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There was a time — before Costco and waterfront houses with mermaid statues and infinity pools, decades before the name “Hawaii Kai” — whenever anyone spoke of Maunalua Bay, the first thing that came to mind was “Lukela!”
Joe Lukela, born in 1879, was konohiki — holder of the old Hawaiian fishing rights — for all of Maunalua Bay and the fishing area stretching from Paiko to Makapuu. He would bring in such bountiful catches that his boat would be half-sunk by the weight. He had a little house on the beach, which was kept neatly, and a shack for his nets, which was not. He was the stern, exacting manager of the resources of the bay, making sure the fish were undisturbed during spawning season and scaring away anyone who tried to poach.
“Back then if you said Maunalua or Paiko, people would say, ‘Oh, that man!’” his granddaughter Caroline Lee remembers. “Everybody knew Lukela.”
For decades his reputation was established as the protector of Maunalua. But later in life his influence passed, and by the time of his death in 1966, Hawaii writer Bob Krauss wrote, “The saddest thing about Joe Lukela’s death last week is that so few people knew he had lived or will care much about what he took with him when he died. He took with him mostly memories of the stars at sea and loading his boat at sunrise and a shack on a shabby beach.”
Wednesday the Honolulu City Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution to put up signage and a plaque in the area where Lukela’s house once stood near the last bridge on Kalanianaole Highway before Koko Head. It is the result of years of research by filmmaker AnnMarie Kirk of the historical website Maunalua.net and Chris Cramer of the Maunalua Fishpond Heritage Center.
“Through our interviews and research about the area, the name of Mr. Lukela kept coming up,” Kirk said.
Some of his techniques were so refined, they sound wondrous. He could spot schools of mullet coming into the bay just by shadows in the waves or a slight change on the water’s surface. He would open a wooden gate into the fishpond that is now the marina, and all the fish would fight the current to swim inside. His great-granddaughter Sandra Park remembers being a young child, playing in the shallow water near shore, when all the fish would rush past her legs to get into the pond.
If the resolution passes, Kirk, Cramer and members of the Lukela family will raise money for the signs. The hope is to teach the history of the area as well as the highly effective system of natural resource management that Lukela practiced all his life.
“What I would want people to know is how my tutu man kept the resources,” Park said. “He was a simple person, but he had a really big job and he did it well. He was a fighter. He fought to keep it simple.”
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