Henry J. Kaiser was influential to the growth of many things we have come to know in Hawaii. This month we look back on Kaiser’s early beginnings as an entrepreneur on the mainland and in Hawaii.

Kaiser was born in 1882 in Sprout Brook, N.Y. His father was a shoemaker, his mother a nurse. At the age of 13, Kaiser quit school to work for $1.50 a week as a cash boy for a Utica, N.Y., dry-goods store.

Kaiser’s mother died when he was 16 due to a lack of medical care, and Kaiser vowed that health care was a major priority in his future business career.

Kaiser took up photography as a teenager and was running a studio in Florida by the age of 20.

After saving up enough money, Kaiser moved to Spokane, Wash., and worked as a laborer. In 1906, he moved to California, and by 1914, he founded a paving company that would be responsible for paving highways and roads throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In 1927, Kaiser was awarded a $20 million contract to build 200 miles of highways and 500 bridges in Cuba. The project was finished three years sooner than expected. Kaiser realized he could make more money by completing projects quickly and moving on to new contracts.

By 1931, his firm had the primary contract to build the Boulder, Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams. Kaiser also set up shipyards in Portland, Seattle and Richmond, Calif. His team built cargo ships with an average construction time of 45 days, but the SS Robert E. Peary was completed in a record four days and 15½ hours.

Kaiser wanted his workers to have access to health care and on Aug. 10, 1942, opened the Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for his shipyard workers. That hospital would expand and be open for more than 50 years.

By 1944, more than 90 percent of the Richmond shipyard workers had joined Kaiser Permanente, the first voluntary group plan in the United States to feature a medical practice, prepayment and medical facilities.

Kaiser Aluminum was begun in 1946 after the purchase of aluminum facilities from the U.S. government. In 1948, Kaiser established the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser opened a credit union and bank for his employees in the early 1950s.

When Kaiser visited Honolulu in December 1953 he was surprised at the shortage of hotel rooms and inability to get the room he wanted. A few months later he returned to the islands, holding a new conference to announce he would be developing a major tourist resort in Waikiki.

In April 1954, Kaiser appeared on the opening program festivities for KULA Channel 4 (now KITV), a station that he would become involved with in the near future.

In November 1954, Kaiser and business partner Fritz Burns purchased land in Waikiki, the old John Ena estate, 8 acres that had become a slum area with 100 run-down homes. The following year Kaiser purchased the Niumalu Hotel for $1.3 million. In record time, Kaiser had his Hawaiian Village Hotel built and set for a grand opening in September 1955.

"I want to create the tourist’s dream of everything Hawaii ought to be. The whole purpose of everything I’m thinking about is people," Kaiser told Cobey Black in a 1956 Honolulu Star-Bulletin interview.

However, during the early days of the hotel, the occupancy rate was only 10 percent, due in part to unfinished expansions on the property. Construction went on seven days a week from 8 a.m. until dusk, creating a noisy environment for guests and the view of construction cranes, workers and trucks from many rooms.

Kaiser worked with Warner Bros. and helped developed its first television series in 1955, a Western show called "Cheyenne." The show was sponsored by Kaiser aluminum foil and Kaiser cars.

On Jan. 12, 1957, a state-of-the-art, 1,800-seat aluminum geodesic dome was built in just 20 hours, giving Waikiki its biggest convention facility.

Kaiser realized that television and radio could help increase his ever-expanding array of industry. On March 15, 1957, Honolulu’s 10th radio station, KHVH, signed on the air. On May 5, 1957, Kaiser launched KHVH on channel 13, the first syndicated TV station in the islands, with the call letters derived from Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village Hotel.

Next month I’ll cover more of Kaiser’s influences on Hawaii’s history.

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A.J. McWhorter, a collector of film and videotape cataloging Hawaii’s TV history, has worked as a producer, writer and researcher for both local and national media. Email him at flashback@hawaii.rr.com.