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.

1947 Paradise of the Pacific, predecessor to HONOLULU Magazine, visits Papakolea, a Hawaiian Homestead neighborhood. In the photo at left, Angeline Taylor (top right) sits on the steps of her home with her family. “In the 26 years since the Hawaiian homestead plan for persons of Hawaiian or part Hawaiian blood was put into effect … [it] has been termed one of the more successful social experiments of the nation,” the magazine writes. “More than 4,000 persons now live on homestead properties in Hawaii.” Today, more than 22,000 people live on Hawaiian homesteads.

1962 “Two years ago, the trade in Hawaiian recordings was … in a perpetual doldrums. Suddenly, almost overnight … the market for recordings of Hawaiian music is a money-spinner,” Paradise writes. The reason? Prior to 1960, only two radio personalities occasionally played Hawaiian music on air, while other “Island DJs outdid each other with the latest in rock-and-roll and cha-cha-cha. Islanders, they figured, were surfeited with Hawaiiana.” But in 1961, a couple of stations, targeting tourists to Hawaii, added Hawaiian music to their rotations. “To their utter amazement, listener polls told them that Islanders liked Island music!”