 Yubachi Talk. Gordo the Tex are here. Not alone. How's that for amazing? And Andrew, the security guy. Where have you been? Palau brother. Oh man. It's a long way. Long, way way. Long way. And then you're flying off somewhere else again. Well anyway, welcome back. Nice to have you here. Please grab yourself a live. Pull up a towel and a chair, sit down and join us for another exciting, thematic, thrilling episode of Yubachi Talk. We have a great guest today. Tom Wolfers. I can't want to say Woolworth, but I'm not, Tom, nice to see you, not the founder of Woolworth, Tom Woolforth, and Tom is a proprietor of this company called Anana Corporation, but you've got some really cool projects you've worked on. You and I met at a watering hole, it was in my man's standard, sitting at the live ation, having a live ation, I met Tom and said, when you're in Oahu, come on in, he lives in Alaska. So he flew all the way down from Alaska just to do this show today. How's that? Appreciate your time. Appreciate your time. Appreciate your time. Our arms sore. Our feet. Our guests spare no expense. Anyway, let's jump right into this. So tell me a little bit of a background on yourself and then we'll get into this really intriguing project that you've been working on. So a little background. Thanks a lot, Gordon. I was born in Flint, Michigan. Okay. That's been in the news a lot lately. Yeah. Fast forward to my days in archeology in the Midwest and then one day I had a job offer in 1995 in Hawaii. They said, come on down to Hilo. I did. I jumped in the plane and some more flying to Hilo with the family. I spent 14 years in Hilo doing archeology, a lot of stuff mostly on the big island, sometimes in caves. That was a lot of fun. That must be awesome. Oh my goodness. I got some stories. Yeah. We're going to get something. Let's squeeze a few out of you. Okay. And then in 2009 I moved to Alaska and I am currently the Tribal Liaison for the Alaska Army National Guard. Tribal Liaison. Now that's a cool job. So you're on the base? I am. Okay. On the way, the one that goes up to Denali. The train goes by there. What's that? J-Bear. Elmendorf Richardson. Oh my goodness. Yeah. You didn't buy that on the train once. It goes right through. This show is really getting out there. We're expanding. We're getting into all kinds of different areas. It's kind of cool. So when I met you at the big island brew house, there's a plug out guys getting me a free beer next time I'm up there. Nice. Anyway, when I met you, you were talking about this incredible project that you were working on. And to do with, and it gets green so I can't show, the battle's on the big island. Correct. So tell us a little bit about this. You bet. Well, it's two things. It's a product, it's a paper product that looks like a map. And you can unfold it and see this map of where 108 ancient battles took place over the last thousand years on the big island. But there's also a website that you can go to. And you can go all over the place on this website learning about warriors, learning about different battles, different places. It's pretty fun in itself. There's a lot. I keep adding to it. So it's always growing. Yeah. Wow. So how did you get the project? Where are you at? University of Michigan? So I missed, there was a little gap there. Quite a gap. You studied archeology at Michigan? At Indiana University. I was a big fan of Bobby Knight. And Hoosiers there. Yeah, I know. Kentucky boy. And when I ended up in Hawaii, I just got immersed into this situation here. And in fact, I'm glad you asked that question because, you know, I had to read the archeology literature to be any good here. But what I found out was that my colleagues in archeology weren't identifying the battlefields. You know, we could do hay-ow and burials and trails and all those other things you think about. But we weren't seeing the battlefields. And I thought, well, why is that? They're hard to see. You can imagine. It's just like Gettysburg or whatever. It's just a plowed field or a hay field. And here in Alaska, it's just, or, where am I? I mean, here in Hawaii, it's just a lava field. So I started, instead of reading the archeological literature, I started reading the oral histories and the histories and whammo. That's where they are. That's where the battles are talked about. Sometimes only in one sentence. Sometimes in whole pages and chapters. So I started spending more and more time accumulating that information. And then it turned into this website and turned into the map. And was it in Hawaiian? Did you have to have it translated or? No. These are books that are available to everybody. And almost any bookstore, you'll be familiar with Kamakau and Kalakaua and Malo, EE. Those are the Alaska, these are the Hawaiian folks written in English. But then there's also the Hollies that showed up like Fornander and O'Galley, Westervelt and Throm and those folks. So Forest knows all this stuff because there was no written Hawaiian word, right? Correct. So it was oral history. That's kind of when it was in oral history, it was translated, so there was oral history that got, beginning to get recorded on Western contact. Correct. It's a funny phrase when you say oral histories because it's oral histories written down. Sure. Gotcha. Okay. Well, that's kind of cool. Now, so you said, so Nolan was doing the battles and you said, oh wait, why don't I look at that? Yeah. You had to plug that game. You had an inquisitive. And then because you were on the big island, you were in Hilo, then that's what said, okay, let's look at the big island versus Kauai, Oahu and A'ai and all the other places. Well, that's kind of nifty. Now, so, I mean, how do you, how do you go about, so you read the books, right? And then what do you do? You take out your GPS. Okay. There's a lot of that. Well, in the books, they don't tell you precisely where these battles are. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Rarely, I should say rarely, do they actually tell you. So you get general ideas. And I haven't found them. I haven't been able to walk out and say, this is exactly where it is. But I've taken that information and put it out there for everybody else to think about too. And between everybody going to the website and thinking about it, maybe we can actually find the locations. So yeah, so on your website and then on the paper map, you've got all the locations marked out and so on. And general location. General location. So what you're hoping to do is have people come in and contribute to it and add more that they may know about. There's a lot of folks out there with a lot more knowledge than I have. And I'm hoping that this stimulates dialogue. Okay. And we can share that and grow from there. So have there been any excavations so far at any of the sites? Not at the battlefields. Or are they gathering or okay? No, in fact. Oh, I see. So there's still some work to be done. A lot of work to be done. In fact, ask yourself the question, what kind of artifacts might you find at a battlefield? Sure. You know, you think of the weapons, of course. There'd be weapons. Yes. And maybe the bodies, but those get processed. You know, they bring their dead and they take them home and they treat them properly. So there's not a lot of things at that location of that violent battle. So it's a tricky thing. There's other things you have to think about. The camps around the battlefield, the trails leading up to it and maybe, you know, where they ate before they, you know, had the big battle and then what they did when they were trying to leave. So it gets a little tricky. Yeah. And you've had to deal with the Hawaiian culture and make sure you're not trapping on lands that you shouldn't be. Absolutely. And all of those kinds of things. This is very important. In fact, there's a lot more people out there that know stuff that hasn't been written down as well. So if you're lucky, you know, you can make some nice relationships and learn about that. And I've been very lucky in that regard. Yeah. And there's a group out there called Lua Practitioners. So a lot of folks that are doing this now, and it's like your taekwondo, you know, it's your martial art. Okay. And folks are doing that and having a great time, you know, keeping this vibrant and alive and learning that ancient art of warfare. That is pretty incredible. I mean, this is kind of a very intriguing story. Sure. And I didn't think about stuff not being left behind, right? Because it's, you know, it's not like a scarcity economy, but there's, like if I didn't, you don't leave a weapon on the ground when you can plainly see it, you're going to pick it up and take it, you know, and they're probably, I don't know how many were killed, like people were probably hurt badly and many probably got their head busted open, but it's not like a bomb, so there's parts blown everywhere and things like that. So it's, they're intact, right? It's not like, you know, the Civil War and all those kinds of things, right? So now, are you trying to document the purpose of each of those battles? Why was this battle fought or significant? You know, the significance of that, with 108 battles that you know of today on the Big Island, I mean, they're all, 108 can't be related to the overthrow or the bringing together of all the islands, they all have to be related to different things. Absolutely. And in fact, the story over a thousand years or so tells of the growth of the groups here and the social maneuverings and the kings and queens and intermarriages and all that kind of stuff, so it's a long story of development for the societies in Hawaii. It really leads up to Kamehameha, and of course, he studied that stuff. He didn't get his book out to study it like somebody might today, but I mean, he knew the oral histories and he knew about that battle from 500 years ago, and that would help inform him on how to do a better job in his work, too. So it's really fascinating the whole story and how one story leads to another. Yeah, I'm just sitting here getting more and more intrigued on it, because I noticed that on your website and again on the map that you've got write-ups on a number of the different battles and how they were put together and who was what, and you got that from the oral histories and the books that you were able to research. So I wonder how, out of all of them, I bet you've only got, what, 10% of what is probably known? You know, that's a really good point, because there's a debate about that out there in my profession, in the historians, and you could say that everyone that was written down is everyone that there was, but other people say, no, there was a lot of other ones that never made it into the oral histories, because what do they say? The victor writes the history, right, and what about, you know, the folks that lost, they might not have got to tell their version or their tale, or it was lost to the ancient, you know, centuries, all along. Sure, oh, and losing probably cost you your food and your land, and you had to spend time getting yourself read, you know. Well, I don't think they did a lot of rehabilitation back. You know, I mean, you probably were gone, though. I mean, I'm just presuming you, you know, you would run off of your resources or whatever it may be, right, so you had to sort of relocate or something. Well, I'm the howliest of howlies, so I got to ask, is there any of the battles where they, did they battle over, like over lands, over the areas? That's a really good question, and I don't quite know the answer so much as trying to expand their own territory as to really win the island, you know. I mean, there's six major districts in Hawaii, and they all had their major chiefs, and they all knew each other really, really well, so they weren't trying to get the next-door neighbors' territory so much as they were all vying for that one big spot over the entire island. They would make alliances with their neighbors sometimes to do that, and sometimes not. There'd be civil wars between groups of chiefs, you know, across the island, that kind of thing. So it's very similar to, like, I'll think of Britain, too, because they had the serfs, and that's the one at least I can relate to, and they had those kinds of battles that went on within the families, because there were intermarriages and the relationships that went on there. There's a lot of similarities there. Wow, that's pretty incredible. Interesting. So... Always about the land grids. It's funny how people, oh, it's a human thing for some reason. Sorry, you can't make more land. I mean, I guess not we are. That's right, the big island there. Well, we're making land, yeah, but they just didn't want to wait for that. Yeah, the big island is making more land. China's making more land. They're putting land up. Apparently, yeah. Now, I digress again. We're trying to keep me focused and thematic here. Anyway, we're getting ready close to coming up on a break, you know. So what we do, if we take a break, we go get this guy Angus from the beach. He's from another set of islands, and he's got a new thing he wants to talk about. He wants another set of islands, and I don't know where he's from. He's from another planet, maybe. Yeah, maybe. So this is Tom Wolfer, not the founder of Woolworths from Anana, your sole proprietor. Archeologists got some really cool stuff about happening on the big island, and we can talk about Linae as well when we come back. All right, we'll go pay some bills. We'll be back in about a minute. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com, where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Aloha, my name is John Wahee. Am I actually have a small part to do with what's happening today? Served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee every other Monday. Thank you, Ara. I'm Jay Fidel, host of Life After Statehood, and I do this with a regular contributor, Ray Tsuchiyama, and we try to make sense of all that has happened in Hawaii, all that is happening, and all that should happen. Ray, what do you think of that show? I feel delighted to be part of Life After Statehood since after 59, so many things happen to the state of Hawaii, yet things could have gone in other directions. And that's what I'm fascinated about, that Hawaii has had a great history, but could have an even greater future. There you go, I believe that. I'm with you all the way. Ray Tsuchiyama and me, Jay Fidel, we do it as much as we can on Life After Statehood. Come around and see what we have to say, thanks. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hey, Aloha, and welcome back to Hibachi Talk. Andrew's security guy here, and I got a real quick security minute because I got a call today that bothered me. You know all these devices, you own these electronic devices that you plug into your network at home or at your office? They all have firmware on them. You need to check for firmware updates often for your devices, okay? There may be vulnerabilities out there that have been fixed on newer versions of that firmware. And if you haven't installed it, you're sitting there with the device that has a problem or a potential problem or a potential vulnerability to cyber attack. So update the firmware on all of your devices frequently. Thank you. Angus is here. Angus, what's going on, buddy? Hey, man, Andrew, welcome back. Welcome back. You know, I'm always updating my firmware. Every year I update my firmware. Yeah, every year, I bet. Every year, oh, not every week. Every week. It's good to see you, man. It's good to see you. Oh, it's good to see you. Tom, it looks like it got a wee bit of a Scottish last name there. Oh, won't we bet on the fourth? I'm on the fifth of the fourth. Oh, I've been on that wee bridge. So I didn't have a gadget this week because I did a new segment. We're gonna call it, how are you kidding me? Okay. So you know what? Remember a few weeks back that Gordo had a picture of us just look very similar to this with a light pole down on the ground. Guess what? This is another one on the same street. Oh, so that's our maintenance tactic? That's our maintenance, new maintenance tactic. It's a poll committee. I know it's the poll committee, trying to decide who's problem it is. Anyway, are you kidding me? Can we get this stuff fixed? What are we paying for this? Where do you find this stuff, man? You're a busy guy. We're not walking around. I find them all over the place. You are always finding stuff. Good job. Anyway, it's like, I'm like an archeologist, but I'm like, I'm hunting for all the things that we really screw up. Excellent. Anyway, oh, he's got an accent. Whoa, my goodness. Anyway, thank you, Tom. Nice talking to you. And nice talking to you. And let me say everybody every week, let your wing game free. Where are you being? Hello? Nice. Good work, Angus. Always out there keeping an eye. I like that somebody's keeping an eye on the bureaucracy and some of the issues out there. And it's funny that it's Angus. He's a busy cat. He's one busy, busy dude. One busy dude. Anyway, we're here with Tom Wilson. And we're talking about your background in archaeology. I was always intrigued at archaeology. That was the coolest kind of project. I'm a cultural anthropologist by trade. Oh, yeah. That's right. You are. Studied it out here at the ranch. Now, what is now for our viewing audience? All two of them. What is a cultural anthropologist? No, not archaeology. So archaeologists, these guys do the artifact work. And they document all this stuff that we try to say people were doing all the reasons why their song and dance and the things, the components of culture that they have. So the archaeologists give us that data that sort of helps tell those stories. So it's a two-pronged sort of attack on figuring out history or figuring out a culture or figuring out what was happening at a place and time, how things got transmitted around the world, and all those kind of things. So did you work with people like? No, we haven't worked together. No, we haven't worked together. I mean, I wasn't any good anthropologist. So I had to go back to technology. Obviously. So what were some of the challenges that you had when you started putting all these things together? 108 battle sites, how do you even start? And then what challenges did you run up against? Well, it was all about the books. It was all about the oral histories and the books we were talking about. But there's not a lot of information out there. So first of all, there's a lot of reading, which I love to do anyway. I mean, I talked about all those books I've read, and I had to read them two times or three times to really make sense of it and see how they networked together and linked together because they did reference each other without knowing it, they reference each other. So there's a lot of that. There's a lot of work in the library. But there's some misspelling sometimes, and there's also disagreements. I mean, you read one person that heard it from one capuna from way back when and wrote it down one way, and then another who heard it another way. So there's not just one story about the one battle. Sometimes there's two or even three versions of that. And so what I do, that's a big challenge, but I don't try to solve that riddle. I bring all those stories to the website so you as the reader can discern that and see how those are different now. And this is the website right here, www.hawaii. I just lost it. Anyway, it's there. There you go. There you go. www.hawaiiwarfare.com And it's a really cool website. So it's really intrigued because you keep going back and looking for more. I'm hoping to keep it going. And there's different links to the within it. So if you're reading along one battle and you want to read about this warrior, you can go read about that warrior. So Tom, is this a self-funded project where you're here working on doing other work or did you come out here to work on this project? That's a great, cool, thank you for asking that. So I do have a day job. When I moved to Alaska, I started working with the National Guard, but I just didn't want to leave Hawaii behind. Awesome. I invested so much and I'd learned so much and I'd been so lucky to be in Hawaii. So I kept this going as a way to stay in touch, you know, at least through the literature and the culture that way. And I did, it's a self-funded thing. It took me years and years to get here. Wow. So have you, did you get any assistance from the University of Hawaii? Or from anywhere? Not at all. Nope, it's all been through my own library and that way. My colleagues are aware of this and I had a lot of discussions with colleagues. That's been very helpful. Thank you for bringing that up because there's a lot of people involved, but not institutionally. You know, I'm happy, I'm really lucky and happy to know a lot of folks in the Hawaii culture and around Hilo and such and they were always happy to point me in a direction. Yeah, actually you mentioned this aside bar kind of like that one of the locations of a potential location of a battle is again another watering hole in Hilo. Oh yeah. That I frequent. Oh, right on the bay. Right on the bay. It's literally there. So you would think that these places that we gathered today possibly were gathering places previously for some reason that maybe someone wanted to gain. Wow, Aver. There's a lot of, there's different kinds of battles. Some at areas of population where you're trying to overcome that person in power. Others on the frontiers, you know, in between the chief fleet groups and that's very interesting and kind of meet on neutral ground sort of and others just in places that are easily accessible like in Hilo Bay, you know, you can roll in with your canoes from Maui and that's the other thing. There was a lot of island to island battles as well. So if you were going to come and try to take over an island and that's a really bold thing to do, you know, you'd have to land at a big beach with a lot of canoes. Do you think they planned these, they had to plan these battles out and how they thought each component would work to take over an island. They'd have to sit and plan all of this out. Now they'd have to know the island. Yes. Did they know what they sneak over here? They did. Had a bad night, quite bad day. There are stories about that too, about reconnoitering. But also during these times, there was a lot of, they were friends, you know, they were not all related but there's a lot of relationships through marriage and kinship and so you would go party with these folks or trade or have, you know, do surf or whatever it was. Many, many years and all of a sudden something might go south and that's when you already knew about the great beach to land on. Oh, and the things that happened. Now did you find that the people were very open to talk about, you know, the history and back in their families and so on? Yes, and I think that, excuse me, it's really amazing to me that there are so much more stories that are not written down. A lot of people out there know the story from their grandpa, they knew their grandma thing and that's fascinating. And that doesn't really show up on my websites. I don't like recite those folks but I'm hoping that this is a project that I do for the next how many years I'm around and maybe you can go in that direction. So have you published any books or is there a book in the works or how's this looking? No, I thought about doing that but as you know, the product is like a map and I wanted to make it easy to digest. So the poster's on one side and it shows the location, the general location of 108 Battles and on the back it's like about 18 pages for each little panel as you unfold as a page and it's like a short book that tells this chronological version of that. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll show up all that well. We'll give it a shot but I don't think it'll show up all that well. It's not too bad. This is the... Battles on the Big Island? Battles on the Big Island and you know, the writing is on the back and there's a great big map in the inside. So, and they can order this from the website? Absolutely. Okay, they can order this on the website. I have two but I'm keeping them for myself. I had two. I gave one away to Forrest. I just saw Forrest. Yeah, and he'll love it. Oh yeah. And so I gave one to Forrest and then I'm keeping the other one but Tom gave me another one. I'll give one to you. See, there you go. There's like, it's all there. So, you've got this one but then there's another project that you've learned to me too about Lenai. Yes. So, why don't you give me a heads up on this one or give her a heads up? Right, oh, well, this is being tech. How about you talk? It's all about tech. All my techs are right here. So, the one from Lenai was just launched this fall and it's really high tech. Mine's got a little bit of paper and I got a website but this one is an app and it's very interactive so you can learn about, you go to this app LenaiGuideApp.org and I think I might have put that on a slide too. And the next thing you do, you're looking at the map of Lenai and it's got some dots you can hit and all of a sudden you're on this part, you're on this beach, you're at this halo and they really have done a great job of getting you on Lenai virtually and so you can really get a sense of the history there in the current culture because that history is very current right now. So did Larry fund that? Who funded it? That was part of the Lenai Heritage Center. I don't know all the details on that but I'm sure it's on the app. I looked at it yesterday and I thought, wow, this is really kind of a cool, neat app. I said the only thing I see missing on it is like the battles. Yes, the battles are missing anywhere. You could do the battles on Lenai and add that to it but it's another cool, quiet app that's out there. What I like about yours and I like about this one is not the Y Visitors and Convention Bureau, it's not everybody trying to sell you a luau, it's not everybody trying to sell you all those things where you can sit and get into the actual history, archeology of what's going on and this has gone on in the state. Thank you for that. And it's not government funded, so there's no dependence on the government. It's self-funded, just like Hibachi talk. So we're not obligated. I keep thinking that the geocachers would be good. As if you could get a geocache on each battlefield, you'd get people out there interested in finding out about that particular battle maybe. You know how their little cache has stuff in it so maybe they would, I don't know, but that's a group of people that kind of, they go wherever, right? For what, for what, the reason of finding the cache but they tend to carry information and then usually there's information about those sites if it's of some sort of significance so that's maybe a way to also help spread this around. I keep thinking of them. You're giving me ideas too, like do you have a, I mean I know you have the website, do you have a Facebook site? I haven't done that yet. So you got, there's Facebook and then there's Twitter opportunities as well. So I'm gonna put a plug out for you. So if there's some volunteers out there that are in this space that want to help Tom with this, it'd be a great classroom project. Yeah, a new geocache, there's 108 new geocaches you can go plant, because they'll go put one there, you know, just to claim to make a first. And then the guy who gets it first gets some notarizers, all kinds of stuff with that folks. It's like, my wife used to do that quite a bit so I'd end up driving to obscure places whenever we traveled to get a geocache. So we're throwing some ideas and hopefully when this gets viewed a number of times you'll get someone to give you calls because they got your website. So another thing we're gonna add to the show a little bit different. We're gonna talk about some things that are happening in the future on this show. We have, I have a couple of announcements and a couple of things that are coming up. One is the April Foolish Party. This is our 31st April Foolish Party. So on April 7th, this is the one where the boys bunch, we raised money for Make-A-Wish. Last year was a- That's a great event. And we raised over $50,000 for Make-A-Wish last year. So it's coming up, I have tickets. If people wanted to call me, mine are discounted. If you want to call me, and he buys you. Call me and Angus will be there, I'm sure. And he'll bring his lohenies with him. So- And we gotta get the remote camera. Get the remote camera. But they had to look at that. So that's April 7th. I think it's a Friday. Usually it's a Friday. Oh, it might have to broadcast. It will do a late show broadcast. And then Angus has got, he's now going out on the road and he's got a performance coming up on- Oh, you don't wanna miss that. It's the February 22nd. February 22nd, he's gonna be resetting Scottish poetry and drinking Scotch whiskey with many of the friends. And that's open to the public. Oh, that's awesome. So go check that one out. So you gotta go. We gotta go. Anyway, Tom, thanks again. This has been really wonderful. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show. You've moved the show up way up the ladder now. And none of our guests go unrewarded. So you got our autograph solo cup, number 101 in the series. Oh, thank you, sir. It's all yours. You just saw this, I have something for you guys. She's wanted for you. Oh, nice. Thank you. This is to you, Angus. Whoa. These are like the real, you can't tip a muller. It's just like a shot glass. I love it. Awesome. It's signed, all right, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Okay. And like we do at the end of every show. And thank you, Zuri and Robert, for helping us get this going. One, two, three. How you doing?