ISLAND HISTORY: Charles Titcomb, 19th century Kaua‘i silk cultivator, planter and rancher
In 1830, former Yankee watchmaker Charles Titcomb (1805-1883) was aboard the whaler, “Lyra,” when it was shipwrecked off Maui.
ISLAND HISTORY: A burial cave was desecrated in Waimea Valley, Kaua‘i
In April 1993, hunters stumbled upon a burial cave deep inside Waimea Valley several miles above Waimea town.
ISLAND HISTORY: The funeral rites of Kaua‘i’s Prince Keali‘iahonui
Keali‘iahonui (1800-1849) was the son of Kaumuali‘i (c. 1778-1824), the last king of Kaua‘i, and Kapua‘amoku, a Kaua‘i princess of the highest chiefly rank, and was therefore possessed of some of the bluest blood in all Hawai‘i.
ISLAND HISTORY: The Japanese picture brides of Hawai‘i
During the early 20th century, Japanese matchmakers would arrange marriages between single women in Japan seeking husbands in Hawaii, and Japanese bachelors in Hawaii who desired to marry and raise a family in Hawaii.
ISLAND HISTORY: Hole Hole Bushi – folk songs of Issei Japanese women in Hawai‘i
Hole hole bushi are songs that Issei (first generation) immigrant Japanese women sang during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while tediously stripping dry sugarcane leaves off cane stalks with machetes in Hawai‘i’s cane fields.
ISLAND HISTORY: Gerald Hirata’s unique Kaua‘i sugar plantation camp map
Gerald Hirata, historian, and caretaker of the Hanapepe Soto Zen Temple, has created, for the first time, a revised USGS topographical map on which the names of twenty-six now almost entirely nonexistent south and westside Kaua‘i sugar plantation housing camps are matched with their locations.
ISLAND HISTORY: Memories of the old Kapa‘a Stable Camp in 1971
During 1971, my wife, Ginger, and our two children lived at Kapa‘a Stable Camp, a Makee Sugar Co., and later, a Lihu‘e Plantation employee housing camp that no longer exists, but was once a lively place situated on Ka‘apuni Road just mauka of the intersection of Ka‘apuni and Olohena roads.
ISLAND HISTORY: A look at Waimea Sugar Mill Co. manager Ewart
Born in California, George R. Ewart Jr. (1875-1959) came to reside in Hawaii in 1877 with his parents, and was educated at Punahou and at McGill University, Canada, where he trained as a civil engineer.
ISLAND HISTORY: A mysterious incident occurred at the Koloa Tunnel in 1984
From 1982 through 1984, I was employed by McBryde Sugar Co. as a haul cane truck driver.
ISLAND HISTORY: Pioneer aviator Rosco C. Wriston, the first pilot to fly to Ni‘ihau
As an Army Air Service aviator stationed at Luke Field on Ford Island, O‘ahu, during the 1920s and 1930s, Lieutenant Roscoe C. Winston (1895-1974) made the first flight over Kilauea Volcano, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and the first flights to Kaho‘olawe and Ni‘ihau.
ISLAND HISTORY: Kenneth Emory — a pioneer anthropologist of Polynesia
Anthropologist Kenneth Emory (1897-1992) was born in Massachusetts and in 1900 moved with his parents to Honolulu, where he attended Punahou and became fluent in Hawaiian.
ISLAND HISTORY: Whaleboat captain Kapahe shipwrecked in Kaulakahi Channel
When teller of Hawaiian tales Eric Knudsen (1872-1957) of Kauai was a young man, it was his pleasure to listen to the past exploits of an elderly, former Hawaiian whaleboat captain named Kapahe.
ISLAND HISTORY: Eleanor Kaikilani Coney — a famous beauty at the court of Kalakaua and Kapi‘olani
A famous beauty of 19th century Hawai‘i, Eleanor Kaikilani Coney (1867-1943) was born at Nawiliwili, Kaua‘i, one of six children of High Chiefess Laura Amoy Kekuakapuokekuaokalani Ena Coney (1843-1929) of the Big Island and American John Harvey Coney (1820-1880).
ISLAND HISTORY: ‘Paradise, Hawaiian Style’ was filmed on Kauai
The movie “Paradise, Hawaiian Style,” starring Elvis Presley (1935-1977), was filmed during 1965 in Los Angeles and in Hawaii, with several scenes shot on Kauai featuring the Coco Palms and the Hanalei Plantation hotels.
ISLAND HISTORY: Author, newspaperman Charles Nordhoff visited Kaua‘i in 1873
In 1873, American newspaperman and author Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901) booked passage on the 75-ton sugar schooner, “Fairy Queen,” which sailed one afternoon from Honolulu, bound for Waimea, Kauai.
ISLAND HISTORY: The Hawaiian sugar plantation newspaper era – 1919-83
From 1919, when Kaua‘i’s Hawaiian Sugar Co., aka Makaweli Plantation, first published the “Makaweli Plantation News,” Hawai‘i’s original sugar plantation newspaper, until 1983, when the Waialua Sugar Mill plantation published its final edition of the “Waialua Sugar Scoop,” a total of 55 Hawaiian sugar plantations published their own in-house newspapers.
ISLAND HISTORY: Mabel Wilcox, health care pioneer and philanthropist
The granddaughter of American Protestant missionaries, Abner & Lucy Wilcox, who settled on Kaua‘i, and the youngest of Samuel and Emma Wilcox’s six children, Mabel Wilcox was born in 1882 at Grove Farm, Kaua‘i.
ISLAND HISTORY: A look at the life of a Kaua‘i-born suffragist
Hawaiian suffragist Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett (1861-1929) was born in Lihue, Kauai to parents Hermann A. Widemann (1822-1899) and Mary Kaumana Pilahiulani (1833-1899).
ISLAND HISTORY: Radio announcer Mike Ashman authored ‘Kauai: As It Was In The 1940s and ’50s’
In 1940, with a couple of years experience as a radio announcer at KSAN in San Francisco under his belt, California-born Mike Ashman (1921-2018) joined Kauai’s first radio station – KTOH (Kauai Territory of Hawaii) – which began broadcasting on May 8, 1940 on Ahukini Road.
ISLAND HISTORY: A history of the famous Hamura Saimin restaurant
Kaua‘i’s Hamura Saimin restaurant was opened for business by Mr. & Mrs. Charles Susumu Hamura (1906-1980) and Aiko Hamura (1910-2002) in a converted Army barracks on Kress Street, Lihu‘e in 1952.