 Bingo! We're back. Think Tech on a Monday. Oh, Monday, Monday, Monday. Okay, and we're doing Life After Statehood with Ray Tsuchiyama, informed citizen. Hi, Ray. Good to be here. Off at Thanksgiving. Of course. Have you recovered? Oh, well, I'm fine. I don't eat that much. I spent the whole weekend working on Think Tech stuff, so it's okay with me. All right. So it's a working Thanksgiving for you. Exactly. Every weekend is a working weekend. So let's talk today in our Life After Statehood examination about transportation in a way. And before the show began, you were telling me some very interesting stuff about the Hawaiian experience with transportation starting from Captain Cook. And you revealed to me, which I did not know, and I don't think many people know at all, is that prior to Captain Cook, the Hawaiians did not have the wheel. That's correct. The wheel didn't really exist here, but they had great experience in sailing, you know, with the canoe, of course, and the caravan. And they had extensive inter-island voyages. With canoes? Yeah, with canoes. And when we say inter-island, it went all the way up northwest of Kauai to those atolls and little islets there and stretching all the way to South Point on the island of Hawaii. And they were good at it. They were very good at it. But on the other hand, as you know, they developed their own island cultures and in some instances they were raiding other villages, other islands. It's not like it was one whole state or confederacy or kingdom. And that's a mistake when you say that about life before 1778 when Captain Cook came. Now, Kamehameha had a big battle in the Pali and all that, which consolidated most of the islands except Kauai, as I remember. What role did the transportation play in that? Well, before the British or Westerners came to Hawaii, they could, of course, have caravan of voyages among the islands, but it was not large-scale kind of transportation. What the English and British have brought were larger ships. And also when the Hawaiians saw these ships, they accelerated making larger caramirans, larger ships on their own also. And the death of Captain Cook was around a long boat. A long boat. Yes. The Hawaiians wanted his long boat. He said no. And it was in those days it was called a misunderstanding that led to a riot and firing of muskets and the death of Captain Cook. You're absolutely right. So it was about a small boat, in fact, when this so-called misunderstanding arose, and that ended the life of the British leader at that time. Now, in the group was, many think, was the young Kamehameha that he witnessed the killing of Captain Cook. And he saw the ships come in. And he saw the value of such ships to take other islands. I think that was a catalyst. That's a military weapon. Yes. It all fell into his long-range plan to consolidate, first the island of Hawaii, then to move to Maui, and then the other smaller islands, and then to Oahu. And when he brought his military amphibious campaign to Normandy to Oahu, he had assembled a whole series of larger ships through his... Larger canoes. Well, larger ships. He had one or two sailing vessels that he kind of got alliances with traders, with Isaac Davis, with John Young, with people like that. It's the English-style sailing. That's right. We're not Hokulea. That's right. And he brought over 12,000 warriors through the island of Oahu. And I made a kind of an analogy of the military campaigns of that era. In 1781, when the Revolutionary War in North America between Great Britain and the 13 colonies, ended at Yorktown, Lord Cornwallis surrendered the entire British Army, which was 8,000 soldiers and Marines. So King Kamehameha had the wherewithal to develop logistics to move large numbers of men, material, food, muskets, and, of course, powder and all kinds of weapons to another island. He was remarkable in the space of what? 15 years. Barely 15 years. He picked up all the accoutrements of Western society and used them effectively in consolidating the state. Well, and that's what he did, the kingdom. Now, next up, you're absolutely right, was Kauai. But if you look at the map of the Hawaiian islands, the farthest island from another island is Kauai. It's over 70 miles from Oahu. And he was ready to step up for another campaign, but he had to suppress uprisings and all kinds of political infighting back on the island of Hawaii, other parts. So he delayed that. And Kauai eventually, under the king, kind of acceded to be part of the kingdom. That didn't take place until, like, 1820. Yeah, right. A long time. And that is why, even today, there's a history by adjusting about Kauai, and it's entitled The Separate Kingdom. Yeah. So, you know, you have this very rich history, which gets a real boost by Captain Cook's arrival of navigation, of transportation. I don't remember, Kamehameha had the rule of the broken, the law of the broken paddle. Hawaii Bicycling League, and Tana Gucci talks about this all the time, was that everyone has a right to the road. And what's a little bit chilling about that is that until he announced this law of the broken paddle, not everybody had a right to the road. And some people couldn't go on the road. But after that, it was a sort of democratization of the roadways. I think we're a little late in terms of, you know, global development, but there you have it. So it was an advance, though. Well, I think you have an interesting point there. If you go back to the late 18th century, and if you went to, say, you know, Kakaako or Waikiki back then, and saw a Hawaiian person and say, who are you? Where are you from? He would probably not say, I'm from Hawaii. He would say, I'm from the Ahupaa. That's the area that he or she lived and died and worked and got fish or food and so forth. That stretching from the top of the mountain all the way to the sea, that ecological ecosystem was the world that was the citizenship of that person, not of Oahu. That person probably could not go. He would have been beaten or ostracized or kicked out if he went to Waianae or even to Waimanalo. And so those little visitors existed, self-sustainable, and exchanged like mangoes from the interior with fish from the coast. So they were kind of an ecosystem, but they would not have said, I'm from the Kingdom of Hawaii at that point. Now it's interesting that over time through the 19th century, the formative period for the synergistic development of the Hawaiian culture and people from elsewhere, the Hawaiian canoe didn't go anywhere really. It was the larger ships that came from the mainland and from Asia that really meant... And by the end of the 19th century, it sounds to me like transportation was not really a Hawaiian experience anymore, although they could regulate it certainly, but it was the capital that Oahu was coming from somewhere else, especially into Ireland and between the islands of the mainland and Asia. That's right. And you have some travel between the islands. Like, as you know, up till the 1850s and 60s, Lahaina was the capital of the Kingdom. So during some parts of the year, the whole royal court would have to travel from Honolulu to Lahaina. So that was a big endeavor to do that. So they had to gather a lot of canoes, a lot of vessels to do that. But what really accelerated all this was the clippership. And the clippership would take cane, sugar cane, or molasses or sailing ships, large sailing ships, used as freight, bringing goods to Hawaii from San Francisco and so forth, and then going back with molasses or cane or whatever the product was, sugar cane at that point, to pay for all these products. And now I've heard that even rich planters sent their laundry to San Francisco. But that gives you an idea how dependable the clipperships would be coming in terms of mail and so forth. And then steamships would come about after the Civil War. They would start coming in and out of even more dependable because they could go when there's no wind in between. So that activity accelerated exports out of Hawaii to the mainland. Yeah, and in terms of inter-island traffic, we had those steamships plying the inter-island trade with the cargo and passengers from then, what would be about the last 25 years or so of the 19th century, right through, gee, statehood. That's how you got around, because air flight before statehood was really of no great consequence. It was an adventure, an experiment, but it wasn't for the people. And this is a very interesting question. Statistically or percentage-wise, the more people travel between the islands when there were ferries, then now when there's one monopoly airline. Isn't that true? That is so true. And remember just 10, 20 years, 10, 15 years ago, when you had, like, script. You could buy a lot of flights of Hawaii or Aloha and use them like, you know, like, sort of getting in. And, oh, let's go to Maui this weekend. Let's go to the Hawaii Island of Molokai. And children used to have grand experiences, but today I would bet percentage-wise the high percentage of children on the neighbor islands have never been to Honolulu. Yeah, and vice versa. That's right, that's right. So my father, as I said, in the late 30s when he was on Maui, attending Maui High School, he used to be a manager for a baseball team, I think, for Maui High. And they used to come to Oahu all the time for, you know, for sports events and so forth, going back and forth. On the steamers. On the steamers and carried freight and so forth. But you see, that is combined with another revolution in population. You have, before the war, there were already 45,000 people on Maui. There's now 165,000 on Maui. How do they eat? How do they do things? How do they... It's all brought in directly from the West Coast on container ships. Directly? Directly. They land directly in Maui. Yeah, they just come in, come in. But you see, the rest of the United States, the ports and so forth, export to Asia when you think about it. When items come from China or Japan or South Korea or Taiwan, they go to LA or Oakland or Seattle and they get distributed throughout the U.S. So when I moved from Tokyo to Honolulu, it was cheaper for me to send items in a container from Tokyo to LA. And then get them on a second leg back. Because they had to go another leg back to Honolulu. So it was more expensive to get to... Although the length of distance is nearer to Tokyo from Honolulu and Los Angeles is another leg. But because there's nothing that we ship back to Asia when you think about it, it's empty. So it costs more. So in that period, say the 50s or so, lots of labor strife on the docks. That's right. The planes really hadn't come. The jets hadn't come yet. The statehood hadn't happened. It was revealed, I think, that very few people controlled all these goods that came from the continent. And that changed the power structure, didn't it? All of a sudden, the waterfront became very powerful and the shippers became very powerful. Then Alexander and Baldwin arose and others controlling the pricing, controlling effectively the economy. And what's interesting is how statehood affected that. When we come back from this break, Ray, we're going to find out how statehood affected it and how the advent of the regular airlines affected it in inter-island trade and also in trade with the mainland U.S. and Asia. Wow, I'm excited to hear about it. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi with a Think Tech Hawaii show, Stacey to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha, see you then. Thank you, Hawaii, Asia, in review. I am Johnson Choi, the host. I'm looking forward to see you next month, December 15, Thursday, 11 o'clock, right here again. Aloha, my name is Reg Baker and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We highlight success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success, which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. When we're back, we're live with Ray Tsuchiyama talking about, you know, the way statehood and the advent of the airlines, which happened right around the same time with jet traffic, 1959 or so, changed the docks and the unions that controlled so much of the imports to Hawaii's economy and the exports to the sugar exports and thus the economy itself. So how did statehood change that? How did the airlines change that? I know that's a mouthful of a question. Yeah, it's a big question. You get back to the crux of the economy the ports were at the key, like the internet of its time because through then goods flowed out, goods flowed in. Without shipping sugar or pineapples, you went bankrupt. That's all we produced. We didn't manufacture cars or semiconductors or phones or whatever. It was only agricultural products when you thought about it. So that was a key area to keep peace on the docks. It took a lot of focus by the big companies and became even a government issue. Remember, IOWU was seen as a communist organization at one time and there were, like you say, strikes for money and so forth. But it also was a prelude to more democratization of the society. Unions would play a role in overthrowing the Republican. The revolution of the 1950s. Jack Hall, many, many people of that period were part of it. John Burns could never win an election without union backing and so forth. So the intertwining of societal change didn't also combine with a change in what the unions didn't see coming, which was tourism, which was fueled and triggered by the 707. The 707 suddenly could bring hundreds of people at a time to the airport. And then they would go into Waikiki and at that time there were just the Royal Hawaiians or Moanas or Hale Kalani that catered to the upper crust. They came by ship. They stayed for a month or a month or two months and then lounge with the Beach Boys and have a grand old time. People from the West Coast or Peoria they would stay for a week, barely a week and then they leave on the next plane. There were no infrastructure at that time and one of the early people who saw the future was Chin Ho. And the Ilikai is very much a symbol of the hotel that catered to a new class of short-term stays, families and so forth. And that was a revolution of the 60s of statehood and tourism as a whole industry. How did that affect the neighbor islands? It did not affect them as quickly as Honolulu. I mean Waikiki was already a playground for the rich and famous from the 20s and 30s. You know, Bing Crosby's and the Dukau Mokus and all the stars and starlets from Hollywood had discovered Waikiki from way back. But what was happening on the neighbor islands is that many people don't understand this but from 1945, and I mentioned this before, through the 70s, the population of Maui was static. It was 45,000. In fact, people were leaving from Honolulu and so forth. The plantations were no longer as robust as they had. That's right. And people wanted the air-conditioned job and that's what they found in Honolulu. So MB started thinking what to do with this land that they got and actually we should imagine called Wailea. Wailea didn't exist as even a name of a locality. It's a made-up name. It was Kihe, or Makena, not Wailea. Wailea was weighed down the road. Yeah, and Kanapali was this dense, you know, Kiavea place that nobody wanted and that began to see maybe we can do something here. So the neighbor islands are unique than Honolulu for being more master-planned. When you see the golf courses and so forth, both Wailea and Kanapali... Plan for tourism. Yes, exactly. For mass tourism and the selling of lots and housing and so forth. Because you don't make money on golf courses. You make money out of lots and houses, joining the golf courses. So that's amenity. But the upfront costs would take a lot of money. So the AMBs and AMFAQs and others began to go into another whole different world other than agriculture. And it was not an easy kind of transition because agriculture always fought back because they saw one acre out of ag, it'll never go back through ag. One waste tree. There was always a tension when I was a castle and cook between dole and oceanic properties. There was always a tension between the ag people who wanted to retain ag because they saw why tourism is just a fluke. Ag is where it's at and has been for a hundred years. It would be the dominant economy. So it was always in flux. But the tourism people because of the rise in population, the rise in hotels, and people actually coming here and staying as tourists and that started in the 60s. Yeah. And so transportation was really backbone to that. Everybody would come into Honolulu in those days and then they would go to the neighbor islands, if at all. A lot of people never went to the neighbor islands. And when they went to the neighbor islands, in my recollection they were a minority on the plane. Most of the people on the plane and air flights were really cheap in those days relative to now. I mean it was like $15 to go to Maui. It was really cheap and less than $30 for a round trip. It was something else. And you would take your Azaris and your igloo and your beach mat and you take your best half and go to the beach on Maui. That was romantic and a lot of local people did that. It was a regular thing. They saw their families but they also went as kind of citizens of the state. They were traveling a lot relative to now. There was much more interaction. But given today's lack of travel, most people on Oahu, next stop after Diamond Head is San Francisco, we have no idea what's happening on the neighbor islands. That's true. It is true. And other figures across 300 bucks. That's right. The economy or politics or the needs of the neighbor islands are completely out of mind for 950,000 residents of the state of Oahu, as they say. But one thing in 1964 that people from Hawaii went to Tokyo for the Olympics. And why I bring this up is like, it's a miss chances in history. And when they arrived there, they came into a world where they could go to Tokyo, to the hotel, through a monorail. It just started up in 1964. It's still... The world's fair. Well, no, it's Olympics. Olympics. 64. And it's like 52 years ago. It's still there. And working. Yeah, and working. But that stretch, it's not a far stretch. When you think about it, in 1964, what if, what if Honolulu had developed a monorail from Honolulu Airport? That's what I'm trying to say. Oh, I'm sick to think we could have done that. Yeah, the Waikiki. And in those days, you could go drilling through Liliya, drilling through Kalini, just like H1 and just wiped out entire neighborhoods or divided neighborhoods or eliminated large section of, like, you know, dam in the states, monorail on this side, Mapura on this side. I mean, large divisions happened, and people forget about that. But it did, you know, destroy many neighborhoods because Honolulu, up till the late 60s, was a small city of neighborhoods. Yes. I mean, you go out to Waikai, it'd be three or four towns along the way. You go out to Waipahu to be three or four towns, and each one was a separate neighborhood, a separate unit. But then came the freeways in the middle 60s with federal money for, quote, I love this, interstate highways, interstate highways money. And even today, there's signs that say interstate highway. Took them a long time to build it, and they replaced two lane dirt roads which existed around the time of statehood. Now all of a sudden we had freeways. And freeways, freeways changed things, didn't they? Certainly on Oahu, but also on the neighbor islands. Right. And I think what happened was that the strong got stronger, the weak got weaker. By that I meant Alamoana became a huge shopping center. The neighborhood shopping centers were gone. Kaimukii, for example, was a thriving business center. It was gone by the 60s and 70s. And it allowed for, of course, the development of the suburbs beyond Monolua and with the end of sugar. And so that accelerated, easy kind of in and out. But what people didn't understand was that in order to not get into a traffic mess, you had to develop employment centers out in the western suburbs. And of course it's easy to say. I mean, all through the 70s and 80s, people were talking about the second city and employment centers. It never came about. You don't have that country flow of people. And so everything is still the engine of economic and business growth is downtown in Waikiki. And that's where people come. And that brings us to mass transit and everything else. Yeah, mass transit. I think we should probably have a show next time about mass transit actually, Ray. It's such, it's a huge discussion and it flows out of this whole thing about second city. But I would like to add that when the freeways were built, roads were being built all over the islands. And I remember in the Big Island, for example, the Mamalahoa Highway did not exist in the 60s. And the highway, the highway south of Kona going to South Point, that didn't exist either. That was a little tiny one-lane road with rock walls on it. Take you forever to get to South Point. If you wanted to go from, for example, Kona to Kamawela or Kauai High, you had to go all the way up on the mountain and come down again. So there were a lot of areas in the state that were unbuilt. Interestingly enough, still are. The saddle road, I mean, it's still, maybe they fixed it a little, but it's still a mess. And Cayena Point, we never paved it. They never made a road there. It's the end of the world. Incredible, yeah. But I'll just mention one thing. Unintended constant questions. And I remember this. What if King Street and Baritania did not go one way? At one point they... They were two ways. I remember two ways. Yeah, yeah. And then it eliminated thousands of small businesses. It eliminated them. That's true. Unintended constant questions. It would have been a very different city with little... It would have fed into Cacaco. You would have high-rises there that would have shopped along those streets, Baritania and King Street. And that's all gone. That's all gone. And they're busy throwaways with like deserts. They're like deserts between Alamona and where you live. Isn't that true? Yeah. Unintended consequences is another way of saying bad planning or no planning. But speaking of planning, we're going to get back to this whole thing about rail and all of the implications and all of the factors and considerations. Then, way back when, when it was first considered, and along the way and now especially, and we're going to evaluate exactly why it happened the way it happened, what is happening now, and what is likely to happen in the future. Are you excited to discuss that, Ray? Well, there's many what-ifs, but you cannot change the past. That's the thing. But you can create the future. You can create the future. We're going to talk about the future because that's the most important thing. Next time we meet, here at Life After Stadia. Thank you, Ray. Thank you.