Being surprised by past conditions

As everyone who stops in here knows, one of the purposes of this blog is supposed to be to explore historical conditions.  The blog itself, of course, meanders a fair bit, so a person could be legitimately excused for not knowing that, but that's the general theme of things here.

Given that this is the authors' focus, you'd think that the authors themselves wouldn't be surprised by the very things they note, but in fact that's not always the case, which demonstrates, I guess, how accustomed we can become to noting things in our own neck of the woods, while running off of general assumptions in regards to other areas.

People stopping in here have no doubt noticed that there are suddenly a lot of photos or reflected posts on Hawai'i up here and that the authors have recently been there.  For me, it's not the first time, but the first time in a very long time.  I think I was last there in about 1975 or so, but frankly, it could have been as long ago as 1972 or 1973.  It's a while back.

At that time, I was pretty young, and while I recall being there, I also frankly wasn't as prepared, rather obviously, to be surprised by one thing or another of the type we generally note here.  This time, much older than I was back then, things are a bit different.

In travelling to Hawai'i, I'll note that we went to Maui and Oahu.  Last time, I went with my mother to Oahu and then to Maui.  We went to Oahu as my mother had a great aunt who lived there, and who actually had been born and raised there.  So we spent most of our time there.  I recall that Maui, where one of her daughters lived, was less developed than Oahu  and I remember visiting the extremely impressive Haleakalā National Park.  I also recall that my cousin was married to a Native Hawaiian and that he was quite the hunter, which really impressed me.  But I didn't run around looking to make observations on old Hawai'i.

 Hunting is a traditional activity of the Polynesians and is very much a local activity in Maui.

I didn't this time either, but perhaps for some reason, I can't help but not do that. So I did a bit. And there were plenty of things that surprised me.

For one thing, I was surprised by the serious nature of cattle ranching on Maui. Frankly, I shouldn't have been, but for some reason I assumed that ranching on Maui was probably a touristy remnant of days long gone by. Not so. There are cattle everywhere outside of town.  And a lot of the country looks like pretty good cattle country to.

I feel downright stupid in making that observation, as its' probably the same sort of observation that tourists make here that I find rather lacking in one way or another.  "You have a lot of cattle here!"  Well, no kidding.  Well. . . they have a lot of cattle there too. And reading up on it, cattle have been a pretty big deal in rural Hawai'i for a really long time.

One thing I wouldn't have been prepared for at all are some of the efforts that were made to develop the cattle industry beyond that which it was.  For instance, one of the islands visible from the southern coast of Maui is a small island most recently used by the Navy as a target range.  Now its a state park, closed to general access, but at one time in the late 19th Century a Wyoming rancher and his partner tried to make the entire island a cattle ranch.  I would never have guessed that.  I guess that also says about how lucrative big time ranching in general was, and how comparatively cheaper Hawaiian land was, prior to air transportation (and more on air transportation in a moment).  No way a Wyoming rancher could buy an island like that today.

 Kahoʻolawe.  During and after World War Two this was a Navy target range, but in starting in the mid 19th Century it was ranch land, and was one big ranch owned by a partnership made up of Wyoming rancher Angus McPhee and Maui landowner Harry Baldwin from 1918 up into the 1940s. Even at the time it was first a target range, it remained a ranch.

That cattle were and are such a big deal shouldn't have surprised me, as pig have been since before European contact.  Pork is a major Polynesian food item, and the pigs sure didn't swim to Hawaii.  Indeed, there were no mammals at all on the Hawaiian Islands before the Polynesians started to colonize them around 1100. They brought the pigs with them.  Before that, the islands were the domain of birds and spiders.  Some really big birds too.

Some of the birds are now extinct.  That's not a surprise to me, but what probably is a surprise to many is that the Polynesians had a major hand in that, in the early colonization process.  The Hawaiian Island were partially deforested in the process of Polynesian colonization, and some of the really tiny remote ones were virtually completely deforstested.  Bird life also took a pounding.  I'm not saying, however, that the Polynesians were bad people for doing that.  They were trying to survive against incredible odds, and to the extent that they recreated the islands to suit their needs, well, it's pretty impressive really.

If pigs are no surprise to me, and cattle shouldn't be, one animal that really, really is, is the horse.  I wouldn't have expected any significant horse use on the islands at all, outside of ranching, but I was very far off the mark.

 

Saddle Horses today on Haleakala, Maui, Hawai'i.

Horses were apparently introduced to the island relatively shortly after European and received very widespread use.   That really shouldn't have taken me off guard, given the general difficulty in getting around the island, or in transporting anything, at the time.  The last Crown Princess of Hawai'i, Victoria Kaʻiulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawekiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, actually died after dying from a cold she caught while riding on Oahu, although her heath had otherwise become weak by her concerns over the fate is the islands and her loss of climatic acclimation by living abroad.  Still, it's interesting that riding had become common in the islands.

The Hawai'ian monarchy had actually established a cavalry unit in order to be able to rapidly deploy troops in an environment in which it otherwise was difficult to, and the U.S. Army consistently deployed cavalry to the islands after the US annexed them in 1898.  Foreign invasion of the islands was a major military concern for the US and while we now principally think of the Navy in this context, the Army had a major role in defending the islands.  A lot of that mission was fulfilled by cavalry, the only type of unit that was capable of going from one spot on the islands to another quickly.  Cavalry remained stationed in the islands as least as late as the 1930s.

I don't know if it was the Army that brought polo to the islands, but I've read that George Patton, who was station in Oahu in the 20s or 30s, played a fair amount of polo while stationed there, which isn't surprising as polo was a huge Army deal at the time.  I noticed that Maui has a polo grounds, which doesn't mean the Army brought it there, but I do wonder.  Anyhow, an area has to be pretty horsey before polo will show up there, particularly a place like Hawaii as it isn't as if it'd be easy to ship your polo pony there, or that it'd be even easy to ship a horse from one island to another.  Anyhow, it says something about how common horses had become.

Indeed, horses were such a factor in the Army's role in Hawaii that Hawaii was one of the first locations in which the Army made a dedicated effort to phase them out.  Mechanization of artillery started to come in during World War One, but it was still something that was somewhat underway as late as World War Two.  Anyhow, while a surprising location, to me, for such an effort, Hawaii was one of the areas where the Army mechanized artillery nearly immediately after World War one.

One thing that very much surprised me, and shouldn't have, is the lack of sea transportation in the islands. As close as they are, you'd think that all the major islands would have ferry services.  They do not.  There are ferry services that serve very nearby islands. For examples, the islands that are within very close proximity of Maui have ferry services, which makes sense. But if its a major island, it won't be in ferry contact with the others. That struck me as really odd, until I realized later that the economics of it just don't allow for that in the modern era.

Traditionally, of course, the Hawaiians traveled from one island to another by seagoing outrigger canoes.  But you can't carry much in a boat of that type.  The Polynesians themselves used more substantial boats, albeit still pretty small, for long distance travel  No doubt that was the norm in the islands up through, and after World War Two, as well. That is, people who lived there went from one place to another by boat.  I guess a ferry existed that operated between Maui and Oahu within the past 15 or so years.  So why not now?

 Traditional outrigger canoe.

Well, it probably doesn't make economic sense.

In my mind's eye, I imaged a situation, for example, where a businessman in Oahu might want to go to Maui for the day and work.  A car ferry would allow him to take his car over, do his work, and catch the ride home that evening.  Makes sense, right?

Probably not.  For one thing, being a landlubber, I probably don't' appreciate the number of hours involved in a trip of that type.  It'd probably be a three day deal, allowing for transportation. And in thinking on it, it makes a lot more sense to just fly over to Maui, rent a car, do your work, and go home.  That's probably a lot cheaper.  Indeed, depending on prices, that's what I'll do quite often if I need to go to a town or city over five road hours away.  I can do it quicker and cheaper by flying and renting a car. That should have occurred to me.

Pearl Harbor, by air.

Maui, by air.

So that air travel has become as vital, for intra islands transportation, as it has become for intra state travel in Alaska, shouldn't have surprised me.  I'm still not entirely convinced that some sort of passenger ferry wouldn't be somewhat viable, but it probably isn't.

On air travel, the airplane has made modern Hawaii what it is, for good or ill.  That's not a criticism, just an observation.  Hawai'i is beautiful and much of it remains unspoiled, but frankly Honolulu is a place that I think only a person who loves really big cities would love.  It's an obvious major destination for Japanese tourists, and has been for decades. Signs are frequently in English and Japanese. Chances are to residents of crowded Tokyo, it's pretty neat.  But no matter what, you couldn't have done a Japan to Hawai'i vacation without the airplane.

For that matter, you really had a hard time doing one from the US to Hawai'i, although one of my grandfathers had done just that. As a young man, his health deteriorating, he was sent to Oahu to live with relatives there.  This was prior to World War One, and it involved a long sea voyage, quite obviously, as part of the trip.  His health was pretty bad at the time, and they sent him there for the weather, activity and to relax, which he apparently did.  I've seen one photo of him from that time period (I never met him myself) and his is indeed a skinny, very sick looking, young man in the period.

But that a rarity indeed, made possible by his father assisting in it and by the fact that his cousins and aunts were living there, making it somewhat cheaper than the norm.  For most people, traveling to the islands wasn't even a remote possibility until the airplane made it easy, although tourism was already a factor in the islands economy in the early part of the 20th Century. Still, on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, while there were hotels there, they weren't garden variety tourists for the most part, but fairly well heeled ones.  

The pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel, built as a luxury hotel (which it still is) in 1927.  As a complete aside, this photos has two Japanese tourist in the foreground, with one posing for the other with arms raised.  While not to seem culturally insensitive, this seems to be very much a Japanese cultural affectation, as Japanese tourists seem to invariably strike one of about three poses when being photographed.  This is one, with the person being photographed having his fingers in the "V" sign.  The same sign, with arms at the side is very common, and young female tourists seem to like to pose for male companions in a hip swung sort of pose with arms at the side as if pointing to something, no matter how dense the crowd near them may be.

Air travel to the islands was, at first brutally expensive, and prior to World War Two it was something that was really only undertaken by the very well to do.  After the war, however, air travel, while still not cheap, became much more affordable.  By the 60s it was very affordable, and now, while not cheap, it's well within the reach for Middle Class Americans.  In the meantime, air travel has expanded to where it is now possible to fly directly to Maui as well, which was not the case until 1983.

 

The first intra island air travel was on a plane like this. Well suited for its role, it'd be slow for most air passengers today.  Model at the Pacific Aviation Museum.

 Pan American in its post World War Two glory days.  This aircraft model, at the Pacific Aviation Museum, depicts a Pan American Strato Cruiser, a commercial airliner variant of the B-29 Stratofortress of World War Two.  Pan American used this long range aircraft to replace its prewar flying boats.  This airplane was the type that was used to fly all the way to Japan, with stops in Honolulu and Wake Island.

While tourists come to Hawai'i by plane, it's still the case that a lot of what's used in the islands still is local in one sense or another.  I've spoken elsewhere about local breweries, which tended to be lost in the US and reappear, but they were never lost in Hawai'i, other than during prohibition.  And the same is true of a lot of other products, some being surprising.  Portuguese sausage, for example, has a long local history, reflecting the immigration of Portuguese farmers to the islands in the early 20th Century.  And the islands still farm sugar cane and mill sugar, shipping the product back to the US.

Anyhow, some odds and ends in observations.  And I guess a final comment.  I wonder what it says about a person who picks up such observations while on such a trip?