That Summer at Boomerang

by Phil Jarratt

  While Halapu enjoyed a privileged childhood in the family quarters at Haleakala, the rest of Honolulu, and all of Hawaii, was rapidly changing. In 1874, 38-year-old David Kalakaua assumed the throne on the death of Lunalilo and immediately set about restoring a degree of cultural integrity for his people. A man of refinement and a well-known bon vivant, King Kalakaua set about reinvigorating a sense of Hawaiian mores among his subjects, reduced to almost nothing after half a century of the influence of Christian zealots. Kalakaua, a prodigious drinker, preferred to fight the intellectual battle over champagne at dinner or port and sherry in his study, sometimes in the company of his friend, the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson. But Kalakaua was also committed to reviving such muscular rites as surfing, and while he did not ride the waves himself, he encouraged the Pakis and their kahu to honour the memory of Chief Paki, one of the finest exponents of shooting the olo (long surfboard ridden only by the royals), by ignoring the entreaties of the missionaries and once again riding free on the waves in the shadow of Diamond Head.

  Thus in the 1880s, Halapu, a teenager, found himself one of a small and unofficial band of the king’s own surfers, frequently freed from menial chores to perform the ancient rituals on the waves and thus inspire their peers to do the same. But Kalakaua’s campaigning did not endear him to the emerging haole elite, particularly the pineapple and sugar barons who feared that a cultural renaissance would inflate labour costs and threaten their dominance of the island’s economy. Had he not died prematurely while visiting San Francisco in 1891, David Kalakaua would probably have been deposed, by negotiation or by force. As it happened, this was the fate of his sister, Queen Lili’uokalani, who was overthrown in 1893, just months ahead of Hawaii being declared a republic under the provisional governance of Judge Sanford Dole.

  Robert Louis Stevenson (left) at a royal luau with King David Kalakaua (centre rear) c. 1889. Photo courtesy Hawaii State Archives.

  In the new republic the Pakis meant next to nothing, their lineage ignored, their landholdings questioned. Halapu, who at nineteen had married Julia Paakonia Paoa, with whom he had three-year-old Duke Paoa (born at Haleakala like his father) and another child on the way, found that his entitlements as kahu to the Pakis no longer existed and nor did he have a home at Haleakala. Fortunately his wife had familial land rights that could not be denied. In 1877, under the terms of the ‘Great Mahele’, a native land rights entitlement introduced 30 years earlier, King Kalakaua reaffirmed Paoa ownership of more than three acres of land at Kalia, which would one day become the site of Waikiki’s Hilton Hawaiian Village.

  Halapu and Julia moved with their small son to a partly completed, green-stained, white-trimmed Hawaiian bungalow that sat on a large grassy lot at the end of Kalia Road, next to an almost identical bungalow where the Paoa clan, led by Julia’s brother, Henry, lived. Here, in this tiny settlement of beachside shacks and canoe sheds (halau), surrounded by members of an extended family, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku began his remembered life, the first part of which involved his father going away for a very long time.

  In 1891 Lorrin A. Thurston, Hawaiian born of missionary stock, businessman, publisher, politician, philanthropist and later considered by some to be ‘godfather of the Hawaiian republic’, secured a concession for a ‘cyclorama’ of the Kilauea volcano to be exhibited on the Midway Plaisance at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. This was no ordinary fair and no ordinary exhibit. Officially titled the ‘World’s Columbian Exposition’ to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, under the guidance of the brilliant architect, Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair in the ‘White City’ was planned to be the greatest exposition in the history of America, drawing visitors from around the world and finally expunging the memory of the brutal Civil War. The role of the Midway Plaisance in the greater scheme of things would be to provide an education about alien cultures, but in a way that would be entertaining to the general public.

  Thurston’s cyclorama concept fitted the bill perfectly, for it was not just a giant (60-foot-high and 420-foot-long) artistic depiction of the volcano, but a moving, bubbling show with a traditional village in the foreground next to a small stage from which a scantily clad vocal quartet would harmonise on the old songs of the Islands. Thurston engaged four exotic-looking native Hawaiians with vocal talent to travel to Chicago with the troupe, but soon realised that he would need substitute singers for a production that would be continuous for some eight months. Among his second group of recruits for this purpose was 24-year-old Duke Halapu Kahanamoku, whose voice was almost as big an asset as his fine bone structure and regal bearing.

  In the late summer of 1893, just a week or two after his son’s third birthday, Halapu steamed for the mainland and did not return until well into the new year. What Halapu’s thoughts were of this great adventure isn’t recorded, nor do we know how much Thurston paid his troupe of Hawaiians, although in his memoirs Thurston did note that the cyclorama lost money in Chicago. We also do not know if Halapu ever made the acquaintance of his neighbours on the Midway, such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. He went, he came home, and the whole thing appears never to have been spoken of outside the family, despite the fact that Halapu had made history as part of the first group of Hawaiian performers to ever tour beyond the Islands.

  By the end of the century Halapu and Julia had five children—Duke, David, Bernice, Bill and Sam—all of whom became American citizens under the Organic Act of 1900. Four more would arrive (one of whom, Maria, died as a young child) before Paoa became a household name around the world, but as the century turned, he was already distinguished in Kalia, having been chosen to be one of the kahili (royal plumed staff) bearers at the funeral of the beautiful Princess Ka’iulani, who died tragically of a mystery illness at the age of 23 in 1899. Even without this great honour, however, he was marked as special: a lively, smiling child who seemed to excel at all games but was never arrogant in his superiority.

  The two clans, the Paoas and the Kahanamokus, lived to either side of a ditch that drained the duck ponds and rice paddies and emptied itself into the mud flats that stank up the town side of Waikiki Beach at low tide, and had already been earmarked for future removal by President Dole’s ‘progressives’. No doubt the somewhat ramshackle homes of the Paoas and Kahanamokus had been similarly marked, but that would happen over a very large pile of dead bodies, as Halapu sometimes said, now that he had forsaken the hackney and the town delivery run for a position in the Honolulu Police Department.

  In most Honolulu social circles, outside of the Arlington barracks at least, much respect was accorded both the Paoa and Kahanamoku families as upright citizens and ohana leaders, even if most people did not fully understand their convoluted links to the monarchy. Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, bearing the names of both and being the first child to unite the clans, was a figurehead from an early age. Duke by name, he was king of the keiki (kids) even before he began attending the Waikiki-kai elementary school at the bottom of Waikiki Street, just across from the construction site of the Moana Hotel. His father, Uncle Henry and Uncle David Pi’ikoi taught him to swim by paddling a canoe into the deep water beyond the surf and throwing him over the side.

  ‘Which way home, boy?’ His father would laugh, but he never took his eyes off Paoa as he thrashed momentarily, and then got the knack of treading water and began to swim.

  Halapu modified his swimming lessons in later years, but they were always based on the sink-or-swim principle. Duke’s baby brother, Sargent, twenty years his junior, remembered his father walking out into the deep off Pier Point at Kalia, Sargent on his shoulders, ‘then he’d duck down and I’d be splashing and screaming’. But the tough love clearly worked. All of the Kahanamoku children were excellent swimmers.

  Halapu and the uncles and older cousins also coaxed Paoa into shooting his first waves on a surfboard, lying flat-bellied and wide-eyed on an alaia as it sped to shore and unceremonious
ly dumped him on the sand in front of the old hau tree. Halapu and David tried to control their laughter as they waded across the reef ledge towards the beach and the boy, who shook sand from his hair and nostrils and fixed them with a cold, hard stare of determination. Halapu bent to take his board and his hand, but Paoa pushed him away. ‘I’m fine, I can do this by myself.’

  Uncle David rustled in his fishing bag under the tree and pulled out a flask, from which he took a long draw before passing it to Halapu. They watched the boy struggle through the break with the heavy wooden board and set himself in position to shoot the green wave. Paoa let the first swell pass, as Papa had taught him, and launched himself on the second, lying on his belly for a moment, and then gripping the sides of the board as he swung his body weight forward and sat confidently, legs crossed, trailing an arm through the break to change direction. Halapu and David shook their heads in amazement, but they had seen nothing yet.

  Three rides later Paoa pushed down the face, gripped the sides of the board, but instead of swinging his body full tilt, he pushed his knees forward and clambered to his feet, standing unsteadily in the centre of the board, his arms flailing wildly to keep him upright. This was the moment a surf-rider always remembers, and unsteady and fearful as he was, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku knew what he had to do. He dropped his hands to his sides, then folded his arms in front of his chest and stood upright and proud, just like his father, as the majestic beauty of Diamond Head framed him.

  On 12 August 1898 the Stars and Stripes were being hoisted at Iolani Palace to mark US annexation, the end of sovereignty of the Hawaiian people. Queen Lili’uokalani, recently returned from a long exile in Washington, watched proceedings in dignified silence, but the handover was too much for some members of the United States Hawaiian Band (formerly the Royal Hawaiian Band), who remained steadfast while playing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, but were overcome with emotion while playing the ‘Hawaiian Ponoi’ and had to flee the makeshift stage.

  Many native Hawaiians mourned the loss of sovereignty by staying indoors, but overall it was not a sad day in Waikiki, nor was it so in the Kalia settlement. The royal family had been pau for a long time, everyone knew that. This was just another new beginning, and who knew what to make of it? And Mr Thurston, a man of goodwill, said it would make life better for all Hawaiians. For Paoa, not yet eight years old, oblivious to island politics and newly acquainted with the thrill of the glide, it was quite possibly the best day of his young life.

  Chapter 2

  Waikiki

  George Freeth and surfboard, c. 1907. Photo courtesy Outrigger Canoe Club.

  The keiki (children) made the beach in front of the hau trees their own. The break here (now known as ‘Canoes’) was short and fast in one direction, or slow and leisurely in another. They could choose their speed to match their abilities, although they spent so much time urging each other on to greater feats of audacity that ambition often won out over ability, with resultant bloody noses and chipped bones. The Kalia men surfed with them, before retreating to the shade of the haus and producing bottles of beer and their ukuleles to while away the warm afternoons in pleasant harmony.

  In addition to the Kalia families—the Coit Hobrons, the Alapais, the Moehonuas and several others—the surfers usually included the Kaupikos and the Keaweamahis from Waikiki, and youngsters like William ‘Knute’ Cottrell and George Freeth. Occasionally they would be joined by members of the royal family. Between her return to Hawaii in 1897 and her untimely death in 1899, Princess Ka’iulani rode a big olo board with style and grace, and later Prince Jonah Kuhio, soon to become Hawaii’s representative in the US Congress, became one of the better surfers on the beach. (In fact, Prince Kuhio and his two brothers, David and Edward, had introduced surfboard riding to California in 1885 when they surfed their olos at San Lorenzo River Mouth, near Santa Cruz, while attending a nearby military academy.)

  The families of Kalia and Waikiki were bound together through commerce and intermarriage, and there were the usual frictions between them. But the beach and the surf were normally considered sanctuaries, with differences left at the edge of the sand. Which is not to say it was all peace and love under the haus. The men took wagers on everything, from which of them was the better surfer to which of the bugs crawling along the boardwalk would get somewhere first, and they often drank while the winners and losers were determined. While Halapu Kahanamoku had taken in good spirit the loss of his last canoe to David Pi’ikoi, another beach boy was less understanding when he lost a bet and was relieved of the domestic services of his wife for a week. Occasionally these disputes were resolved with the fists, but singing and strumming were usually how it began and how it ended, with the Ko’olau breezes rustling the palms in the moonlight while the beach boys sang the old songs together and forgave, and drank some more, and forgot.

  The Waikiki scene began to change with the completion of the Moana Hotel in 1901, and the construction of a 300-foot pier directly in front of it. The change can be bookended by the visits of the two most influential chroniclers of the period. When Robert Louis Stevenson set up residence in 1887, Honolulu’s major residential hotels, the original Royal Hawaiian and the Aliolani Hale, were both downtown near Iolani Palace and the Opera House, while the only constructions along the Waikiki beachfront were the Bishop, Brown and McFarlane residences. By the time Jack London arrived in 1907, the Seaside Hotel and the Moana, flanking the Bishop beachfront land, had become the new hub for visitors, with an ‘electric rapid transit system’ connecting beach, port and downtown areas.

  The age of tourism was dawning, and although the swank Moana was by no means Waikiki’s first tourist hotel, it was the first to exploit the beach-boy lifestyle as a means of enticing cruise-line passengers to break their voyages for an interlude in paradise, which might include an outrigger canoe ride on the breakers or shooting a wave in the arms of a bronzed beach boy, and who knew where that brief intimacy might lead? Such activity, rumoured to occur but rarely confirmed, was known amongst the beach boys as ‘kokua da sistas’—help the sisters.

  ‘In those days the haole wahines [white women], they all went for the beach boys,’ Louis Kahanamoku, one of Duke’s younger brothers, told an interviewer. The beach boys obliged by taking the most attractive girls out on their boards to ride tandem, because it offered the best opportunities for intimacy. While paddling, the boys would ride up on the girl’s okole (backside), Louis chuckled. After surfing, they would serenade their students on the Moana Pier until long after dark, and when the party was finally over, often escort them to their rooms. On a few occasions, according to one beach boy’s recollections, the evening’s happy ending took place on a surfboard floating peacefully on the moonlit bay.

  The surf of Waikiki, all but deserted a decade before, was densely populated with people on all manner of wooden surfboards by the time the Edison Company filmmaker, Robert Bonine, set up his tripod on the sand in front of the Moana Hotel in the summer of 1906. Among the surfers featured in Bonine’s pioneering documentary ‘actuality’, Surf Board Riders, Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, were the teenage Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, his younger brother, David, and a fairer-skinned haole who, although older and more physically mature, seemed not quite their equal on the waves, lacking the natural finesse they displayed with every easy move.

  The haole was George Freeth, who had English and Irish blood, but was one-quarter Hawaiian on his mother’s side. Born on Oahu in 1883, the third child of six to a ship’s captain whose reputation was that of a frequently absent father who occasionally became aggressive towards his family on his return, George nevertheless had a nurturing family on his mother’s side. His grandfather, London-born William Lowthian Green, was a one-time prospector who married a full-blood Hawaiian and eventually became Hawaii’s minister for foreign affairs in the days of the Kalakaua monarchy. Green’s daughter, Elizabeth Kaili, encouraged her children to study hard and to embrace the traditional
Hawaiian lifestyle, which to young George meant never being far from the water, where he excelled at swimming, high diving and surfboard riding. While George did not possess the natural talent of the Kahanamokus, he was stubborn and determined, and by the early years of the new century he had trained hard and willed himself to be one of the best surf-riders at Waikiki.

  Paoa went to school but his heart was not in it. At elementary school the full-bloods were beaten by their masters for speaking their native tongue in the yard. Worse, when an outraged Paoa came marching down Kalia Road to tell his parents of this injustice, they seemed resigned to the fact that their culture was taking a back seat in the new Hawaii. The one thing Paoa knew was that he and school were definitely not adzed from the same timber. Showing no application for academic studies, he was enrolled at Kamehameha Industrial School for Boys to complete his education, majoring in machinist and blacksmithing trades. The school, which was for native Hawaiians, was established through one of several bequests of Halapu’s godmother, Princess Bernice, but Paoa was unimpressed. Cutting classes to head for the beach or to turn a dollar shining shoes or carrying ice, his grades were so bad he soon dropped out. A term or two at McKinley High produced the same result. When his mother protested, Halapu told her that Paoa was his father’s son: he would make his way on the beach.

  Relieved of the pressures of an education (although he did return to Kamehameha later for long enough to be awarded a diploma in April 1909) Paoa devoted his time to surfing, swimming and fishing in his small universe between Diamond Head and the downtown docks. Strangely, considering his upbringing, he seemed to have a gift for tending to automobiles and other machinery, and took the occasional fix-it job downtown to supplement the money he made diving for tourists’ coins off the Moana Pier or in the harbour, or joy-riding tourists on his surfboard.