KUALOA
Oahu Island/Honolulu
Co., Hawai’i
by
Hawai’i
is generally overlooked when folks start
looking for ghost towns. Yet due
to its interesting history between the mid 19th Century to just
before World War II is not only interesting, but
quite controversial. Here on paradise in
the mid-Pacific, cultures clashed. Because of its strategic location,
aggressive American entrepreneurship saw a way to make money and the laid-back
island culture didn’t fight back too hard.
The deep, rich soil and plentiful sunshine and rain created an
agricultural paradise conductive to the raising of big-money crops such as
pineapples and sugar - especially sugar cane.
Beginning in the mid-1800s, up through the
early 20th Century, sugar plantations with their mills and
supporting “company” towns, were scattered all over the islands, each pouring
their white gold into the economy. On
the island of O’ahu, there are at least nine old
plantation towns that I’ve been able to research.
During the timeframe mentioned above, the
Hawaiian economy was driven by sugar. As
the importance of this white gold grew, many of the smaller operations were squeezed
out, and big money interests capitalized and five major companies ended up
controlling the industry. Because of
their economic power, much of the islands and their laid-back politics also
fell under their control. Cheap labor
was needed, so over 350,000 workers were brought in from Asia, especially from
Japan, the Philippines, China and Korea. The money rolled in, power grew, and
in 1893, the Kingdom of Hawai’i was overthrown with aggressive help from the
American companies, which owned as much as 75% of the privately-held land in
the kingdom. In 1898, Hawai’i became an
American Territory and in 1959, the 50th state.
Sugar growing and processing was
inefficient and environmentally invasive.
Even though growing conditions were generally ideal, the human toll was
staggering. It wasn’t dangerous like
mining, but was due more to the cramped, near slavery conditions in the
plantations. In addition, increasing
competition from abroad took an economic toll.
Even though production continued full-bore, by the 1930s, eighty years
of plantation culture was quickly fading.
Because the island is fairly small, much of
the land is used in one form or another, and as a result, physical remnants of
the plantation culture are scarce. One
site has been preserved at the Hawaiian Plantation Village in Waipahu, just
west of Honolulu. At the time of our
visit in 2011 we missed it, but the museum has an interesting website that is
worth looking at.
In addition to sugar, and due to the
strategic location of the archipelago, ever since the islands have become an
American territory, the military has had a high presence here, especially
during and shortly after World War II.
In fact, the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, and the Army airfield on Ford
Island there were attacked by Japanese forces in December 1941, forcing the US
into the war.
* * * *
We spent our limited exploring time in the
back country, exploring a pair of former sugar milling towns and several
abandoned military bases. The first site we visited was the Kualoa
Sugar Mill, which is located on private land (Kualoa
Ranch) along the west side of Kamehameha Highway - SH
83, about 2.5 miles south of Ka’a’awa and just north
of Kualoa Regional Park, in the island’s eastern
(windward) shore. It is impossible to miss,
as the smokestack, roofless walls and tumbled rock piles of the old mill sit
only 20 feet or off the highway. The
brick and dark stone ruins are just behind an open white fence BUT are posted
against trespass. Please abide by the
signs and view the ruins from the street side of the fence.
This was the first of the sugar mills on
the island, but today is nearly forgotten.
It was originally established in 1863 by Charles Hastings Judd, the son
of missionary doctor Dr. Gerritt P. Judd, who had
arrived in Hawai’i in 1828 and purchased the land here from King Kamehameha in 1850.
His partner was and Samuel Wilder.
They brought in machinery for their mill from Scotland and built the
structures from local lava stone. A few
sources wrongfully call it coral, but it is lava.
Sugarcane was planted and production began,
but a year later, the Wilder’s son fell into a vat of boiling syrup and was
burned so severely he died a few days later.
Wilder’s wife couldn’t stay at the site any longer so she moved away
shortly afterward. In 1870, Samuel
Wilder sold his share in the company back to Mr. Judd and concentrated and
prospered due to his efforts on building up railroads and inter-island
shipping. However climatic conditions
weren’t favorable and a lack of rainfall hampered production of the
sugarcane. A year later Judd shut the
mill down, but held on to the property.
It is still in the family and is now a working cattle ranch and a
tourist destination for back country tours to places where television shows and
movies were, and still are, filmed.
Extending to
the south, to the north side of Kane’ohe Bay, is a large flat area that once played host to
a WW II era landing field called Kualoa Air
Field. It served as a training field for
Bellows Field (now called Bellows Air Force Station), which is located just
north of Waimanalo on the southeastern end of the island, about 12 miles
east-northeast of Honolulu. Here on the
sandy flat, a portable, perforated steel, planking Marsten
Mat runway ran 6500’ north-south and was bisected by the highway. Whenever planes would take off or land,
vehicle traffic on the road had to be stopped for the planes.
Along the west
side of the north end of the runway, open-topped, soil revetments were built to
protect the airplanes from any prying enemy eyes off shore. Artillery batteries were built on the nearby
hillsides to protect the landing field.
The point is backed by a near vertical ridge and the ocean abuts the
runway on the other side, so a lot of nervous pilots using this windy,
zero-margin for error field were relieved to either be airborne or safely
landed. After the war ended, the field
closed and the land reverted to the original owners.
The landing field is completely gone, but
it was located at what is now Kualoa Regional
Park. The south end has been paved and
is now a parking lot for the park. North
of the highway, the runway is said to be visible, but we didn’t see it, the
revetments and bunkers, or the artillery emplacements as that area is part of
the private Kualoa Ranch, and there is extensive
greenery everywhere. However, just
knowing the history of the place made for an enjoyable visit and proved that
there are ghost towns in the Aloha State!
LOCATION:
·
SUGAR MILL RUINS
·
Latitude: 21.5224914
·
Longitude: -157.8353351
·
AIR FIELD
·
Latitude: 21.5123106
·
Longitude: -157.8370571
This was our featured Ghost
Town of the Month for July 2012.
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FIRST POSTED: July 16, 2012
LAST UPDATED: August 17, 2012
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