I spoke to the Wahiawa Historical Society last month in a beautiful room at the Wahiawa Botanical Gardens. Its members inspired me to write about the interesting facts about their community.
The name Wahiawa means a place of noise, loud or rumbling. It may come from surf on the North Shore, nine miles away, that could be heard in ancient times.
King Kamehameha IV named the area Leilehua, and King Kalakaua built a hunting lodge there in the 1870s, where today’s Schofield Barracks golf course clubhouse stands.
A group of mainlanders led by Byron Clark came to Wahiawa in 1898 because they were told it was the only piece of land on Oahu available for settlement. I believe California Avenue was so named because most of the settlers were from there. In two years the population of the Wahiawa Colony Tract had grown to 80.
The settlers founded Wahiawa Elementary School in 1899. The first teacher of two boys and six girls was Adeline Clark, Byron Clark’s daughter.
James Dole came to Wahiawa in 1900. He bought 61 acres for $4,000. Locals scoffed at the 23-year-old’s dream of selling canned Wahiawa pineapple in every grocery store in America. Dole knew little about pineapples or canning but learned quickly.
Schofield Barracks was named for John Schofield, who was sent to see whether Pearl Harbor would make a suitable naval base in 1872. He thought the entire U.S. and British navies could easily port there if the entrance was dredged.
A fort defends itself. A barracks houses troops that defend a different place, former Schofield Barracks commander General Fred Weyand told me. So, what was Schofield Barracks built to defend? Surprisingly, it was intended to defend Pearl Harbor from an overland attack from the north. I’ll write more about Schofield Barracks in another column.
Wahiawa General Hospital grew out of an emergency medical facility set up during World War II. It began at Wahiawa Elementary School. When the community’s first hospital, Oahu Sugar Plantation Hospital, closed in 1956, the community rallied to turn the civil defense clinic into a hospital, and Wahiawa General opened in 1957,
Many nisei townspeople joined the 442nd Infantry Battalion during World War II. The people of Wahiawa threw them a going-away luau.
When they arrived at Camp Selby, Miss., they found the town had collected and sent them $800 to use as they needed.
Plantation workers lived in more than a dozen camps surrounding Wahiawa. In 1947 Hawaiian Pine consolidated several of its distant camps into Whitmore Village, a mile north of the town. John Whitmore was Dole’s first Wahiawa plant manager, says Lani Nedbalek in the book "Wahiawa: From Dream to Community."
Leilehua High School was originally on base and named Schofield High and Grammar School. It became a territorial high school in 1926, Oahu’s second, after McKinley. Its mascot, the mule, is the same as the Army’s. After it settled into its new location after World War II, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin called it the "school of tomorrow."
Chez Michel’s restaurant began in Wahiawa in 1942. Michel Martin had officers lining up for his French onion soup, duck l’orange and frog legs. In 1962 he moved to the Colony Surf in Waikiki.
Kemoo Farm, outside Schofield Barracks, was founded as a pig and dairy farm in 1914 by Percy Pond. Within 20 years the farm added a milk depot, ice cream parlor, coffee shop and market. "Kemoo" means lizard or reptile. Their best-selling product was pineapple macadamia Happy Cakes.
Marian Harada opened Dot’s restaurant in 1939 and named it for her sister. Its first name, in 1935, was the Sukiyaki Inn. Harada opened a skating rink in 1938 called the Wahiawa Amusement Center. Dot’s Drive Inn took over their spot a year later and is still there today.
Servco opened as Waialua Garage, a two-car garage in Waialua, in 1919. They moved to Wahiawa in the 1920s. Founder Peter Fukunaga held a contest to rename the company. The $25 prize was won by a Schofield sergeant who suggested Service Motor Co. because service was the company’s focus.
Schofield Barracks has so many interesting stories that I’ll save most of them for a future column.
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Bob Sigall is the author of the three “The Companies We Keep” books. Each Friday, he writes stories about Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him at Sigall@yahoo.com.
CORRECTION: Michel’s opened at the Colony Surf hotel in Waikiki in 1962. An earlier version of this story said it moved in 1959.
