Reader Tom Sheeran said he heard about an ocean buoy that was painted pink just offshore of the Hawaiian Village Hotel in the mid-1950s.
It involved Henry Kaiser, who was building the resort, and a group of mariners who regularly enjoyed drinks at the Waikiki Yacht Club.
Kaiser’s favorite color was pink. “On one occasion, after more than a few of those drinks, several of them got a bucket of pink paint and went out in a dinghy and painted the sea buoy at the entrance to the Ala Wai boat harbor,” Sheeran said.
“The U.S. Coast Guard didn’t take kindly to this, and not incidentally it is a federal crime to interfere with ‘aids to navigation.’ … The culprits, several from very prominent kamaaina families, were lucky to avoid the consequences of their foolish actions.”
Sheeran wanted to know what really happened.
Kaiser pink
Sheeran mentioned Kaiser. If I were to make a list of the most interesting characters we’ve had in Hawaii, Kaiser would certainly be on it.
Kaiser was the richest man in Hawaii in the 1950s. He built what is now the Hilton Hawaiian Village, developed Hawaii Kai and played a role in developing Magic Island.
His favorite color was pink. His bulldozers were pink. His concrete mixers were pink. He even had pink rental cars.
Alvin Yee said, “Henry Kaiser kept a fleet of pink Jeeps available to his guests because he also had part ownership of a company that built Jeeps for the Army. He wanted pink Jeeps to differentiate them from surplus military Jeeps that were cruising the streets.
“Elvis Presley was a guest at his Hawaiian Village hotel during filming of ‘Blue Hawaii’ and expressed admiration of the pink jeeps, so Henry Kaiser gave him one. I saw it on display at Graceland in 1985.”
Legend of pink buoy
Former Honolulu Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss wrote about the buoy in 2004.
“The Legend of the Pink Buoy blossomed one morning in 1956, when guests at the new Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village Hotel strolled to the beach and giggled. Off the water-skiing channel was a big, pink buoy.
“Buoys to mark channels are not supposed to be pink. They can be somber black or fire-engine red, depending on what lifesaving purpose they serve. They can be decorated with flashing lights and equipped with foghorns. But never under any circumstance is a buoy allowed to be pink.
“Everybody around Waikiki in 1956 knew that pink was the favorite color of Henry Kaiser, builder of the Hawaiian Village, creator of a new Waikiki beach and lagoon, and dredger of a channel through the reef.
“Everybody knew that Kaiser bulldozed the Legislature, the City Council and the harbor board to get permits while others waited in line,” Krauss continued.
“The harbor board put out a spanking new buoy for Henry Kaiser’s water-skiing channel the moment it was completed, while members of a young, poverty-stricken organization called the Waikiki Yacht Club waited and waited for the harbor board to put a buoy on the channel of the Ala Wai Boat Harbor.”
Krauss talked to Charley Dole, who was a founding member of the Waikiki Yacht Club. Dole said the idea originated the night before a big regatta.
“Amid universal pique that Henry Kaiser had a buoy and they didn’t, contractor Frank Rothwell suggested, ‘Let’s paint it pink.’
“Lorrin F. Thurston, son of the Honolulu Advertiser owner, had a powerboat, and we could use that. Also involved were Terrance Ryan and A.D. Johnson, all of Honolulu, and W.T. Sampson, from Leatherstocking, N.Y.
“We left the club early to pick up the paint, and then we took off for the buoy. We splattered pink paint all over the buoy, the water and ourselves. We returned to the club to find only one guy there, passed out on a couch.
“When I got to the club the next morning, everybody was talking about Kaiser’s pink buoy. Rumor had it that the Coast Guard had called up Kaiser and raised hell, and he had gone to the hotel and chewed out his boat boys, and they tried to convince him they hadn’t done it.
“A few hours later, somebody came to the yacht club. Our commodore told him he didn’t know anything about it.
“The federal prosecutor was pounding his fist and yelling that he was going to get those scoundrels and throw the book at them.”
Paint it black
Crew members of the Coast Guard buoy tender Balsam went out and repainted the 9,300-pound marker its original color, black.
Meanwhile, Coast Guard intelligence officers reported they were “making headway” in their effort to find the culprits who painted the buoy pink.
The person or persons responsible could receive a $2,500 fine and a year in jail for defacing a navigational marker.
Thurston hid his boat, spattered with pink paint, in Rothwell’s Kaneohe garage. However, a Coast Guard officer with binoculars spotted it.
Caught pink-handed
There were no eyewitnesses to the crime, but pink paint on the boat was incriminating.
By the end of the week, the six culprits faced justice. Attorney Robert Rothwell told U.S. Judge Jon Wiig that the men painted the black buoy pink to protest that the government seemed to play favorites with Waikiki boat channels.
He said the offending buoy was located off the boat channel of hotel owner Kaiser soon after it was dredged, whereas the Waikiki Yacht Club for years had tried to get one installed at its channel entrance.
Unfortunately, several boats had gone onto the rocks and been wrecked, but the club still couldn’t get the Coast Guard, the city or the state to put in any buoys.
Rothwell said the men did the paint job only to call public attention to what they considered to be favoritism.
The judge ruled that unauthorized painting of a U.S. navigational buoy off Waikiki would cost the painters a $500 fine and $56 in repainting costs. Each of the painters chipped in to pay it.
100th anniversary
The legend of the pink buoy has been told and retold many times in the past 68 years, and it’s become part of the lore at the Waikiki Yacht Club.
The Waikiki Yacht Club traces its earliest roots to 1924 and the founding of the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club. I’ve resurrected the whole caper to help them celebrate the 100th anniversary of that club in March.
Its clubhouse was located on Middle Loch in what today is military housing. Duke Kahanamoku was a member, and Shirley Temple was made an honorary member when she visited in 1935.
Its boats sailed the waters of Pearl Harbor until World War II began. The Navy kicked the club out of its treasured spot for security reasons, and many members left to create the Waikiki Yacht Club at the mouth of the Ala Wai Canal.
Following WWII, the Navy resisted the club’s return to Pearl Harbor, and the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club became dormant.
Finally, in 1957, a group of military sailors created the Pearl Harbor Sailing Club at Keehi Lagoon. Six years later it became the new Pearl Harbor Yacht Club. In 1973 it moved to its present location, in the Pearl Harbor Rainbow Bay Marina.
If you have any stories or photos of the club, send them to me and I’ll make sure they get them.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
