Hawaii Chronicles III: World War Two in Hawaii from the Pages of Paradise of the Pacific

A Yank’s-Eye View of Honolulu

A Yank’s-Eye View of Honolulu CPL. BILL REED E The war hasn’t changed the people of Honolulu a bit. They are still as hopelessly sentimental, as wildly romantic, and as childishly imaginative as they were in the days before the blitz. When the Japs blasted their ivory tower with death-dealing bombs and machine-gun bullets, they were stunned into realism for only a moment. On December 8, 1941, Honolulu citizens were just as sentimental as they were on December 6. The only difference was the change in the object of their affection. Sentimentality is usually a very funny trait. It is what makes women weep at the movies, men blow their noses at weddings, and Brooklyn baseball fans throw pop bottles. But sometimes sentimentality rises above its mush level and assumes heroic proportions.That is what it did during that frenzied December two years ago, when the easy-going, pleasure-loving citizens of Honolulu set about the harsh business of war. The lush, balmy pre-war days in this tourist-camp community fully justified the dream-like existence of its inhabitants. They lived in a world of music, flowers, and gay, colorful holidays. It was the world of Johnny Noble and his island songs—a world of hula girls and beach boys and lei-sellers. Everything in this world was soft and luxuriant. Nowhere was there a better example of what Hitler and Tojo serenely believed were “decadent democracies.” When war came, Honolulu was the only American city that lived in constant fear of immediate enemy invasion. Its dwellings were the only American homes to come face to face with Axis terror. Overnight, Honolulu was changed from a community that was smug in its security to one in which the people expected devastating punishment from Jap bombers, ships, and submarines. 181 First published April 1944. Overnight, the people’s absurd sentimentality about their beloved island “paradise” became the most potent weapon against the Japs in their proposed conquest of the Pacific. It was only a few hours after Pearl Harbor was attacked that Joseph P. Poindexter, civilian governor of the Territory of Hawaii, declared that an emergency existed, and the military governor assumed command. Martial law was immediately put into effect, and there were regulations on the sale of food, gasoline rationing, and discontinuation of the publication of certain periodicals, particularly those that were believed to be pro-Japanese. The most rigid blackout in the world was enforced from sunset to sunrise, and there was a curfew after 1800. . . .The people accepted the severe regulations imposed by the military government with the same mad enthusiasm that they had received Johnny Noble’s latest song, Winona Love’s newest hula, and the monthly issue of the Paradise of the Pacific. Today, more than two years after the blitz, wartime Honolulu is fantastic . It is a city of a thousand subdued conflicts—between the “kamaainas” and the “malihinis,” between servicemen and civilians, between the many races that form blurry dividing lines among the social classes. The old resident kamaainas, who knew only the moneyed , partying whites that came from the Mainland to winter at Waikiki, resent the boisterous, rude malihinis who have come to shops at Pearl Harbor or to construction jobs at Hickam. And the malihinis accuse the kamaainas of selfishness, coldness, and indifference because the facilities for hospitality and amusement are taxed beyond capacity. Some of the civilians object to servicemen who fill the bars and hotels when they are in town on pass, and some servicemen wonder that civilians should begrudge them eight hours of freedom each week. . . . It is more pleasant to live in Honolulu now than it was just after the blitz. Early in March 1943, the Army relinquished a large part of its territorial control to the civil government. It was a sentimental day for the sentimental Honoluluans, and the “restoration” ceremonies were conducted in the throne room of the Iolani Palace. The room was filled with smiling people wearing leis, and the string section of the Royal Hawaiian Band played “Song of the Islands.” The Iolani Palace grounds, now mushroomed with small wooden buildings housing many new offices of the wartime government, are no longer so rigidly guarded, and many of the important business Hawai‘i Chronicles 182 buildings have members of the Business Men’s Training Corps for sentries instead of soldiers and marines. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel...