, attracted Chinese and Portuguese residents.
As Japanese, Puerto Rican, and other sugar workers left the plantations, many of them settled in Kalihi. In the decades following, Filipinos, Samoans, Koreans, and Southeast Asians joined them. (UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
In the 1910s, “both School Street and Houghtailing Road were dirt roads. School Street extended (Ewa only) as far as Kalihi Street, and Kalihi Street went up into Kalihi Valley. In the Waikiki direction – this was before McInerny Tract was subdivided – there (were) a (few) scattered houses.”
“The first (sizable improvement) was the insane asylum (on the present site of) the Hawaii Housing [Authority]. And beyond that were, on both sides, taro patches until one got near Liliha Street. Liliha Street was quite urbanized, as (was) School Street beyond (Liliha and toward Nuuanu Street).”
“When (I was) a youngster, my mother had to prepare food on wood stoves and (I) had to chop (kiawe) firewood (and thence there was) the gradual changeover to kerosene stove and kerosene lamps.”
“When I was born and for many years, we had no electricity, no drinking water. But with McInerny Tract (being opened up), water (mains) came in, sewers came in, electric system came in. More than that, (now) look at what you can enjoy—TV”. (Arthur Akinaka (born in 1909), UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
“In those days, the principal school was Kalihi-Waena, which was right across the street from Fernandez Park. And that went to eighth grade. See, we just had that grade and then high school. It was later on that they broke it down to intermediate and junior high school, and high school.”
“So, it was customary, not only in Kalihi but in lot of areas of Hawaii, where after the eighth grade the boys went to work. Lot of the boys didn’t start school until they were eight, nine years old. Then eight years in grade school would make ‘em sixteen, seventeen years old by the time they came out.”
“So they were expected to go to work and help the families. And of course, a lot of them didn’t have any desire to continue their education.”
“But it seemed like in our area, we had a higher percentage of boys that continued high school and college. Why? I don’t want to be so bold as to say we may have had a better educated group of parents or parents who were more educationally inclined, who wanted their children.”
“Because if you go back before my time, lot of the old-timers that lived in the Kalihi area were prominent in the old kingdom days. They were prominent people…. I’d read where they used to work for the kingdom or the territory.”
“It was apparently a good area, good residential area, in the old days because of its closeness to downtown, for one reason.”
For those going to high school, many went “to McKinley or St. Louis. We also had a couple of other high schools. Punahou, of course. Then we had Kamehameha. And we had what we called HMA – Honolulu Military Academy.”
“Most of the students that went to those schools were from the Fourth District. See, Oahu used to be Fourth District and Fifth District. Everything Ewa of Nuuanu was Fifth District.”
“Everything on the Kaimuki side is Fourth District. The wealthier people generally, of course, lived in the Fourth District. Most of the children that went to Punahou or HMA came from up that way.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the beauty of Kalihi Valley and the Kalihi area. It’s close to the ocean. Fishing, crabbing. So it was logical. Lot of our residential areas that you see today are that way because they ran out of space in the more city areas, closer to the city.”
“The transportation was a big item. Not many people had cars. So they had to live near their place of employment. A lot of them walked to work.” (Adolph ‘Duffie’ Mendonca, UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
“Well, it was sensible, wasn’t it? And as they earned money and they started new families, they started to move away, yeah? I remember very well as a youngster, very, very few people lived east of the Kahala Mall area.”
“The streetcar line ended at Koko Head Avenue, right across from the theater – used to be Kaimuki Theater which has been torn down. That was the end of the line. The line went from there to Fort Shafter, the beginning of Moanalua. Then there was a line from up Liliha Street that went to Waikiki.”
There was a “constantly changing composition of the residents. The old-timers either relocate or leave this good earth. And mostly because they better, sometimes, their economic status.”
“The other thing is living here in the substandard lot sizes and deteriorating neighborhood. “No one individual can do very much towards modernizing, but ends up just perpetuating what is handed down.” (Arthur Akinaka, UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
By the late 1950s, Kalihi Shopping Center came up, and by the early 1960s, Kamehameha Shopping Center came up. (UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
“People moved because Kalihi Kai became industrialized and got noisy, plus the property became very much in demand. I guess some people sold and moved to a better residential district.” (Thelma Yoshiko Izumi, UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
“I think, maybe when a guy reaches the top and he looks back, and he begins to wonder, what is important in life, was it worth all the effort and time?”
“When you get old, you get near the end of the line, and pretty soon you’re going to be forgotten. And you wonder whether all the things you did, which seemed very important and necessary at the time you did it, just how important was it?”
“And the fact that since most of our people are not rich people, if you associate with the more unfortunate people, you appreciate what they’re going through. Their life compared to somebody who’s inherited a lot or blessed with more brains or better opportunities, or married the right girl, had the right parents.”
“It’s something that makes you feel like somebody coming out of Kalihi that gets up there is worth his salt more than somebody who’s born with a silver spoon. At least that guy worked for what he got. He doesn’t feel that anything was handed to him.”
“How could somebody born with a silver spoon feel that way if he’s never been down on the bottom? How do you know how high a mountain is unless you’ve been down in the bottom of the valley, eh? So, it affects your outlook, I think.”
“I never thought the area I lived in was the bottom. I never did feel that. I never did feel that Kalihi was the bottom of anything, really. I always thought that Kakaako was more down the bottom because that was a built-up area. And you had more of the closeness of homes, and stores. You know, more populated.”
“Kalihi is a big area. From the mountain to the ocean. Plenty room. And we had good climate, good atmosphere out there. Things grew well. Generally green. People took care of their yards, planted nice plants and trees. In many respects, it’s beautiful.”
“I’ve never understood why – maybe a little corner or spot within the area wasn’t too good, but majority, the largest part of Kalihi was a very nice place. Very nice. I’m sorry that it’s inherited such a bad carryover. I don’ t think it deserved it.” (Adolph ‘Duffie’ Mendonca, UH Ethnic Studies Oral History)
