From Our Files: Moments from Hawai‘i’s Past–November Edition

A look back at Honolulu from 1926 to 1991. Stories taken from the archives of Paradise of the Pacific and HONOLULU Magazine.

November 17, 2016

Michael Keany,

OUR HISTORY

In 1888, King Kalākaua 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.

1926

“As the girls do not dress in Hawai‘i.”

1931

Paradise of the Pacific urges residents and tourists alike to add some variety to their diets using Hawai‘i’s wealth of cuisines—pig and poi and sukiyaki and fah-tui chingdu kai young—because too many have been playing it safe. “Judging from the menus of Honolulu restaurants, one might think that the pineapple mint cocktail and fried ulua were the national dishes of Hawai‘i. With unfailing regularity, these items appear on the menus of downtown and Waikīkī restaurants three times a day. Occasionally there is no mint in the pineapple mint cocktail, occasionally the fried ulua is baked ulua, but otherwise these dishes are unvarying and inevitable.”

1946

“Pro football comes to Hawai‘i,” crows Paradise. The new Hawaiian Athletic Corp. Ltd. has created the Islands’ first professional football team, the Hawaiian Warriors, with “Mr. Football” Joe Kaulukukui the first to sign on, as quarterback. The Warriors would go on to play against the Los Angeles Bulldogs, the San Diego Bombers and the Hollywood Bears, always on home turf, with attendance running between 15,000 and 20,000 per game, but a betting scandal and declining ticket sales led to the team folding after its 1948 season.

1981

Hawai‘i Public Radio debuts on Nov. 13, broadcasting from a makeshift studio on the UH Mānoa campus.

1981

KCCN celebrates 15 years of broadcasting Hawaiian music. DJ Kimo Kahoano says it’s the only all-Hawaiian station in the world, and is introducing new, young local artists into the standard “Old Hawai‘i/hapa haole” playlists. It’s music, he says, that “touches on the history, language, the feelings of what Hawai‘i has been, and hopefully what it will be.”

1991

HONOLULU profiles Sidney Kosasa, president and principal of the ABC Store chain. “Most people here think that ABC Stores is a Mainland chain,” he says, but, in fact, Kosasa grew up working in his parents’ Pālolo Valley grocery store. His first shop was Thrifty Drugs, opened in Kaimukī in 1950.


1931	1981	1991

Learn more about the evolution of covers in HONOLULU Magazine and Paradise of the Pacific: 125 Years of Covers, available at shop.honolulumagazine.com.