Since Halloween fell in the middle of the week, I thought I’d begin with a ghost story.

Recently, I got an email from Kyu Kyu Tam, who asked about a haunted restaurant at 1150 S. King St.

Nadine Kam recently reviewed a new Japanese restaurant named Akira, Tam told me. She and her husband remember a Japanese restaurant at that location in the 1970s that was said to be haunted by an obake waitress.

“We were told that the waitress would take orders and disappear. Would you know anything about it?”

The restaurant was named Wako Tea House and opened around 1967. A rumor spread that it had a ghost in a white kimono who took customer’s orders.

Then a second waitress would appear. The customers said they had just placed their order, but the second waitress said it was her area. Could they describe the waitress?

They described a former waitress who had been fired and died shortly thereafter of a brain hemorrhage. In an act of revenge, the rumor said, she returned to Wako to haunt those who had wronged her.

There had been a waitress who died of such a hemorrhage after going to work at the Kaimana Beach hotel, the owner, Midori Kokubun said. But she had not been fired. She left to earn more money.

A month after she died, the rumors began.

Others heard stories of Kokubun sitting and talking in a booth with someone … but no one was sitting with her!

Kokubun believes a competitor started the rumors to hurt her business. But, she thinks it backfired. “Every day, full house,” she said smiling. People came to see the ghost.

Wako Tea House had a series of private rooms that could hold from two to 40 people. It was famous for its Tonosama Nabe — “ruler’s feast” — cooked tableside. Dinner included sashimi, tempura, soup, pickled vegetables, New York steak, salmon, shrimp and scallops. Sake, green tea and dessert were served with the meal, which cost $6.50 in 1970.

Rico Ice Cream

Bryant Ching wrote to me about his family’s dairy business, Rico Ice Cream, whose plant was downtown at Queen and Richards streets.

Rico Ice Cream was known for its smoothness and was considered the finest locally made ice cream from the 1930s to the 1950s.

It was founded by Bryant’s grandfather Richard Ching and John Costa in 1933. Rico comes from their two names.

“One story that was told to me by my father concerned Dec. 7th 1941,” Ching said.

“We were the exclusive providers of ice cream to all the ships on Battleship Row and my father was scheduled to deliver the ice cream for Sunday dinners.

“On that day, he played the ‘owner’s son card’ and called in a substitute. As the deliveries began around 6:30-7 a.m., the sub must have been in Battleship Row exactly during the time of the first attack. My father said he never heard from the substitute again.”

Rico merged with Moanalua Dairy and Campos Dairy of Kailua in 1954 to form Foremost Dairies. For a while it was the largest provider of dairy products in the islands.

‘Steamboat’ Mokuahi

Alvin Yee wrote to me about Sam “Steamboat” Mokuahi. He was one of the beachboys I wrote about a few months ago.

He said the Navy had several LSTs tied up in a row like dominoes in 1944 in Pearl Harbor. LST is an abbreviation for landing ship tank.

“They were vessels designed to deliver cargo onto an unimproved shoreline common in the South Pacific during World War II,” Yee said. “The rusting remains of one LST is still prominent at West Loch.”

At 3 p.m. Sunday, May 21, disaster struck. An explosion rocked a row of LSTs in West Loch that had been tied up next to each other. They were blowing up like dominoes, so the trick was to pull out the next one to break the chain, Yee said.

“Steamboat Mokuahi motored up to the LSTs, tied a rope around his waist and swam 70 feet under burning oil to loop the rope around an LST’s rudder.

“He then returned back under burning oil to the tug where other crewmen pulled the LST out of the chain of explosions and so stopped the spread of damage.”

Over 160 naval personnel died and 396 were injured. It would have been more if not for Steamboat Mokuahi.

Ward Field

Every now and then I’ve come across a reference to an airport named Ward Field. It occupied the makai part of the Ward estate, about where Ward Warehouse was, around 1930.

James Ma wrote to me about it. “As a child about 7 years old, I was taken there by family to see these two propeller planes, when aviation was new.” Ma is 96 years old now.

“The Ward airport offered plane rides for anyone, and charged passengers by their weight — 1 cent a pound. If you were 100 pounds, it cost $1.

“I do not remember if there was a scale, but a man would collect the money. One dollar was big money back then.”

Ray Thiele in his book “Kennedy’s Hawaiian Air” said that the founder of Hawaiian Airlines, Stan Kennedy, bought a small, bright red plane from Bellanca and began offering rides at Ward Field to build public confidence and create some enthusiasm for aviation.

Hawaiian Airlines still has and flies that Bellanca CH-300 Pacemaker plane.

Ma also said the ocean almost reached to Ala Moana Boulevard 90 years ago. What is now Ala Moana Beach Park was under water until Dillingham dredged it, Ma said. “The sand and coral filled in the park, just as they filled in the Waikiki duck ponds when they built the Ala Wai Canal.

“Kakaako also used to be where local tough guys hung out,” Ma continued. Several neighborhood groups from Kalihi, Palama and Kakaako formed barefoot football teams. Fathers and sons played on the team together in Kakaako, Ma recalled.

“All had to take a swig of beer or oke between plays. It was lots of fun. Big crowds came to see the games as fist fights often broke out, which were very entertaining.”

Detective Lucile Abreu

Kristin Schultz wrote to me about her grandmother Lucile Abreu, whose lawsuit forced the Honolulu Police Department to stop discriminating against female officers when it came to promotions.

In last week’s column I mentioned that two of her four sons become police officers and that she had two grandsons join the force as well. What I didn’t know is that one of Abreu’s daughters, Francine Schultz, also joined the force as a fingerprint technician. She served for many years.

“Perhaps she did not join as an officer,” Schultz wrote, “but her work was certainly integral to the department, and she, too, was inspired by her mother’s fight for justice.”

The Rearview Mirror Insider is Bob Sigall’s weekly email that gives readers behind-the-scenes background, stories that wouldn’t fit in the column, and lots of interesting details. My Insider “posse” gives me ideas for stories and personal experiences that enrich the column. I invite you to join in and be an Insider at RearviewMirror Insider.com. Mahalo!