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190 MARINE LABORATORIES hen Bruce White retired as graduate dean in 1954, President Gregg Sinclair asked me to serve and added the title of director of research. Prior to that time, in 1948, the Hawaii Marine Laboratory, the first major research unit on the campus, had been organized as a budget entity. We had no particular physical facility. It was just people like me in zoology and botany working in the marine area. We composed a little group. The quarter-time reduction in teaching load we were granted for research was allotted to that budget. We had almost nothing to buy equipment with. We operated mostly through our academic departments. In 1951 the marine laboratory on Coconut Island was established. Previously, we had an organization but no facility. We obtained an Army surplus target-towing launch as a research vessel. It was forty-six feet long and well outfitted, had a good-sized deck and a good engine. That boat was berthed in Kaneohe Bay at a shoreside pier. Edwin Pauley, his brother, and a couple of others bought Coconut Island about that time. It had eighteen acres and excellent boat facilities. I called on Mr. Pauley and told him what a nice place Coconut Island would be to dock our boat. He said, “We have a lot of other facilities here. Could you use anything else on the Island?” I said, “I’m sure we could.” We walked around the island to inspect potential facilities. Chris Holmes, a previous owner, had developed a lot of saltwater tanks and kept fish and even porpoises in large ponds dredged in the surrounding reef. During World War II, the Army had built some wooden barracks along the edge of the island. Pauley said, “If you want to fix up those buildings and those aquaria and ponds, you may use them.” Pauley asked me to bring Gregg Sinclair over there one day to have lunch with W 11 ORGANIZED RESEARCH UNITS Robert W. Hiatt (as told to Robert Potter) Organized Research Units 191 the Pauley family. Pauley said he wanted the University to use the facilities and agreed to give us $10,000 to help put them back in shape. Ten thousand dollars at that time was quite a bit of money because we did all the work “in-house.” Our University shop people as well as faculty went over and did it. About this time, the director of the Rockefeller Foundation happened to visit the University, and I invited him to go to the island. As we walked around, I told him what research we were doing, how we were trying to get a seawater system built so we could operate a regular marine laboratory, not only for our own faculty but also for visiting researchers who wanted to work on coral reefs. At that time no marine laboratories were available for that research. He became interested in the prospect and gave us another $10,000. So with $20,000, plus what we could pry out of the University, we built a new water system, remodeled the buildings into laboratories , built a new dock so we could bring our boat right alongside, and put all the aquaria and ponds in order. We got two more launches from military surplus to ferry people from the shore. The University bought a couple of cars to transport staff between campus and the boat landing. That’s how we started the Hawaii Marine Laboratory. Our main laboratory building was visited by two U.S. presidents. After Harry Truman left office, he spent six weeks at Coconut Island as Pauley’s guest. Every day Truman would walk around the island, a good constitutional walk. Every day he’d stop in at the lab. He got to know all the people by name and learned what research they were doing. Every day he’d want to know the progress they’d made. Lyndon Johnson was at a governors’ conference in Hawaii in 1960, and Pauley invited the governors to the island for a barbecue. Johnson walked around and came into the lab office where our secretary, Laura Ing, was working. He was wearing a khaki outfit, looking like a farmer. He said, “Young lady, can I use your telephone?” She looked at him and asked, “Do you work here?” He said, “I’m the vice-president of the United States.” That lab burned in 1961, destroying research records, including mine. I appealed then to the National Science Foundation...

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