Readers get it right, from Mighty Mouse to Obama

OK, I admit it. I blow it on occasion. I get some part of the story wrong. For instance, last week I wrote about the Pawaa Theatre and the Mickey Mouse Club weekend matinees for kids.

Five readers, including Darryl Keola Cabacungan, wrote to gently tell me it was the Mighty Mouse Club. Mickey was a Disney mouse. Mighty Mouse was made by Terrytoons and was a parody of Superman.

Cabacungan said “each neighborhood theatre had similar club programs,” he wrote, “and each was named after a cartoon character like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.

“Perhaps your readers might find a story about these Saturday morning clubs with ten cent admissions a nostalgic view into small kid time.”

Readers? Have a story about going to your neighborhood theater for kids matinee clubs?

Two other boo-boos involved the story I did on Prince Jonah Kuhio (March 27). In looking for photos of the prince, I came across one of him flying a plane.

DeSoto Brown, archivist at the Bishop Museum wrote to tell me it wasn’t real.

“The Kuhio ‘airplane’ photo is just a funny thing that you could pose for, offered by a photographer (or photographers) in at least one mainland tourist destination,” Brown said.

“This is just the same as the large cut-out crescent moon that people could sit in for a photo, or a fake car, or a fake boat, or a ‘jail cell,’ or a ‘bar,’ or a cowboy costume, etc.

“In fact we also have a photo of Kuhio and his wife and some others posing in a fake car too. He was a fun-loving guy and I’m sure thought that these souvenir photos were amusing to do.”

In the same article, I stated that Kuhio and his brothers were adopted by King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani when their parents died. Iolani Palace docent Willson Moore told me he had looked into the adoption extensively and came up empty. There is no evidence they were hanai or legally adopted, he told me.

“In my law practice,” Moore said, “I distinguished the hanai Hawaiian custom from a legal adoption in this way: to Hawaiians, hanai was an effective adoption in FACT in that familial ties were broken from birth parents in favor of the new hanai parents.

“Adoption in the legal sense was an effective adoption in LAW requiring a court or at least legal proceeding plus decree or ruling (unlike hanai which did not).

“At most, King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani assumed guardianship of the three Piikoi teenagers when their last parent (mother Kekaulike) died in 1884. They did not treat the three Piikoi boys as their own, just as wards.”

Moore also points out that the brothers did not take either Kalakaua’s or Kapiolani’s name, nor did they take any hereditary rights from them.

“In short, we can find no historical evidence to support the assertion that the Piikoi boys were adopted by the Kalakaua couple, hanai or otherwise.”

On May 1 I wrote that Wook Moon, who founded Ming’s jewelry store, was Chinese. Elsa Lee and several others told me that although Wook Moon gave his company a Chinese name, he was Korean.

“He was the eldest son of Dora Kim,” Lee says. “Kim is included in the book ‘Notable Women of Hawaii.’ She arrived in Honolulu in 1903, married Hong Suk Moon and had five children. Many of their descendants still live in Honolulu and would like it to be known that although his designs were often inspired by Chinese characters and patterns, Wook Moon was Korean.”

The last correction has to do with Barack Obama and the tea party. A tea party. Not THE tea party.

In my Jan. 2 column, I showed a photo of Punahou student Barry Obama and others having a tea party at Sam Cooke’s house in Manoa.

Elizabeth McDermott wrote to tell me that the photo was satirical.

“It was, as I understand it, a spoof of a tea party for the annual Punahou 1979 yearbook, the Oahuan,” McDermott told me.

“I was in the class of ’81 at Punahou with Cathy Cooke (Sam’s daughter). The tradition at that time was that each homeroom would come up with a theme for their yearbook photo. You can see Barry’s homeroom teacher Eric Kusunoki in the foreground of the shot pretending to be their waiter or tea server.”

I should have known. Barack Obama was never a tea partyer, even in high school.

In today’s modern age we can change the online version of an article and add a “clarification” alerting readers to the modification.

And, as we’ve done for decades, we run a notice of the correct information in a section of the newspaper called “Corrections.”

So, my eagle-eyed readers, if you spot something that is wrong, please let us know. We want to get the story right, even it it’s after the fact.

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.