 Hi, four o'clock rock, I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, and this show today is going to be Life After Statement, it's a study in nostalgia for the old guys, but if we don't study history we are doomed to repeat it, George Santiana. That's right, that's right. And today we have, as usual on Life After Statement, we have Ray Tsuchiyama, an informed citizen who has great memories, he's into nostalgia among other intellectual pursuits. Before we start, I want to tell you that if you want to participate in the conversation we have Twitter for you, thinktechhi, and we have our VoIP phone which you can call on 415-871-2474 and participate in the discussion, okay? And today's discussion is about air transportation in Hawaii, especially since statehood is very interesting, statehood like coincided with the Boeing 707, didn't it? Within weeks. That's absolutely correct, and before that there was air travel to Hawaii, the clipper planes, the pan-land clipper planes, and they had the refuel in Hawaii before going on to the Philippines, Japan and so forth, and those are glory days of air travel because when it landed, it was on the water, and then you transferred to a little boat or outrigger canoe and then all your luggage, but you were like at point, you were at your hotel immediately, you didn't have a commute from the airport. That's right, right there, it was like door-to-door, door-to-door kind of thing, but you're absolutely right. The 707 brought volume, could bring 200, 250 passengers one time. Now that's equivalent to one small passenger liner coming in from Los Angeles or San Francisco. So this suddenly revolutionized hotels in Waikiki because you had to have a middle-range hotel to take care of, a burst of people coming in, and they leave in two weeks, and the more traditional form of tourism was that you took a leisurely one month, two months, hanging out in Waikiki. With a ship. That's the ship. The pace was slower. That's right, in the Bing Crosby, Bob Hope era, Heddy Lutma Loma. Papa Holly music in the Banyan Court. And they had the Beach Boys and so forth, and Hawaii Calls, the radio shows, and so forth, but it was a, like you say, a very slow-motion kind of vacation that nobody takes anymore, and they had beautiful kinds of restaurants, hula shows, clubs, and suddenly you had a new kind of middle-class visitor who had money to spend just for a week or two weeks, and they were taking the next plane back to Los Angeles. It was very exciting to take a jet plane up till then, and the best you could do was a turbo prop, or less, you know, just an ordinary propellant piston engine. But here now these were jets, you know, and really, I mean, we haven't had such disruptive technology and transportation since then. So when this happened, people were really excited about traveling halfway across the Pacific in a few hours, wow, in a brand new jet plane. Very exciting, and it was part of the experience of coming to Hawaii. That's right, and you have another iconic movie, Blue Hawaii, that comes right around that time, 61, and you see the swain fields of sugarcane, the pineapple fields, Elvis Presley. That was iconic right before the Vietnam War, also. And suddenly you have the Hawaiian village sprouting up by Kaiser, and that was the first tie-in with a TV show called Hawaiian Eye. I remember it. And Hawaiian Eye and Hilton Hawaiian Village was a tie-up. Of course, the show was filmed in Burbank, California, 99% of the time, but people assumed that it was filmed in Hawaii. And again, they wanted to come and see where it was filmed. And so you had the rise of TV. You had the rise of 707. You had technology, really accelerating. All these things happening at the same time, and statehood. And statehood, and a new iconic hotel to cater to these short-term visitors called the Ilikai by Chin Ho. And that was, and the Outrigger Chain, enormous growth in middle market accommodations. And that sprouted out all over. All these things happening, all connected, as you say. Right during the early 60s, from like 59, 60, 61, 62. And plus, when you think about it, the freeways began to emerge right at that time. H1 was just being filmed around that time. And a huge construction all around Liliha, Kapalama, all the way to Kaimuki. And so you had a, just like we go to Beijing or Shanghai today and see the future being built before our eyes, that was Honlulu in the early 60s. Cranes everywhere, construction going on. And of course, there was draining what seemed to be a swamp right before entering Waikiki. And that was Alamono shopping center. That would be the biggest shopping center in the world coming up. So, and of course, there was another construction project and people, tourists used to come and also watch, which is nearby called the state capital. That was a beautiful building also that we should not ignore. And that was, and that with the volcano shapes. And it was the symbol of statehood and of the future of Hawaii. We had a vision of the future then, don't you think? Statehood was more than just statehood. You know, you had to get excited about it. And there were exciting things happening. And one of them was this whole thing driven by 707 later followed with other things. On the other hand, there was another aspect to it I want to mention to you. So I get here in 1965. Right. There was no, you know, what do you call it? Jetway. No, they didn't have jetways. And they didn't have any security either, by the way. All of those were the days. You could go on or off the plane. Nobody would want to pack you down or anything. And the background of agriculture wasn't so aggressive. And there was Aloha in Hawaiian in fierce competition. Yes, yes. So you don't have to plane from the mainland. And the first thing that happens is some young thing, okay, is there in a hula skirt. And she, I don't know, I think we must be close to the same age. Right. She's dancing for you. They're all around dancing. And they come over and they give you a lay. And then maybe another one and another one. And all the passengers, the plane feel they're being welcomed. They're a very special way that did not exist anywhere else in the world. That was welcomed away. And then they would take you to a little grass shack affair on the tarmac, okay, in which there was unlimited pineapple juice. You could drink yourself silly with pineapple juice. What a welcome that was. And your eyes got bigger and bigger because people were catering to you that way. Those were the days. And the pineapple and dole, of course, and the major, you know, big five companies, still in agriculture at that time. If you look at ads, remember the story of Georgia O'Keefe coming to Maui and Hawaii, painting a pineapple that would be on, in a Saturday evening post of that, a life magazine of that period. The pineapple juice as a morning drink was what middle-class America really looked forward to every morning. And that's what got them to see Hawaii as the origin of a very exotic drink at that time. You're absolutely right. Yeah, and at the airport, you know, you get a taxi cab and it was a Cadillac. You know, I mean, I come from New York and they didn't have Cadillac taxi cabs. Even now, they never have Cadillac. They had checker cabs like Neal Abacrami, right? That's all they had. And anyway, you get a Cadillac cab and the driver is kind of a beach boy kind of personality. And he would teach you and talk to you and tell you things. It was like entertainment it was. And invariably, Ray, I hope you remember this, invariably you come down Nimitz, okay? And this big pineapple on the top of the Stoll plant, which was an active plant at the time. Exactly. Only people, you know, students, you know. Which is a water tank, actually, but it was a very beautiful symbol of manufacturing at that point, of canned pineapple. Yeah, and invariably the taxi driver through the uninitiated, you know, Malahini tourists, he would say, hmm, they're taking that pineapple down. Why? Because it's ripe. And that was a joke that led you into Waikiki. Millions of people heard that so many jokes. And of course, Hawaii and I, one of the characters was Ponzi Pons, who was a taxi driver. And he was a Filipino comedian that rose in the prominence because of that show. And again, that iconic kind of happy-go-lucky guy who would initiate you to the tropical culture, which was completely unlike urban LA or San Francisco or New York, or Peoria, Illinois. It was an introduction to something mysterious, yet very happy and vacation land. I mean, you left your, you know, a 95 job behind on the mainland, entered a paradise. And that was Hawaii, selling that kind of dream through movies like Blue Hawaii and many others. Which, I mean, people remember. You know, the thing is that it was so good that it cast a shadow that lasts even till now. I mean, it made Hawaii so popular. It sort of formalized the romance, you know, packaged the romance. And so everybody was looking for that. Webley Edwards, what do you call it? In the courtyard of the Banyan, Alamoana Hotel, Hawaii Calls. Oh, yeah, Hawaii Calls, yeah. Hawaii Calls, you mentioned. Okay, it formalized that romance. That was Presley did. But all these guys were like actors on the stage selling you that romance. And people were buying it. And so much so that they remembered it and they told their kids, I had a client who came here in the, what, I guess it was the late 50s, early 60s. He loved it so much that he lived in Australia. Every year thereafter, he came. For the rest of his life, he left such an impression on it. And he knew, we all knew, that the romance was petering out. And it was like running on an empty tank. And we have to also look outside of Hawaii what was happening at that time. People had money. There was a 707, the U.S. was the most advanced country in the world for building planes. They were coming from east to west, right? They didn't go west, were to China or Japan. Because remember, they were third world countries almost. They had still suffered a demonstration. I mean, China was a communist. You couldn't go there. Korea was devastated by the war. Japan was devastated by the Philippines. All these places were just trying to get out of war during the early 60s. And even Singapore, remember, Singapore Airlines is not one of the top five in the world. They had nothing back in the 60s. And well, think about it, alternative futures. What if Hawaii, Aloha Hawaiian, had emerged as a transnational Asian airline? People talked about it, but I didn't do it. No, no. In fact, this whole concept of Hawaii being sort of the end of the universe, right? You want to go to Asia underdeveloped, not necessarily as pleasant experience, certainly as Waikiki. And people saw the Western boundary as just of Kauai, right? That was the end of it. And I think that has a huge, that is very important to understand that. We were remote, and yet we were civilized. We were technologically capable, but we were still very quaint. And we had romance. And I think it infected more than the tourist industry, more than the taxi drivers, more than the hotel staff. Because in those days, everybody felt we were at an outpost. This was an outpost. I remember a relative of mine was sick on the mainland. And I had to get back there, compassionate. What's it called? And it's very interesting. So I was in the service. So I called Barbara's Point. And they had a Space A seat available. I mean, Space A is hardly the word. They had a plane with a lot of seats in it. If you were military, you could get on. In military, you just get on. And you sit in one of those sling seats. That's what you do. So I called and I said, where I need to get back to the mainland when is your flight leaving? I said, oh, we're leaving in 20 minutes. Well, I'm here. And you're in Barbara's Point. In those days, you had a cross road. It was a two-lane, half dirt road. It took forever to get out there, like an hour and a half to get out there. And I said, well, I can never make it. I can never make it in 20 minutes. And he said, the guy who was running this in Barbara's Point, he said, no problem. We will wait. And they waited. They held this plane for me. I think that was part of the same thing that you saw in the tourist industry. We were in outposts. We worked together. Everybody working together. I mean, it was the kind of aloha that people aspire to now. But we really had it. And it was everywhere in the state. I mean, people were friendly to strangers. But you have to remember, though, at that time, the population of Oahu was barely 200,000 or 300,000. A barely less than half. So you come to a city. Actually, a city ended like at like Mornalua or Red Hill. The rest was like terra incongruito. There was a plantation out there. Plantations a little bit in Waihewa, a little bit in... In a plantation town. Yeah. There was like mills and sugar mills. I mean, it was like, you left town. You left and you went to something. The whole same thing on the Kaiser side. It was a dirt road out there. It was a two-lane road, Kalani-Hanioli. It was an adventure. Nothing was going on. But you mentioned the military. And the other thing that really sparked interest in Hawaii was R&R from Vietnam. People in Vietnam spoke of, I want to get back to the world, which meant the U.S. and Hawaii was part of the U.S. So they met their families here, or a city in Waikiki. That would also be a catalyst to return from Ohio or Nevada or Texas. They bonded up with... That's right. Rest and recuperation. Yeah, R&R was a great program where they saw that, wow, we have to come back. We have to bring the kids back. And they would come back annually. And that was also a feeder to the middle... To tourism. Yeah, tourism. The 70s and 80s and so forth. That still continued. But the iconic waves of sugar cane and so forth, it's gone. Ag is gone in Hawaii. Concrete jungles. All those things that were in blue Hawaii, it looks like a historical anachronism now. It is an anachronism, but people still come here for this imaginary romance. It's so interesting. When we get back from this break, Ray, I want to talk about what happened with Aloha and... Well, with Pan Am for one thing. And then Aloha and Hawaiian. I want to talk about how we wound up with only one airline monopoly, and we lost all other methods of transport and what that did for the state. I want to talk about private general aviation, too, and take a look at air transportation in Hawaii and always after statehood. And if you didn't notice, that's Ray Tsuchiyama. He's an informed citizen here on Think Tech, life after statehood. And we're talking about air transportation in Hawaii, which is a worthy subject. We will never finish it in this time. But we'll give you 15 minutes more after this break. Thanks. I'm driving for a little tailgate. I usually drink, but won't be drinking today because I'm the designated driver, and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you guys say good-money. He says, let's go. We're doing life after statehood with Ray Tsuchiyama, informed citizen. We're talking about air transportation in Hawaii today after statehood. It's very interesting. Aloha and Hawaiian grew up after that. And we have a caller. Oh, we have a caller and a caller. Thank you for calling. What is your question? We are so curious about whether we provoke the question on that. Air transportation. Do we have a vision for the future like we did in days gone by? A vision for the future of air transportation? Okay, let's play that. Do we have a vision, Ray, for air transportation in Hawaii? I mean, before, as you mentioned, it was central in the development of the state in and after statehood right around that time. And it defined us. It defined our future. Do we have a vision now, or are we, you know, the prisoner of Zenda? I don't know what that means, but let's look at how airlines look at Hawaii. Remember, with all this tourist traffic, do airlines make money? Remember, there's a lot of seats, so long mileage. There's not much business travel coming to Hawaii. They're not making that much money, although there's volume. That's number one. Number two, if you're in Hawaii, or in Logan, and want to go to an Asian capital, it's tough. It's a challenge sometimes getting to Hong Kong, getting to Taipei, getting to Ho Chi Minh City. You have to go through a hub like in Chong or Tokyo or some others. We are not a hub. So, when people talk about Asian Pacific business, it has to be easy to get to places like Singapore. It's easy to get anywhere because it's a hub, or Narita, or Hanada, or Incheon in Korea. And so, and remember, there's overflights. Remember, all that time into the 70s and 80s, the 747 did not have to refuel. They just went on from Silicon Valley to Tokyo or Beijing or Shanghai. It was more efficient. They're going every day. There's nothing drawn in here. Every day, there's a huge amount of volume, business travel. They're paying top dollar for those seats. They're making money, airlines are making money. And so, and there are other airlines that emerged outside in Asia Pacific like Emirates, like Singapore Airlines, or ASEANA, or even JAL or ANA that go everywhere now. It's not restricted to Asia Pacific. They go to Europe, to Brazil. Even small airlines can become large. Look at Hawaiian Airlines flying everywhere now. Or Tiger Airlines discount out of Kuala Lumpur. So there are strategies there. But remember, Hawaiian Airlines had to cut back on certain destinations like Manila. There weren't enough business travelers paying top dollar for seats. That's a hard one. So, again, if there's a vision, yes, there's a lot of mass tourism traffic. How do you create a network where there are business people coming to Hawaii and Hawaii people going out and selling things and doing business in Asia Pacific? Well, we don't do business. We do tourism. It's another kind of business. Okay. You're right. You know, I mean, although I have to footnote that by saying that we went to this program at the convention center. In fact, we filmed it a few weeks ago. It was called the ELELE program. And it's about bringing scientific conferences to Hawaii by the tens of thousands. It's a new kind of market. The hotels are very excited about it. Obviously, the university is very excited about it. I wouldn't call it business per se. We're a professional, scientific, academic, but there's a lot of bread in that. Right. And we could find another footing, if you will. Right. And I thought the convention center would be doing that by now. And that's not a new topic, but Schmeizer was talking about that as Hawaii's Geneva of the Pacific. That's 30 years ago. We never realized that. You know, it's too bad. Because there were little pockets of possibility. Talk about mediation center here and arbitration and trying to draw people to the aloha environment and we're very friendly. And you can find a nice hotel and do your arbitration and mediation. Making a law center of the Pacific. None of those things. But you had a very good point in the first part of the show. Remember, there was a dream, a vision of Hawaii as a romantic vacation land. And if I was a middle manager in working for a Fortune 250 company in Beijing, Shanghai, whatever, and said to my boss, I want to take this course in mediation or marketing. And the guy says, wow, that's great. Where is it? It's in Waikiki. No way. Well, you remember the U.S. government had a conference out here. There was GSA or something. And they're going to have a huge number of people come out here and somebody put the kibosh on it. They say you can't go to Waikiki. That's not a serious place for a conference. This is a serious conference. You don't do serious conferences. I know we've got to change that. Right. And that's another show. Another time talking about HTA and the Waikiki Improvement Association and the Hawaii visitors and so forth. But here about airlines. The airlines might have, they might have participated in shaping this. Instead, and I'm not saying Hawaiian alone, instead they were interested in the tourist trips. Right, of course. Okay. And that's why I think there wasn't enough business for both Aloha and Hawaiian. It's not enough seats, so one of them had to go off. And Aloha did. That was too bad because a lot of people liked Aloha. Oh, yes. And they remembered during the war, there was discrimination on Hawaiian. Remember that? And my father-in-law wouldn't fly Hawaiian. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he wouldn't fly Hawaiian. Because I only, I know my uncle and aunt always flew Aloha from Maui to Honolulu. I don't know the reason, but, and they said there was better service and the drinks were better quality or whatever. But that was in the mid-60s. So they must have had some kind of, you know, but you look back then, there was enormous traffic among the islands, even back in the mid to late 60s. So, and today, of course, like we discussed before, the price of seats and so forth are so high that many children on the neighbor islands have never been to Honolulu, or vice versa. Yeah, so high. So what you have is the ferry, sorry. You know, the boats, the ships that used to ply these waters, sorry. Really tragic. There is no commercial way to get from island to island on the ocean. And there was no, well, this island there, but I, you know, that's a small operation compared to the, you know, Aloha United. So what you have is a survivor, Hawaiian, and they get $250 or $300 for a round trip. And those kids can't afford it. And their parents can't afford it. And the average person, you know, a citizen of this state cannot afford it. And if he can, he can't afford it to do it on a regular basis. The way, you know, when I'm talking about airlines, they have transportation, why? When I first got here, the weekend, for a lot of people, a lot of young local people was taking one of those mats. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I remember that, yeah. Some Zories and an igloo full of beer, even beer on the airplane, right? And go to the neighbor islands. And I think it cost like $25 or $30 round trip. And that was, you know, take your honey to the neighbor islands. And it was fabulous. It was, the state was a playground. The state was unified. And in an island state, the possibility of air travel and the quality and the price of air travel defines the way the state operates comes together, especially when there's no surface travel possible. So, I mean, in those days, it was pretty good. And something happened after what I don't know. You would expect by now, you know, from years past, as like other places, there would be, you know, many Uber-like air taxis, you know, think about it. And there would be, you know, categories of business and so forth and much more. But because, remember, there's ups and downs in gasoline prices, gas oil prices that affected air travel also. And tickets went up and there's been, you know, a kind of up and down history to all this. But you're correct that there are many people who don't see their loved ones or family or friends for a long periods of time. And it was different. Even my father used to go from Maui to Oahu when he was a manager of a baseball team all the time. And they figured out ad hoc ways on ferries that some left from Kaniwe, you know, others left from the Docks and from Lahaina or Kahului. There were all kinds of almost clandestine ways of getting back and forth. And they figured it out and I could never, you know, understand it. But they used to have much hundreds of ways of doing it. But it's all gone now, all gone. Yeah, it's too bad. So we have one airline, an island there, I suppose. You can go rent a plane with general aviation, but that, relatively speaking, that's way more than it used to be. I was telling you during the break that a buddy of mine said to me one day, this is back in the 60s, let's have a Coke on Molokai. So we got a plane, he rented a plane, we drove the Molokai, we had a Coke, we drove back. It was a different attitude, a different possibility. Now you would not, yeah, we'll do that. Even in the 70s, there were people that I knew who would go to Kapalua just to have dinner and come back. And you can't even fathom that anymore. In order to go to a neighborhood, you have to really plan out what you're going to do and think the best part is yours. That's right. And stay there a long time, well, more than one night. You're going to be there for a week or so. And I remember, we can't finish the show without talking about the airport or the airports, right? Okay. And I just came back from a conference in Las Vegas, the airport is beautiful. Right. But then if you fly to Asia, the airport is all beautiful. And if you fly to Europe, the airport is beautiful too. So we don't do that. We've been waiting to upgrade our airport since 2001 or 2002. We haven't done it yet. And it's really, it's failing. It's failing and it's obvious. And I mean, even merchants who could make money aren't in there for some strange reason. And then you add on top of that the whole thing with TSA. Right. I remember Ray, I would take my, now my wife, my girlfriend out and we would go to the restaurant, to the airport. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The restaurant's very good. Everybody had a great coffee there. Everywhere went to this restaurant. Right, right, yeah. That's right, that's right. And in Singapore, they have a hotel, they have a pool, they have a cinema, they have a movie theater and a great mall. And other places to skip all, they even have a little casino at the airport. They can take money from other places. And also an art museum, like Rembrandt, at the airport. At the same bar, the same thing that walked away there. That's right. And you can have a wedding at the airport. And so it becomes- I've heard people love that, yeah. And then they head off to their honeymoon. That's right. It's not a place to escape. It's a place, a meeting place to go to, like you say, a restaurant where you meet friends. It's a city. Yeah, a little, you don't see it as a transportation. Look at it as a mall. Look at it as a place to meet and have a good time. I want to go back to the caller. The caller asked us what the vision was. Wow, yeah. So if you could take a moment and articulate a vision, I'll make you governor or something. What vision would you have for air transportation in Hawaii going forward now? Well, I think air travel has to benefit not only the tourist industry. It has to benefit emerging kinds of businesses that in the Asia Pacific Rim. And how to really make transportation part of business development. You see what I mean? How can people in the airline industry or airlines lead business to where there's opportunities? Yeah. And they have to see us as a business, a small business market, not an international global business market. We just want to do business on Maui or Molokai or a big island. We need to get there. We can't spend $300 every time. And we can't do all the business on the telephone or by the internet. We have to do face to face. We have to, they should be providing us with a method of facilitating business in this state. So the state, again, as I mentioned before, should come together. Because if the state comes together and does business together, trust me, our economy will be better. And you're referring to, because of transportation, we seem to be moving apart. And each island seems to be very resentful or kind of, I'm not going to have my taxes pay for something else. Or we have to prevent people from Oahu coming and spoiling our beaches. There's something strange about that. It really is. Because the kingdom was about a unified place. And we were all Hawaii since that time. Now we are divided and going off the other places. And, you know, house divided must fall. It's not going to be put together. And the force of, like you said, Aloha. Aloha was for all the islands. It was for welcoming visitors from everywhere to the entire state. And if we're going to invite people but yet entertain in different ways or we have a different feeling of our visitors, it's going to wreck the future. Yeah. So the airlines have a big effect on us and our future. That's right. And they're part of the vision for the future of the state of Hawaii. Next time, Ray, let's talk about the middleman. Let's talk about the wholesaler. The emergence of the wholesaler in the 19th century. The guy who imported goods into Hawaii and sold them locally. And then the demise of the wholesaler in, I guess, the late 20th century and certainly now. Let's rate through GM as an informed citizen. And we talk about life after statehood. And we find things that we didn't have any idea about when we start the program. It's totally serendipitous. Yes, it is. Thank you, Ray.