From Our Files

July Archives

In 1888, King Kalakaua issued a royal charter, commissioning a magazine. Then titled Paradise of the Pacific, this publication became HONOLULU Magazine, making it the oldest magazine west of the Mississippi.

1933

Despite the arrival of new inventions like “electric ice boxes” and “talking pictures” on the Big Island, “the spirit of old Kona survives,” especially among its resident fishermen, writes Paradise of the Pacific. “Superstitions abound among the fishing folk of Kona, old beliefs handed down from ages past. It is fatal to a day’s fishing trip, for example, to take along bananas for lunch. Hawaiian fish just can’t tolerate bananas, as one can learn by asking any old-time fisherman in the district. It is also bad luck to wish a fisherman good luck. … Some of the old men take such an expression so seriously as to give up the entire trip.” 

1953

“If you think the muumuu’s nothing but a tent with ruffles, it’s time to think again. The old missionary nightgown-dress can set the boys awhistling when it’s had a bit of imaginative modernizing,” writes Paradise of the Pacific, covering the Honolulu Symphony Society’s “Muumuu Mania” party at the Queen’s Surf. “Missionary ghosts probably flipped their halos, for some of the styling probably was the most daring done to the old dress in the more than 100 years that muumuu’s have been traditional Island garb.”

1973

HONOLULU Magazine shadows U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye on a typical workday in Washington. In addition to serving as one of seven senators on the Watergate Committee investigating allegations surrounding President Nixon’s 1972 election (photo above left), he chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on foreign operations and the Commerce subcommittee on foreign commerce and tourism. “And then there are all those letters from constituents to answer. The senator is a bug (if you’ll pardon the expression) about reading his own mail,” the magazine writes.