Island History

February 15, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Born in Kekaha in 1862, Koolau (or Kaluaikoolau) became a cowboy, a famous hunter, and an expert shot with his rifle.

February 8, 2025 | 2 MIN READ

In early August 1962, gutsy Eugene Ressencourt (1911-74), Bill Joy and Henry Kam made a treacherous descent from Kokee into Kalalau Valley.

February 1, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

American ship captain William Henry “Bully” Hayes (1827-77) commenced his career as a trader among the islands of the Pacific in the 1850s, and after raiding and robbing trading st...

January 25, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Julius Scammon Rodman (1912-2001), of New Bedford, Massachusetts, whaling stock, arrived in Hawaii in 1930 following a year at sea, and from then until 1940, he scoured the caves of Hawaii in...

January 18, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Johann Heinrich Zimmermann (1741-1805) was one of three German sailors aboard Captain James Cook’s ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, when Cook made his discovery of Hawaii on Jan....

January 11, 2025 | 2 MIN READ

Born in Kealia, Kauai, the son of Otomatsu and Tamano Yoshida, Yoshiichi “Big Mice” Yoshida (1904-2001) was educated at Kauai High School and was the owner of Y. Yoshida Service St...

January 4, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Kenneth Shiro Shioi (1916-2011), the son of Japanese immigrant parents Taroku and Haruyo Shioi, was born at Makaweli, Kauai, and moved to Honolulu with his family at an early age.

December 28, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

In 1971, two years after photographer, filmmaker and author John Wehrheim first came to Kauai, he moved into an A-frame shack behind Howard Taylor’s home in Haena.

December 21, 2024 | 2 MIN READ

In early 1939, Honolulu police officer Harry Shupak informed treasure hunter Julius Scammon Rodman (1912-2001) that in 1934, while pig hunting in Waimea Valley, Kauai, he’d discovered a...

December 14, 2024 | 2 MIN READ

“Honolulu,” British author William Somerset Maugham’s (1874-1965) tale of sorcery, is written with such authenticity that one has the impression that Maugham based it on a fi...

December 7, 2024 | 2 MIN READ

In the artwork that accompanies this story, there’s a reproduction of artist Herb Kawainui Kane’s (1928-2011) painting, “Moment of Contact,” his artistic interpretation...

November 30, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

For the longest time, and well into the 20th century, there existed a steep, ancient Hawaiian trail that connected Wainiha Valley, at the base of Maunahina Ridge, with the Alakai Swamp at the...

November 23, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

According to interpretations of Hawaiian legends and radiocarbon dating estimations, it is speculated that sometime during 300-600 A.D. a Polynesian chief named Nanaulu became the first person...

November 16, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

In her book, “In Love and War: The World War II Courtship Letters of a Nisei Couple,” published in 2015, author Melody M. Miyamoto Walters published the courtship letters of her gr...

November 9, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

In his book, “Kauai: As It Was in the 1940s and ’50s,” Mike Ashman (1921-2018) wrote nostalgically about prices on Kauai in 1940, the year he first arrived on the Garden Isla...

November 2, 2024 | 1 MIN READ

The California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C &H) refinery, founded in 1906 at Crockett, California, refined Hawaii-grown sugar until 2017, the year it refined Maui’s Hawaiian Commerc...