An Iolani Palace outside Hawaii?

I was looking through old photos of Iolani Palace in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser archives a few years ago, and one stunned me — it showed snow falling around the palace.

Now, I know we’ve had snow fall twice in Honolulu in the past 140 years — both times due to freak weather conditions. One was in the 1880s and another in the 1930s. It was sunny and warm and the snow melted quickly. Neither time was as heavy as the photo indicated.

Could there be a replica of Iolani Palace somewhere, I wondered? The answer turned out to be yes.

During the 1982 Sapporo Snow Festival, a huge replica of Iolani Palace was built to commemorate direct flights between Sapporo and Hawaii. The festival attracts about 2 million people a year to see hundreds of beautiful snow statues and ice sculptures, which are brilliantly lit up at night.

The Snow Festival was begun by local Sapporo high school students in 1950. They built six snow statues in Odori Park. Five years later the Self-Defense Force joined in and created the first massive snow sculpture, which now dominates the annual event.

Replicas of famous buildings are popular projects at the festival, and recent sculptures have included the Imperial Palace in Beijing, the Royal Grand Palace in Thailand, Japanese castles, the Great Wall of China and the Parthenon in Greece. Dinosaurs, cartoon characters and people are also fashionable.

February marked the 65th Sapporo Snow Festival. For seven days Sapporo was turned into a winter dreamland of crystal-like ice and snow, organizers say.

They had replicas of the Taiwan National Palace Museum, the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Mausoleum of Itimad-Ud-Daulah in India, as well as snow sculpture contests and skiing, sliding and other winter sports activities.

These photos were taken by Philbert Ono, who was born and raised in Hawaii and graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is now based in Japan and enjoys photographing Japanese festivals and uploading thousands of images to his website at www.photoguide.jp.

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com