I was chatting with Karen Knudsen, East-West Center director of external affairs, a few months ago. I told her I’d like to write about the center and asked her to think of story angles my readers would enjoy.

I’m always looking for little-known stories about well-known people, places and organizations.

In the case of the East-West Center, what I found out this week is that it played a key role in creating the Polynesian Voyaging Society and the Honolulu International Film Festival. All three share overlapping purposes, I was surprised to learn, although their approaches differ. Here’s Part 1 of the story.

In the 1970s traditional Polynesian navigation was a lost art in Hawaii. It was thought that there had not been a Hawaiian master navigator for more than 500 years.

But University of Hawaii anthropologist Ben Finney, artist Herb Kane and waterman Charles "Tommy" Holmes believed a replica of a Hawaiian voyaging canoe could be built and navigated between Hawaii and its ancestral islands around Tahiti.

They founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society in 1973 to show that ancient Polynesians could have purposefully piloted themselves across vast stretches of ocean using noninstrument navigation.

"Ben Finney asked the center to help find a navigator from Micronesia," former East-West Center Assistant Director Greg Trifonovitch recalls. EWC Culture Learning Institute Director Verner Bickley "saw the vision, pushed the East-West Center to take on the project and found the money for us to proceed."

Trifonovitch had lived in Micronesia and knew master navigator Mau Piailug from Satawal Atoll in the Caroline Islands.

The 41-year-old was concerned that the art of traditional navigation was dying out. He saw the work of the Polynesian Voyaging Society as a way of preserving those skills.

Piailug came to Hawaii and was given the title of a Special Fellow at the center. "It was the first time in the history of the East-West Center that somebody with a third-grade education from a Japanese school in Micronesia came as a fellow," Trifonovitch says.

Trifonovitch asked Piailug how he would be able to navigate the Hokule’a to Tahiti, a place he had never visited.

"During the day you’ve got the sun, and at night you see the stars," Piailug said.

Trifonovitch asked, What about when it’s raining or overcast?

"I know the patterns of the swells," Piailug said. "So I look behind me and I look at the wake, and as long as the wake is cutting the swells at a particular angle, then I know where I’m going."

The Hokule’a was built, and the crew was trained in its use. Piailug led them on its maiden voyage to Tahiti in 1976. When they made landfall in Tahiti, 17,000 people turned out to greet them.

Two years later master navigator Nainoa Thompson persuaded Piailug to return to Hawaii to instruct a new generation of would-be wayfinders.

Piailug mentored Thompson and trained the crew. It led to voyages to Tahiti in 1980, New Zealand in 1985 and Raiatea in 1995, among others. Piailug died in 2010.

Today the Hokule’a is traversing the Indian Ocean on its first around-the-world voyage. It is traveling more than 50,000 miles around Earth, bringing the world together to set a course for a sustainable future.

Onboard there is no compass, sextant, cellphone, watch or GPS for direction, the Polynesian Voyaging Society says. "In wayfinding, the sun, moon, and stars are a map that surrounds the navigators. When clouds and storms make it impossible to see that map, wave patterns, currents, and animal behavior give a navigator directional clues to find tiny islands in the vast ocean."

On Tuesday the East-West Center will celebrate its 55th anniversary with a gala dinner honoring Thompson.

Thompson will be given the center’s Asia Pacific Community Building Award for his dedication to the rebirth of traditional voyaging. His work has strengthened the bonds of understanding among the people and nations of Asia, the Pacific and the United States.

"In a sense, honoring Thompson brings the center full circle in a story that began more than 40 years ago," said Derek Ferrar, East-West Center news and information specialist.

"Many people today do not recall that the East-West Center was a key early sponsor of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a relationship that remains vital today through ongoing collaborations between PVS and the center’s Pacific islands and leadership education programs.

"In fact, a number of EWC participants and alumni have been closely involved in portions of Hokule’a’s unprecedented journey around the globe."

Next week I’ll write about the Hawaii International Film Festival, which will be held Nov. 12-22.

Until I delved into this subject, I never realized the film festival, Polynesian Voyaging Society and East-West Center share similar purposes: bridging distances — both cultural and physical — between people in the Pacific, Asia and the world.

The Hawaii International Film Festival uses cinema to bring East and West together. The Polynesian Voyaging Society uses the Hokule’a and the East-West Center uses education, all to increase understanding between cultures.

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.