Spirit of Aloha | Features | January/Feburary 2006

A Hundred Years Ago in Honolulu
By: BOB DYE

The city and county of Honolulu, founded in 1905, is now celebrating its centennial with a variety of special events through July 1, 2006. What was Honolulu like in 1905? Our master historian tells all.

Why secret codes were used by Lili‘uokalani, the deposed Hawaiian queen, for some entries in her 1905 diary we don’t really know. Was it because of shifting alliances? Was it because folks were frequently switching political parties? Was it because she didn’t know who to trust? Powerful financier Charles Reed Bishop, then retired in San Francisco, worried that Hawaiians would not side with their old kama‘äina friends. He said: “There is a danger of their being misled and used by blaterskites of their own race and of the various stripes of haole.” Blaterskites?

People in all walks of life on O‘ahu were slowly adjusting, many of them uneasily, to life in a territory of a nation whose new motto was “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider hero of the war in Cuba, was now their president and he had “an affinity for combat.” Eight years earlier, as assistant secretary of the Navy, fearful that Japan would make Hawai‘i her own, Roosevelt had advocated immediate annexation. “If I had my way,” he said, “we would seize those islands tomorrow.”

When the U.S. took possession a year later, Hawai‘i lost its seat at the table of nations. The former independent island republic was now but a small insular region of a large continental nation. Native Hawaiians, especially, found the change from Hawaiian chauvinism to American nationalism a difficult one. The ruling elite, appointed by the U.S. president, insisted that everyone pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. Not everyone wanted to do just that.

It was an unsettling year, filled with political tension and labor unrest brought about by annexation. There were new rules to follow, different laws to obey. The U.S. Congress insisted the territory establish county governments; with some acrimony that onerous task was undertaken. Businessmen knowingly grumbled that another layer of government meant another layer of corruption.

Hawai‘i Gov. George Carter wielded great power, more than any elected governor of a Mainland state. But as an appointee he had no mandate from the people, a situation that bothered him in his efforts to fit Hawai‘i into an American mold. Because of all the pilikia (trouble), he decided to resign. “If I had been elected, no storm that beat upon me could force me out.” On the other hand, Roosevelt had told him, “I want harmony, if it can be had by doing right. But there are conditions under which harmony would be the last thing I would want.”

To speed the transition to its new status, Americanization programs were started in the public schools. Proficiency in the English language was a primary goal. Students were also given a new set of historical heroes to worship. The founding fathers of their new country all had haole names. Their Hawaiian language was an early casualty of the push to Americanize Hawai‘i.

Most white kids attended private schools. The public schools were primarily for the children of nonwhites, and they were downsized when Republican Carter, a fiscal conservative, unhappily slashed the education budget. One plantation manager expressed a prevalent attitude among the economically powerful but physically outnumbered whites, when he noted that “public education beyond the fourth grade is not only a waste, it is a menace. We spend to educate them and they will destroy us.”

All around O‘ahu there were signs the stick Roosevelt wielded was growing bigger. Fort Shafter was under construction and Schofield Barracks was in the planning stages. The military vanguard numbered fewer than 400, but preparations were under way to receive many more soldiers and sailors—as it turned out, tens of thousands more.

In the meantime, Hawai‘i’s citizen soldiers in the National Guard were declared fit for military service and given an integral part in the defense of the Islands. But when an O‘ahu unit was called out to put down a riot by laborers at Pioneer Mill on Maui, Hawai‘i legislators refused to appropriate any new money for the Guard. Troops went unpaid, but three companies were mustered out. Japanese workers at Waialua, and ‘Öla‘a on the Big Island, also organized protests, signaling more trouble ahead. These weren’t the docile men that planters had been promised. If Japan invaded Hawai‘i, military commanders worried that the field workers might join the invading forces.

Because of the success of Japanese military might in battles with China and Russia, Roosevelt felt some urgency to improve defenses in Hawai‘i. Condemnation of 676 acres of land on the east shore of Pearl Harbor was completed, with the channel through the bar deepened to 30 feet at low tide. Though more dredging needed to be done, the development of the harbor as a major naval installation was well under way. Now it needed to be defended from attack by sea.

A National Coast Defense Board was convened by Secretary of War William Howard Taft in January, by order of Roosevelt. Soon, military engineers began examining possible sites in the “white elite” areas of Diamond Head and Waikïkï for a coastal defense system to protect Honolulu and Pearl harbors. A dull Honolulu real estate market was about to heat up.

Among those with ocean-view homes in the elite white area was former territorial governor, now federal judge, Sanford Dole. Invitations to Sunday morning breakfasts at Aquamarine, his Diamond Head beach cottage, were sought after by distinguished visitors to Hawai‘i, as well as icons of local society. The conversation was usually lively, the judge often witty and the food always tasty. Ah Lin, the Dole’s Chinese cook, was adept at preparing New England fare—baked pork and beans, brown bread, crisp bacon, strong Kona coffee with hot milk. He also served copious amounts of succulent local fruit—papaya, mangoes, Isabella grapes, avocado pears, figs, soursop, strawberries, even steamy, hot, baked breadfruit.

Only a half-hour from downtown in comfortable coaches on the new electric trolley line, property in the area was seen as a good investment. When it was hinted that lots might be condemned by the federal government and taken for gun emplacements, property owners were gripped by fear and greed, often simultaneously. The military would have to pay a pretty penny for the land it condemned, they hoped. As matters turned out, Uncle Sam did pay top dollar. In mid-July, Julia Fayerweather Afong received $28,000 for the family beach house and grounds on which batteries Dudley and Randolph were subsequently built (now the site of the Army Museum).

Old Glory fluttered seemingly everywhere on July 14, to celebrate the arrival of Taft and to demonstrate patriotism. But on Punchbowl, towering over everything, was George Mo‘oheaukauluheimälama Beckley’s huge Hawaiian flag, which measured 80 feet by 40 feet, contained 700 yards of bunting, and was thought to be “the largest flag in the world.” Beckley, a high ali‘i, was making a statement.

Taft, weighing more than 300 pounds and sweating profusely in a light-brown suit, arrived aboard the Pacific Mail liner Manchuria. He headed a congressional delegation of seven senators and 232 congressmen, aides, maids and valets, military and civilian escorts, a photographer (who sold prints for $2 each) and the president’s daughter Alice. There were 104 people in all on this familiarization junket to the Philippines, where Taft had been governor a few years earlier.

Although O‘ahu was not this mission’s travel objective, the island was hyped as an important, valuable piece of property during the few hours they were ashore. There was not a single U.S. warship stationed at Honolulu Harbor, they were told, and that didn’t help the local economy. Merchants had a taste of the business generated by sailors and marines on shore leave when Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet put into port on Dec. 16, 1903. Then, 3,600 officers and men came ashore with money to burn.

Acting Gov. Alatau Atkinson, articulate and loquacious, accompanied Taft. Carter had met with Taft in San Francisco a few days earlier. At breakfast, Taft tried to dissuade him from resigning, but he was determined to be done with appointive politics. When he arrived at Oyster Bay for lunch, his Yale classmate called him “my Hawaiian sensitive plant.” Even when matters didn’t go one’s way, it was necessary to stay the course, he was admonished. Carter did not resign.

Meanwhile, Walter F. Dillingham, whose company had dredged the channel through the Pearl Harbor bar, was assigned as Miss Roosevelt’s escort. She was high-spirited and smoked cigarettes in public, while sometimes brandishing a revolver she carried in her purse. Dillingham had his hands full keeping her from making more serious mischief. Her father joked that he could run the country or manage Alice, but not both. To make matters worse, her suitor of the moment, a bachelor congressman, was making the trip. Together they rode the surf in front of the Moana Hotel.

Before departing Hawai‘i, Taft told his hosts, “Never before in your history have you had such an opportunity to influence legislation as you have today.” What legislation was that? he was asked. “You need fortifications,” he declared. “I am gong to recommend fortifications for the Hawaiian Islands.” He was applauded.

Things were now looking up for the economy. A member of the committee on naval affairs said, “These Islands are of the first importance to the nation.” His colleague expressed the “sense of the party” that visited Pearl Harbor: “There was an absolute necessity of defending these Islands from any possible attack, and if they were seized by an enemy, the Pacific Coast would be exposed to depredating fleets.” He was satisfied with the site for the naval station and convinced that it and the channel might “easily be made impregnable.” As for the money, he believed Congress would “readily grant the necessary amount.”

Turning O‘ahu into a fortress would indeed fuel the economy. Commenting on Taft’s visit, the missionary newspaper, The Friend, touted the territory as a great national asset, which only needed “adequate development to prove of inestimable value.” And it had a vision of “these Islands teeming with a population of millions composed not of weaklings but of strenuous men of many races united in a common American citizenship.” And a common religion. The territory was to be Christian in word and deed, by God. Since annexation, attendance was up at Central Union Church, the membership nearly doubled in seven years. Hardly a Great Awakening, but heartening indeed to the outnumbered Protestants.

The congressional party had not been given a walking tour of Chinatown or Iwilei, two urban areas where crimes by “moral weaklings” were said to flourish shamelessly, without any interference of the law. The Advertiser sent investigative reporters to Chinatown, and one of them got inside gambling rooms on King Street, a heavily fortified place. A series of articles on gambling among Chinese then appeared in the leading paper. Editorially, victimless crimes were not laid at the feet of society, but blamed on demon rum dispensed at “blind pigs.” Apparently hoping for clergy-led Christian soldiers to take vigilante action in Chinatown and Iwilei, Advertiser editor W.G. Smith, speaking at the Methodist Church, specifically charged police corruption and told how the law was in cahoots with Chinese gamblers.

hat year, Mother Marianne of Moloka‘i wrote to a sister: “Pride, you know, is the cause of all sin and is the dark cloud that hides from our view Jesus’s bleeding and suffering for us, and closes our ears to our sweet Savior’s call, ‘Take up thy cross and follow me’… Time is flying. Let us make use of the fleeting moments. They will never return.”

Thus was the tenor of the times in Honolulu in 1905.

BOB DYE is the author of Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawai‘i, and the editor of the Hawai‘i Chronicles series of books. His articles on Hawai‘i have appeared in Newsday, The Honolulu Advertiser, the Hawaiian Journal of History, Honolulu magazine and other journals.

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