Who was dull, slow, low, underhanded, fraudulent, tricky or mean? That’s the meaning of the word “Kakaako” I found in a 1939 publication of the Hawaiian Historical Society. I can’t tell whether it was describing one person who lived in the area or something else.
Thomas Thrum (1923) translated Kakaako as to “chop, beat or prepare thatching” and indicated the salt marshes there were good places to gather pili grass, which Hawaiians traditionally used to thatch their houses.
That makes more sense.
Kakaako has gone through so many different phases. Let’s look at some of the history and highlights of its last 200 years.
Kakaako was an ili, or land division, within the ahupuaa of Honolulu. It’s bordered by Punchbowl, King and Piikoi streets and the ocean. Alii lived there 200 years ago. Chief Boki and his wife, Chiefess Liliha, had a home there (Pohukaina) in the 1820s. Prince Kuhio and his brothers were raised there. John Papa I‘i (an adviser to Kamehameha II and III) had a home (called Mililani) there, as did Princess Ruth Keelikolani, who co-founded Kamehameha Schools with her cousin Bernice Pauahi Bishop.
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About 100 years ago Kakaako became a thriving residential community, centered around Oahu’s oldest school, Pohukaina. It had a rice mill, poi factories, a dried fish factory, a soy factory, soda works, bakeries, laundries, an ukulele factory, a brewery, schools, churches, stores and three movie theaters: the Kewalo, Bell and Aloha.
By the 1960s the community evolved once more. Many of the residents found nicer places to live, and small businesses took over.
And now, 50 years later, another transformation is taking place. Lofty condos are being built. The auto repair shops are moving, and residents are returning. Has any other place in Honolulu gone through so many transformations?
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For several years I’ve tried to ascertain the location of the Kakaako Branch Hospital, where Hansen’s disease sufferers were sent in the 1880s.
St. Marianne Cope and six sisters of St. Francis came to Hawaii to work with the leprosy patients at the Kakaako Branch Hospital in 1883. Some of the current sisters at St. Francis thought this was where the Immigration Station (now Homeland Security) was on Ala Moana Boulevard.
The good people at Ward Village were able to pinpoint it for me. The location was the 560 Ala Moana block where Keawe, Auahi and Coral streets are today, mauka of the Gold Bond Building.
Hank’s Haute Dogs, Lanikai Juice and the new Highway Inn are on that block.
When St. Damien became ill, the Franciscan sisters went to Molokai to take over his mission there.
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If you asked most residents what the oldest school on Oahu is, most wouldn’t know.
It began as the Oahu Charity School in January 1833, to educate the (often illegitimate) children of Caucasian sailors and Hawaiian women. It was run by two missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Johnstone. It was originally where the statue of Kamehameha is. When Aliiolani Hale was built, it moved to where the State Library is.
The Oahu Charity School attracted students from neighbor islands and as far away as Russia. Since there were no schools in the Mexican province of California, some parents sent their children to Hawaii to be educated at the Oahu Charity School. It moved in 1913 into Kakaako, when the State Library was built, as Pohukaina School.
Mother Mary Waldron taught fourth grade at the school from 1913 until she retired 21 years later in 1934. After school, Waldron organized football games, sewing classes and cooking clubs. When she wanted to clear part of the playground of stones, she put a picture of the German kaiser — our World War I enemy — in a vacant lot across the street and invited the children to throw rocks at it. Soon the park was cleared of stones.
When Matson complained that many of the boys who dived for coins thrown by ship passengers at Aloha Tower were naked, Waldron obtained swim trunks and built a changing shack for the “wharf rats,” most of whom were her students.
The children of Pohukaina School gave her a pin that said “Mother” for her 50th birthday. She wore it every day for the rest of her life. As she was dying in The Queen’s Hospital, huge throngs of people of all races came to pay their respects to “Mama.” Many now call her the patron saint of Kakaako.
As the number of schoolchildren dwindled in Kakaako, the Department of Education moved Pohukaina to Kahala, where it now educates special-needs children, 183 years after its founding.
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You may be surprised to know that Kakaako played a major role in calculating the size of the solar system in 1874. Scientists from around the world came to Hawaii to the area known as Apua, now the district court, to watch the transit of Venus. By carefully measuring how long it took Venus to cross in front of the sun on Dec. 9, 1874, here and around the world, scientists were able to calculate the scale of our solar system with remarkable accuracy. (Today the area is still a magnet for scientists who work at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, just mauka of Kakaako Waterfront Park.)
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Curtis Parry Ward moved to Hawaii from his native Kentucky and married Victoria Robinson.
They lived downtown at first, where the Theo Davies Building is located today, but then bought and developed what they called “Old Plantation” in 1880. Old Plantation stretched from King Street to the ocean, from what today is Ward Avenue to the rice fields that McKinley High School was built upon in 1923.
The family built a two-story home about where the Blaisdell Concert Hall is today. They planted 7,000 coconut trees.
A windmill pumped water from an artesian spring and fed a large pond makai of the home. A pond around the Blaisdell Arena is reminiscent of the larger pond the Wards would boat on 100 years ago. Records show that the Ward family earned thousands of dollars in revenue from harvesting salt on their property, Ewa of Kewalo Basin.
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We came close to having our state capital in Kakaako. In the 1950s, planners’ first choice was Fort Armstrong, across from Waterfront Plaza. Legislators overruled them and chose the present site, because, some said, it was walking distance from their downtown law offices.
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The Great Chinatown Fire of 1900 contributed to the rise in residents in Kakaako. The fire left 6,000 homeless. Some went west to Palama, and many went east and camped at the corner of Queen and South streets. Most found new homes but the infirm and destitute remained.
A hospital was built to take care of them. At one time it was called the Honolulu Home for the Incurables. It focused on tuberculosis and other diseases. In 1907 it moved to its present site and changed its name to Leahi Hospital.
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One of Hawaii’s first multinational companies once occupied the site of Waterfront Plaza. Honolulu Iron Works dates to 1852 and originally milled wheat. It moved into making equipment for sugar growers, and sold the equipment to plantations in Louisiana, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Taiwan and the Philippines.
It was Kakaako’s most famous company and employed more than 1,500 workers. It closed in 1973 as sugar declined, after more than 120 years in business.
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Kakaako has also housed Kamaka Ukulele, Primo Beer, GEM and the first iteration of the Hawaiian Humane Society. Kewalo Basin was the center of Hawaii’s sampan tuna industry.
Lex Brodie choose Kakaako for his first tire store. Fisherman’s Wharf was the last of Spencecliff’s chain of more than 50 restaurants.
Entertainer Don Ho, best known for the song “Tiny Bubbles,” was born there, on Ilaniwai Street. He said it was a lower-class area, but no one starved. Fish were plentiful back then.
Barefoot football leagues thrived, as did sumo wrestling and boxing.
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Kakaako once had an airport of sorts. In 1929 Ward Field, where Ward Warehouse is today, offered flying lessons and plane rides. Hawaiian Airlines’ first test flight in 1929 was from Ward Field to John Rogers Field (now Daniel K. Inouye International Airport). It lasted less than two years.
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Today Kakaako has evolved from a royal compound to a thriving residential community. It shifted from salt cultivation to a base for scientists. A onetime airfield now houses leading retailers. You can buy some of Oahu’s best Hawaiian food where our leprosy patients were once treated.
Can you think of another part of the islands that has gone through as many transformations as Kakaako?
Bob Sigall’s latest book, “The Companies We Keep 5,” has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. His first two “Companies We Keep” books are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.
