For Kona’s fast growing Japanese immigrant population, Daifukuji was a welcome glimpse of home. How comforting it must have been to see that high peaked roof and an altar gleaming with golden lotus blossoms, to hear the notes of the temple gong ringing in the air and to breathe the familiar scent of incense once more.
Read MoreRead MoreHail Konawaena, pride of Hawaii, we, thy children sing,
Daughter of Pele, Mauna Loa cradled, make us worthy of thy name.
After 70 or 80 years on their feet, most women would rush to retire from restaurant management’s hustle and bustle, but not Mrs. Teshima. Ron Ow once described his grandmother’s management style with total admiration, “She is the iron fist in the velvet glove.”
Read MoreIn 19th century Kona, iron pots were used for lots of things: making booze, boiling oil, washing clothes, and, perhaps, even dying kapa! When early ranchers found tallow making no longer profitable, they passed their pots over to their wives who placed them in their gardens.
Read MoreHere is a marvelous photo of the way Kona mauka looked in the middle of the 20th century. We are perched on a ladder or in a tree (how did the photographer get this shot?) in the ahupua`a of Onouli, South Kona, at an elevation of 1,500 feet above sea level.
Read MoreKahu Billy Paris recalled when freighters arrived in Kailua Bay laden with fuel, a long hose or pipe was connected from the ship to the shore to enable gasoline to be pumped directly into Standard Oil’s large white fuel tank. Fifty gallon drums full of oil were simply floated ashore. When “rafts” of bundled lumber made it onto the beach, Mr. Linzy Child, Amfac’s Kailua branch manager, had men grade (select with no knots, rough clear), segregate, and carefully stack each plank to dry with laths in between each piece.
Read More