Island History

April 5, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

In February 1888, the inter-island schooner “Nettie Merrill” was shipwrecked in rough seas and strong winds off Waimea, Kauai.

March 29, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Born in Ilocos Norte, Philippines, in 1906, Agapito Sadang was recruited by the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association, and upon his arrival in 1926 at Honolulu aboard the ship “Presid...

March 22, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

After English Captain Cook was killed by Hawaiians at Kealakekua, Hawaii, on Feb. 14, 1779, Captain Clerke took command of Cook’s ships Resolution and Discovery and prepared to resume Co...

March 8, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

Kauai’s most noteworthy hermit, Dr. Bernard Wheatley, was born in the Virgin Islands in 1919 and earned a medical degree.

March 1, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

My wife, Ginger Beralas Soboleski, was born on Kauai in 1949 and raised on Kauai.

February 22, 2025 | 1 MIN READ

During the 1870s, a man named Keoike, a resident of Nukolii, Kauai, acquired in some way a fortune of $10,000 worth of eight-sided golden slugs and had shown his friend, Josia Keawe, one of th...

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...