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December 14, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Camp Kailani

By the 1920s, wealthy Honolulu families had built weekend cottages on Kailua beach and the planned development of Lanikai homes began. There was little growth during the depression years that followed. (O’Brien)

Kailua Beach Park was established in 1920 when the Territory of Hawaii transferred 25 acres of State land to the City for a public beach park. Since that time, the City has been incrementally acquiring private property.

One such acquisition was through a land exchange with Doris Duke.  Under an Exchange Deed, she transferred a shoreline parcel of 7,817 square feet in Kailua to the Territory of Hawai‘i to allow for the expansion of a municipal park.

In return, Duke obtained two submerged parcels totaling 0.608 acres for her Diamond Head Breakwater and outlying ocean area along the western end of the property and a smaller submerged parcel.

Duke then dynamited a small-boat harbor and a seventy-five-foot salt-water swimming pool into the rock.  The breakwater and harbor were built to protect Duke’s fleet of yachts, including Kailani Lahilahi, an ocean-going, 58-foot motor yacht and Kimo, the 26-foot mahogany runabout that Duke sometimes used to commute into Honolulu. (Shangri La CDUA)

Zoning changes in 1937 made homes easier to build in Kailua. By the eve of World War II, there were 1,500 people living in Kailua, which was still mostly a recreation area for a weekend-only population. Homes were concentrated near the beach. Beyond the beach area, the region was dominated by Harold Castle’s Kaneohe Ranch.

The post-war years saw rapid changes as Hawaii’s economy and population both grew. Kailua’s population increased four-fold to 6,000 by 1948 as developers began building more homes in Kailua. By the early 50s, Kaneohe Ranch sold or leased its land in Kailua as it realized the profit potential.

Kailua’s population continued to grow through the 50s which, along with Kaneohe’s growth, mandated the construction of the new Pali Highway. Kailua’s population was 25,000 by 1960.

By the 1970s however, Kailua had seen almost all available land developed and growth slowed. The population was 36,000 by 1980. (O’Brien)

Land acquisition for Kailua Beach Park was finally completed in May 1991 when the City Parks acquired the last of 13 house lots on the Kailua side of Camp Kailua. )City Parks ended tent camping at Kailua Beach Park about 1970 to resolve complaints from neighbors and beach goers.) (C&C Parks and Recreation)

Nearby, “Lanikai is the name of the residential community situated in the headlands between Kailua Bay and Waimanalo Bay. Lanikai is not a proper Hawaiian word, but was devised by this community’s promoters.”

“The name probably was intended to mean ‘royal sea’ or perhaps ‘heavenly sea,’ which in proper Hawaiian, would have been Kailani, but the words were transposed and joined as they would be in English, rather than in Hawaiian.” (Clark)

There was a Kailani nearby; well … a Camp Kailani.

The Methodist Church built Camp Kailani in 1947, it had  wooden huts and was used for church outings and camping.  (C&C Design and Construction) “The Methodist mission bought the [2-acre] property on June 1, 1946.”

“Dr Alford Wall, Honolulu dentist, acquired fee simple title to the property many years ago. During World war II, the army instituted on the grounds the Welakahao Officers’ club. It removed the home and garage and erected in their place a pavilion, bathhouse, several buildings and cottages.” (SB, Jan 21, 1947)

With respect to use of the new camp, “Dr. Fry [Methodist Mission Superintendent] emphasized that no denominational lines will be drawn.  Only stipulation is that Christian groups use it for their social and religious gatherings. Nominal rates will be charged for overnight and day guests.” (SB, Jan 21, 1947)

Later, “The purchase of the adjacent [1-acre] lot to the camp site brought abrupt changes in the activity of the Kailani Committee for 1963. Master planning is under complete re-study in light of the new property and the priority listing submitted to the Annual Meeting of 1963 will necessarily need revision as new factors in the plan are developed in the future.” (Methodist Journal, 1964)

In 1980, due to the high cost of maintenance and the increasingly urban setting, the Church reconsidered continued use of the Camp and offered to sell the property to the City.

In 1982, the terms negotiated for City acquisition of Camp Kailani allowed two more years of Church use during which time the Church could develop new cabin camping facilities in a more rural location. (However, such facilities were not developed.)

The City Parks Department took over management of Camp Kailani in 1984 and about 1985 informally renamed the property Camp Kailua.

The City Parks acquired Camp Kailua with the intent of removing most structures and expanding Kailua Beach Park. Public use of buildings for meetings, retreats, and cabin camping was allowed but intended to be only temporary.

In 1985, City Parks relocated senior citizen groups to Camp Kailua after the City Fire Department cited City Parks for allowing too many seniors to meet in a Kailua Field gymnasium meeting room. (C&C Parks and Recreation)

In late-1990, City Parks announced the impending demolition of the camp; they began dismantling it in early 1991. This created a storm of protest from area residents.

A March 1991 editorial in the Star-Bulletin called the Camp Kailua ‘a Windward Alamo’ and urged the city to reconsider demolishing it.

“The Kailua Neighborhood Board and state legislators Cynthia Thielen and Jackie Young all lined up behind the Save Camp Kailua group. Alerted by flyers and phone calls, 400 Kailuans showed up at a Parks and Rec-sponsored meeting to protest the demolition.”

But City Parks was firm; campers can go elsewhere. The department said “We could not see allowing 45 people [the camp’s capacity] in there taking up valuable beach frontage that everyone paid for. We can’t allow them to dominate that land.” (Honolulu Weekly) Eventually, the buildings were removed. (C&C Design and Construction)

© 2024 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Buildings, Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Place Names Tagged With: Methodist Church, Kailua, Lanikai, Kailani, Camp Kailani, Camp Kailua, Hawaii, Oahu

December 8, 2024 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

1st POW

11 pm, December 6, 1941, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki and Petty Officer Second Class Kiyoshi Inagaki entered their 2-man midget submarine and were released from their mother sub about 10-miles off Pearl Harbor.

They were part of Special Attack Forces, an elite 10-man group of five 2-man midget submarines that would attack Pearl Harbor.

They planned to carry out suicide attacks against the enemy with no expectation of coming back alive: “That the personnel of the midget submarine group was selected with utmost care was obvious.”

“The twenty-four, picked from the entire Japanese navy, had in common: bodily strength and physical energy; determination and fighting spirit; freedom from family care. They were unmarried and from large families.”

“None of us was a volunteer. We had all been ordered to our assignment. That none of us objected goes without saying: we knew that punishment was very severe if we objected; we were supposed to feel highly honored.”  (Sakamaki)

His 78.5-foot-long submarine, HA-19, and four other midget subs, each armed with a pair of 1,000-pound torpedoes, were to attack American destroyers or battleships.  (NYTimes)

From the beginning, things went wrong for Sakamaki and Inagaki.  Their gyrocompass was faulty, causing the submarine to run in circles while at periscope depth – they struggled for 24-hours to go in the right direction.

The submarine was spotted by an American destroyer, the Helm, which fired on them, and the midget sub later got stuck temporarily on a coral reef. The submarine became partially flooded, it filled with smoke and fumes from its batteries, causing the two crewmen to lose consciousness.

With the air becoming foul due to the battery smoking and leaking gas, the midget sub hit a coral reef again.  They abandoned the sub.

Sakamaki reached a stretch of beach, but, again, fell unconscious. In the early dawn of December 8, he was picked up on Waimanalo Beach by Lt. Paul S. Plybon and Cpt. David Akui of the 298th Infantry.  (hawaii-gov)

Sakamaki became Prisoner No. 1 (the first US Prisoner Of War in WWII.)

He was the only crewman to survive from the midget submarines; his companion’s remains later washed up on the shore.  All five subs were lost, and none were known to have caused damage to American ships.

Humbled to have been captured alive, Sakamaki inflicted cigarette burns while in prison at Sand Island and asked the Americans permission to commit suicide. His request was denied and the first prisoner of war spend the rest of the war being transferred from camp to camp.  (Radio Canada)

He spent the entire war in various POW camps in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas.  He and others were offered educational opportunities through the “Internment University” that had lectures on English, geography, commerce, agriculture, music, Japanese poetry, Buddhist scriptures and other subjects.

He became the leader of other Japanese POWs who came to his camp; he encouraged them to learn English. He also tried to address the problem of other Japanese POWs’ wanting to commit suicide after their capture, since he previously had gone through the same feelings.

At the end of the war, he returned to Japan and wrote his memoirs, ”Four Years as a Prisoner-of-War, No. 1,” in which he told of receiving mail from some Japanese denouncing him for not having committed suicide when it appeared he could be taken captive.

His memoirs were published in the United States on the eighth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack with the title, ”I Attacked Pearl Harbor.”  (NYTimes)

Mr. Sakamaki became a businessman, serving as president of a Brazilian subsidiary of Toyota and then working for a Toyota-affiliated company in Japan before retiring in 1987.

His submarine was salvaged by American troops, shipped to the United States in January 1942, and taken on a nationwide tour to sell War Bonds.  Admission to view the submarine was secured through the purchase of war bonds and stamps.

On April 3, 1943, HA-19 arrived in Washington DC for the war bond drive and for a brief time sat in front of the United States Capitol Building for people to see.

On arriving in Alexandria, Virginia, “George W. Herring, Virginia lumberman, bought $16,000 worth of war bonds yesterday for the privilege of inspecting a Jap submarine. One of the two-man submarines captured at Pearl Harbor was here for a one-day stand in the war bond sales campaign.”

“Those who buy bonds are allowed to inspect it. Herring held the record for the highest purchase and was the first Alexandrian to take a peek at the submarine. War bond sales for the day totaled $1,061,650.”  (Belvedere Daily Republican, April 3, 1943)

It was placed on display at a submarine base in Key West, Florida, in 1947 and later transferred in 1990 to its current site, the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, home of Admiral Chester W Nimitz (who served as Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet during WWII.)

Back to Sakamaki … when he returned from America, he saw a woman working in a neighbor’s field with whom he fell in love at first sight, although he reviewed her papers (“a health certificate, academic records, a brief biography, a certificate of her family background, all certified as to their accuracy”) prior to making the commitment to marriage.

Her father and brother had died in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, so her mother and she had moved back to their ancestral home next to Sakamaki’s home. They married on August 15, 1946, the first anniversary of the end of WWII.  (Lots of information here from Gordon and hawaii-gov.)

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Pearl Harbor, WWII, Chester Nimitz, Bellows, Submarine, Waimanalo, Kazuo Sakamaki, Hawaii, Oahu

November 22, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Wheeler Field

On February 6, 1922, under the direction of 1st Lt William T Agee of the 4th Squadron (Observation,) construction began on the old 17th Cavalry drill grounds at Schofield Barracks in central Oʻahu.  With 20 men, he started clearing away trees and undergrowth.

Within a month, they completed a landing strip.  On November 11, 1922, it was named Wheeler Field in honor of Major Sheldon H Wheeler, former commander of Luke Field on Ford Island, who died in a plane crash on July 13, 1921.

Over the years, this Army air field would be a point of several significant historical aviation events: it was the landing/take-off area for the:

  • first nonstop Continent-to-Hawaiʻi flight by Army Air Corps Lieutenants Lester J Maitland and Albert F Hegenberger in the “Bird of Paradise” in 1927
  • Arthur Goebel landed his plane as winner of the $25,000 James D. Dole Prize, for Dole Derby air race from California to Hawaiʻi in 1927
  • first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia, by Australian Squadron Leader Charles E Kingsford-Smith who landed the “Lady Southern Cross” at Wheeler on the first leg of his pioneer trans-Pacific flight from Oakland, California, to Brisbane, Australia, by way of Hawaii and Fiji in 1928
  • first Hawaiʻi-to-Continent solo flight by Amelia Earhart, who flew from Wheeler Field to Oakland, California (in 18 hours and 16 minutes) in 1935

Permanent structures, including officers’ quarters and club, noncommissioned officers’ quarters and club, chapel, dispensary, and administrative buildings were erected in the early-1930s.

During the 1920s and early ‘30s, Wheeler was the principal Army Air Corps field in Hawaiʻi.  On August 5, 1939, the War Department issued General Orders No. 4 reassigning about 1,400-acres of Schofield Barracks land to Wheeler Field; less than four weeks later, on August 31 1939, it became a separate permanent military post.

Three paved runways arranged in a triangle allowed for three aircraft to take off simultaneously. A separate, fourth runway was constructed later.

A row of metal hangars and a flight line bordered the north side of the northernmost runway. A large reinforced-concrete enlisted men’s barracks and administrative buildings stood behind the hangars.

By 1940, Wheeler Field had evolved into a primary base for Army Air Corps pursuit (“fighter”) aircraft such as the P-40 Warhawk, responsible for air defense of the Hawaiian Islands Territory.

In the early morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese pilots flew toward the island of Oʻahu from six aircraft carriers (the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku;) two waves of planes attacked various military installations on Oʻahu.

The first wave of 183 planes (43-fighters, 49-high-level bombers, 51-dive bombers and 40-torpedo planes) struck its targets at 7:55 am.  The second wave of 167 Japanese planes (35-fighters, 54-horizontal bombers and 78-dive bombers) struck Oʻahu beginning at 8:40 am.  By 9:45 am, the Japanese attack on Oʻahu was over.

Air bases were important objectives in the attack, because the success of the Japanese was dependent on eliminating air opposition and precluding US planes from following their aircraft back to their carriers.  The first air base to be hit was Wheeler.

There, twenty-five dive bombers aimed at the hangars, dropping approximately thirty-five bombs. They hit and set fire to hangars and storehouses. One bomb struck the barracks. The same planes returned to strafe the flight line.

Casualties amounted to thirty-eight enlisted men killed and fifty-nine wounded.  Eighty-three aircraft had been destroyed, fifty-four of which burned in the fire storm on the flight line.

During World War II and until 1949, Wheeler was assigned to the Seventh Air Force (former Hawaiian Air Force) and successor commands.

Following the war, with the establishment of the US Air Force as a separate service in 1947, Wheeler Army Air Base was re-designated Wheeler Air Force Base under the operational control of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF.)

The following year, the installation was placed on minimum caretaker status; however, with expansion of the Air Force during the Korean conflict, Wheeler AFB was restored to fully operational status in 1952.

In August 1987, the Secretary of the Interior designated Wheeler AFB as a National Historic Landmark, recognizing it as a site of national significance in the history of the United States and, in particular, World War II in the Pacific.

On November 1, 1991, the Army took over the facility and Wheeler was renamed “Wheeler Army Airfield.”  A couple years later (March 15, 1993,) to settle ownership concerns, the Army and Air Force exchanged Wheeler for Fort Kamehameha Military Reservation.  (Lots of information here is from NPS and ‘Brief History of Wheeler’)

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Fort Kamehameha, Sheldon Wheeler, Wheeler Army Airfield, Charles Kingsford-Smith, Arthur Goebel, Hawaii, Oahu, Schofield Barracks, Lester Maitland, Albert Hegenberger, Amelia Earhart

November 21, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

It’s Raining … Inside

The Koʻolaupoko moku (district) encompasses lands from Kualoa Point to Makapuʻu Point. Encompassing 43,598-acres (68-square miles,) Koʻolaupoko makes up approximately 11-percent of Oʻahu’s land mass.

The Koʻolau Mountain Range forms the inland (mauka) boundary of the district. The ridge elevation generally ranges from 2,500 to 2,800-feet; Kōnāhuanui, the tallest peak on the Koʻolau Mountain Range (3,150-feet) is found in Koʻolaupoko. (BWS)

Koʻolaupoko is the remnant of the Koʻolau volcano. Eruptions forming the mountains occurred approximately 2-million years ago and left lava flows that layered over each other.  Magma pouring out of fissures in the volcano solidified in the narrow cracks; the rock that is created is much denser and much less permeable than the surrounding porous lava flows.

These dense, usually vertical geological structures are known as volcanic dikes. These dikes form wall-like areas that can capture and contain water.

Trade winds, which blow over the Pacific from the northeast across the Hawaiian Islands, bring large quantities of moist air to the Koʻolau Range. When these winds are deflected up and over the range, the water vapor condenses into clouds and falls as rain.

The rainfall does one of three things: (1) it runs off, eroding the land, forming valleys and gouges in the mountain slopes (and also creates some spectacular periodic waterfalls;) (2) wets the land surface, shallow infiltration saturates the uppermost soil layer and replaces soil moisture used by plants and then is absorbed by the vegetation and/or evaporates (evapotranspiration;) or (3) it percolates into the ground (slowly sinks into the ground and becomes groundwater.)

For the latter, it takes about 9-months for the rain, now groundwater, to seep down through cracks and permeable materials in the mountain; much of the groundwater ends up contained in dikes inside the mountain.

As these dike compartments become filled with water and overflow the dike edges, sometimes the water emerges at the surface as springs or streams.

Dike water is good for drinking water.

Development of dike-impounded reservoirs for domestic water offers two basic benefits: (1) the water level is typically high (limiting pumping (as in energy to pump water up wells) and allowing gravity to distribute to the needs at lower elevations) and (2)  the reservoirs are isolated from saline water.

Groundwater impounded by dikes in the Koʻolau Range is a major source of water for the island of Oʻahu, and many tunnels have been bored into the range to develop it. (USGS)

The typical sequence of excavation of a high-altitude tunnel starts with the removal of a zone of weathered rocks, either by tunneling or trenching and is followed by penetration of dike intrusions in the basalt rock.

As tunneling advances farther and farther through the dikes and basalts, the contained dike water leaks and water flow increases, often in instantaneous jumps when key restraining dikes are punctured, until either a single dike, or a series of them, releases such a large volume of stored water that excavation must be halted.  (Mink; USGS)

When a tunnel is bored into a dike-water reservoir, if allowed to flow freely, it will drain water out of storage. Over the course of water exploration in this area, several dikes were struck.

The reduction of dike-confined groundwater storage caused by construction of eight tunnels in Oʻahu has been estimated at 25,800-Million gallons, equivalent, then, to the total ground-water withdrawal on Oʻahu for about 60 days.   (USGS)

Little consideration was given to the storage potential of dike compartments tapped and dewatered by water-development tunnels until a bulkhead was placed in a Waikāne tunnel of the Waiāhole system in 1934 to stop the draining and allow the dike to refill with water (about 40 years after high-altitude water-development tunnels were first constructed in Hawaiʻi.)

The bulkhead at Waikāne held back some water in storage, but not in sufficient volume to be considered successful. Use of the Waikāne bulkhead was discontinued, but other attempts at bulkheading were tried elsewhere, also without much success.

That changed on February 8, 1955.  A 12-foot dike 1,600 feet into the Waiheʻe tunnel was penetrated and water gushed out at an initial rate of about 2.5-mgd (million gallons per day.)   A bulkhead was built to contain the water.

The bulkhead held and the concept of inducing and controlling storage was resoundingly proved with the placement of the bulkhead in Waiheʻe tunnel.  The storage above the tunnel in Waiheʻe Valley has been estimated at 2,200-Million gallons.  (Mink; USGS)

In Koʻolaupoko, fresh water comes entirely from precipitation along the Koʻolau Mountain Range; Waiheʻe provides much of the drinking water to Windward Oʻahu, from Kahaluʻu to Kailua.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply recently drilled an inclined well to tap dike-impounded water. This technique permitted the development of dike impounded water without the large initial and uncontrollable waste of stored water common to prior development by tunneling.

Dike tunnel systems are also at Waimānalo, Luluku, Haiku, Kahaluʻu, Pālolo, Mānoa and two Waianae tunnels, as well as in the Kohala region of the island of Hawaiʻi and in West Maui.

Oh, It’s Raining … Inside (?)

While the bulkhead holds the dike water, along the Waiheʻe tunnel into the Koʻolau, whatever the weather outside, rainwater (now groundwater) that missed the dike continues to make its downward percolation through the mountain, through cracks in the ceiling … producing a constant ‘rainfall’ for all in the darkness of the tunnel to the Waiheʻe bulkhead.

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Economy, General, Place Names Tagged With: Koolau, Koolaupoko, Waihee, Hawaii, Oahu

November 19, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kaʻōhao

Kaʻōhao (the tying) is an ʻili in the Kailua ahupuaʻa in the Koʻolaupoko Moku on windward Oʻahu.  Its name relates to when two women were tied together here with a loincloth after being beaten in a kōnane game.  (Ulukau)  The place where this act took place was given the name of Kaʻōhao and it so remains to this day.  (Fornander)

Hāuna, kahu to high chief Lonoikamakahiki of Hawai‘i Island, saw that two women were beating their husbands in a game of kōnane.  He offered to play the women and wagered a bet.  The women said to Hāuna: “We have nothing to offer on our side excepting ourselves. If you beat us in this present unfinished game you can take us as your property.”

Hāuna then said: “I have two double canoes filled with things that are valuable; the chief articles of value on the canoes, however, are a large number of feather cloaks. If you two beat me, you two shall have the goods in the canoes together with the men on board.” The women replied: “It is a bet.”

After the women were beaten at the game, he tied them together and led them to his canoes where he said to one of them:
“This canoe shall be yours with everything in it from stem to stem, including the men.  The men shall be your servants; they are not for you to sleep with. And as he had spoken to her, so in like manner he spoke to the second woman. He then left the women and proceeded to meet Lonoikamakahiki.  (Fornander)

The Hawaiians used the mountain tops between Alāla Point and Wailea Point to scan the sea for fish.  Some maps and other references note the area as Alaʻapapa and Mokulua.

In 1920, a bridge was constructed across Kaʻelepulu Stream, giving better access to the area.  Before this time, the Windward side was relatively remote.  However, in 1921, the Old Pali Road was widened and paved; this helped to initiate the suburban commute across the Koʻolau.

Shortly after (1924,) Harold Kainalu Long Castle sold land to developer Charles Russell Frazier (the head of Town and Country Homes, Ltd., which was the real estate division of the Trent Trust Co.)  Frazier (primarily a marketing man, but was also developer and chief promoter,) planned the place as a resort community of summer and vacation homes.

In the 1920s, reference to the area changed, when Frazier and Richard H Trent made up the name “Lanikai” as a marketing ploy to entice wealthy buyers looking for a vacation home at the development that was references as the “Crescent of Content”.

In naming it Lanikai they believed it translated ‘heavenly sea;’ however, they used the English word order.  In Hawaiian the qualifier commonly follows the noun, hence Lani-kai means ‘sea heaven,’ ‘marine heavenʻ.  (Ulukau)

They laid out the subdivision and the first permanent homes in the area were constructed in 1924. Development began at the northern end of the neighborhood and moved further south along the beach.

The original lots along Mokulua Drive were numbered #1 through #39, from north to south with lots approximately 75-feet in width by 250-feet in depth, and about 18,000-square feet in area.

Beachfront properties were originally sold at an extremely low price, 20-cents per square foot, because of the lack of a windbreak.

The area was initially considered a remote country location for weekend getaways or vacations at the beach for swimming, fishing, boating and hiking.

The company’s many newspaper advertisements, which encouraged Honolulu residents to escape from the city to enjoy the recreational opportunities offered by a beach home.

These ads promoted Lanikai as a tranquil place in the country, where a “beach, protected by a reef and favored by landward breezes, is always safe for bathing.” A full-page ad, titled “Lanikai Futuregraph,” placed by Trent Trust featured their vision of the future Lanikai.

There was a row of rectangular-shaped beach-front lots, bordered by the ocean on one end and the road on the other, with homes sited near the ocean and large lawns fronting the road. The first lots sold were those along the beach and the inland lots were sold later.

The construction of the Lanikai streets was completed by October 1925. Included in the deeds for the Lanikai subdivision were restrictions that remained in effect until 1950, against building within 18-feet of the property boundary line along the street or using the property for anything other than residences.

At about the same time, Frazier leased a couple-hundred acres of neighboring land from Bishop Estate.  He persuaded sixty-five men, many of whom were purchasing his lots and cottages at Lanikai, to commit to a country club project.

Before the golf course or clubhouse was even built, the Kailua Country Club (the name quickly changed to Mid-Pacific Country Club – MPCC) was heralded in the local newspaper as a “Mecca (for) tired businessmen who seek surcease from worldly cares in the surroundings of nature.” When MPCC was founded, only two eighteen-hole courses existed on the island of Oʻahu.  (mpcchi)

In 1926, the development doubled in size and Frazier added the now-iconic monument at the entrance to the development.

It was designed by the famed local architect Hart Wood.  (Wood, known for residential and commercial structures (including Alexander & Baldwin Building and Honolulu Hale,) designed the also-iconic “Hawaiian” double-hipped roof pattern and “lanai” or broad roofed-in patio with open sides.)

For decades, beach houses in Lanikai were mainly used as a retreat from Honolulu; however, in the 1950s, the area began to develop into a more suburban residential area. Many beach houses and beach retreats were replaced by houses more suited for daily living.  (The Pali Highway and its tunnels opened in 1959; that helped spark the change.)

Lanikai Beach had a white sandy beach approximately one mile long (about half of this has disappeared over the years due to erosion along the shore.)

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Place Names Tagged With: Kailua, Lanikai, Harold Castle, Mid-Pacific Country Club, Koolaupoko, Mokulua, Kaohao, Hawaii, Oahu

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