Born Aug. 24, 1890, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku became one of Hawaiʻi’s most celebrated citizens during his lifetime. From winning gold medals for the U.S. Olympic swim team to serving as sheriff of Honolulu, the ever-suave Kahanamoku ended up becoming the Islands’ ambassador of aloha, giving swimming and surfing exhibitions around the world. […]
Artists across the state are coming together under the banner of “Hawai‘i Arists for Racial Justice” to raise money and awareness for the Black Lives Matter movement, which saw a resurgence in public visibility due to protests ignited last week after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man from Minneapolis. Proceeds from this
Hawaiʻi’s not all pretty beaches and tropical weather. OK, it’s a lot of that, but scattered throughout the Islands are historic relics and sites, in all shapes and sizes. It helps that so many significant events have occurred in Hawaiʻi, from the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778 to the unification of the islands
It’s been an active decade for the Aloha State, which has been in the news a lot these past 10 years. We had our biggest volcanic eruption in recent memory; one of our own served two full terms as president of the United States, most of them in the 2010s; and Zippy’s finally expanded out
How is it that the Have Aloha Will Travel podcast is already on its 20th episode? The weeks have really flown by. For this special episode, Cat and Kevin talk to a very special guest—of course, all of our guests are special—Michael Wilson, who works as an exhibit designer for Bishop Museum on Oahu. His
Did you know Santa’s elves are real? At least, in Hawaii they are. But instead of working at a toy factory at the North Pole, these holiday helpers work in government buildings, juggling their day jobs as Honolulu city employees with their holiday seasonal assignments. And while they might not be making toys for the
As a traveler, there are some things I’ll never do. I won’t eat whale or turtle meat, I won’t surf alone at an unfamiliar break and I won’t jump off a cliff into a body of water. I tried to do that last one, standing at the edge of Ka Lae, or South Point, on
There are many things Hawaii is known for: pineapples, sandy beaches, Duke Kahanamoku and surfing, to name a few. Oh, and cowboys. You heard us correctly. Cowboys, or paniolo in Hawaiian. Few realize that long before cowboys made their way across the Wild West, paniolo were wrangling wild cattle—known for their often-deadly combination of aggression
Ten years ago, I lived in a cul-de-sac in Hawaii Kai in East Honolulu that, every New Year’s, turned into a neighborhood mochi factory. The Mahoe family lived directly across the street and had been pounding mochi (Japanese rice cake) in their garage for generations. About 200 people would gather there on Jan. 1, starting
A group of wet-haired kids pours out of a traditional Hawaiian canoe on Waikīkī’s Kūhiō Beach, smiling and laughing. The kids are from Waimānalo, a rural town on the windward side of Oʻahu. They’re spending the clear, bright day in Waikīkī with their teachers. The adults, sporting rashguards, revel shamelessly in the sunshine, too. The
On the front lawn of Hilo Public Library rests the Naha Stone, a wide, 7,000-pound chunk of volcanic rock. Legend says that whoever could overturn the stone would be granted the power to unify all of Hawaii. King Kamehameha the Great, who eventually conquered the Hawaiian Islands, was believed to have overturned it. Recently, I
Beginning in the 1850s, as the sugar industry grew and plantations began to multiply throughout Hawaiʻi, plantation owners—many tracing their ancestry to English and American missionary families—began importing contracted laborers from outside the Islands to supplement Hawaiian laborers. By the early 20th century, thousands of laborers from China, Portugal, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Puerto Rico
