Hawaii’s history continues to turn up interesting items

Last week, I began a two-part column on things I learned in 2015 while researching and writing this column.

I mentioned that Hale Kipa, the nonprofit that helps troubled youth, was given five free Apple II computers and its members flown to California where Steve Jobs personally trained them in their use.

Mark Twain, I found in 2015, had come to Hawaii in 1866 at the age of 30, and our islands played a pivotal role in launching his career.

And given the controversy over the Confederate flag this year, I was surprised to find that Queen Liliuokalani had sewn one for Curtis Perry Ward. The princess, at the time, felt sorry for the lonely Southern gentleman.

I also was surprised to find out one of Matson’s ship, the SS Monterey, rescued 1,675 Canadian medical personnel during World War II. It was the greatest sea rescue in history.

I had so many discoveries in 2015, I figured it would take another column to tell my readers about them.

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The East-West Center celebrated its 55th birthday in 2015 and I wrote about it on Sept. 11.

I was fascinated to learn the East-West Center played an important role in creating the Honolulu International Film Festival and the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

The three organizations share a similar purpose: bridging distances — both cultural and physical — between people in the Asia-Pacific and the rest of 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.

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In February, I wrote about two of the top watermen of the early 1900s: “Dad” and “Pop.” Dad was the nickname of George David Center, and Pop was the nickname for Alexander Hume Ford.

Ford had come to Hawaii in 1906 and was fascinated with wave riding. He asked several boys to teach it to him.

Surfing had diminished in popularity and Ford thought it needed to be rescued. He talked fishermen, paddlers and surfers into forming a club in 1908, the Outrigger Canoe Club — and established its first location, where the Outrigger Waikiki is today.

Dad was born in Kipahulu, Maui, in 1886. He was the U.S. Olympic swim coach who took Duke Kahana- moku, Buster Crabbe and five others to the 1920 games in Belgium.

The U.S. took 16 of the 30 swimming medals.

One day in 1915, when the surf was flat, Dad Center put up a volleyball net and got a game going in the sand. The sport of beach volleyball had been created.

Ford thought we needed a better training facility for our swimmers than Honolulu Harbor and in 1927 encouraged the territory to create the War Memorial Natatorium on the beach fronting Kapiolani Park.

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On Jan. 9, I wrote about karate. Charles Goodin told me karate means “empty hand” and was developed in Okinawa around A.D. 1500 when King Sho Shin restricted weapons to lessen the chances of war.

It thrived in Japan for more than 400 years until it was first demonstrated outside Japan at the Nuuanu YMCA in 1927!

In 1927, the elder statesman of Okinawan karate, Kentsu Yabu, visited Hawaii.

The demonstration at the Nuuanu YMCA was put on by Yabu at the end of March 1927. Seven hundred people attended a later demonstration on July 8, 1927. Yabu also demonstrated karate on Maui and Kauai.

I must point out that the Nuuanu YMCA in 1927 was located in what is now the Long’s/Safeway parking lot, across the street from where it is today.

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Another thing I learned in 2015 occurred in that same lower Nuuanu neighborhood.

Jeffrey Wataoka wrote to me about the neighborhood he grew up in that was razed by construction of the H-1 freeway and Pali Highway.

One of the roads that was taken out was Holt Lane. It ran parallel and makai of School Street. Wataoka says the people there called the area “the camp.”

I was surprised to find that the Holt family had an estate there 140 years ago during King Kalakaua’s reign. By the early 1950s, it had devolved into a lower-income tenement housing area where rents equaled, in today’s dollars, about $150 a month.

I also found out that there was a movie theater — the Golden Wall — where the Pali Highway exit to the H-1 freeway is now.

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Tom Holowach surprised me last year when he asked me if it was true that King Kalakaua and the kingdom were robbed by pirates in the 1880s.

He told me he was an extra in the opening episode of “Hawaii Five-0’s” sixth season. The plot of the episode was that the kingdom was raided in 1884 by pirates who got away with more than $2.5 million.

I had never heard this story, but when a question involves the monarchy, I turn to one of my friends, Iolani Palace docent Willson Moore.

The Iolani Palace research staff found that the Daily Alta California newspaper, on Dec. 15, 1884, had perpetrated a hoax on its readers.

The story read: “It was on December 1, 1884, that Hawaii became the scene of the last great buccaneering raid in history.”

Seventy armed men with cutlasses and rifles captured the town of Honolulu, the treasury, palace and the king himself, his ministers, generals, banks and all the large companies, the story said.

“As quickly as they arrived, they left like a thief in the night.”

In the next edition of the paper, a one-inch article buried inside quietly told readers the whole thing was a hoax.

But it was a good basis for a “Hawaii Five-0” episode.

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So those are some of the more interesting things I, and hopefully my readers, learned last year.

Next week, I’ll give out the first Rearview Mirror Recognition Awards. If you feel a particular story or person I wrote about in 2015 deserves commendation, please write me about it. Have a prosperous new year!

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.