Take-Aways from a Beached Whale in Kailua, 1911

Ua Ola ʻo Kini Kailua

© Kīhei de Silva

A lot can be learned from a little article. This one describes the stranding of a humpback whale in Kailua, its capture by fishermen, and the subsequent distribution and consumption, by Kailua’s “multitudes,” of its rich, fatty meat. 

Ola Kini o Kailua i ka Iʻa Nui he “Palaoa Pae”

I kahi la kalae o keia mau pule aku la, ua pae mai la he kohola kino nui puipui ma Kailua nei ma ka lae o Alaala ma ka huli makani, me he la i kipa mai no ka honi ana i ke onaona lau lipoa o Oneawa, a loaa aku la i na poe lawaia ua ili i ka hapapa. Ua pau aku na kane, na wahine ame na keiki no ke kaʻipuu ana i na poke io momona, a iloko no o ke kai ua pau i ka lole a maemae, o kekahi mau poke iʻo kelekele ua laweia e hanai i na Kepani me na Pake, ua loaa he 20 dala ma ke kuai ana ia lakou. O ke koena iho o na poke iʻo ua hiu ia i ke kupa me ka palai, a he ono hoi kau me ka miki poi. Ina pela hou mai ua iʻa nui hou, ai ono loa ko Kailua mau kini, pohekeheke maikai kikala. Hemo.

Me ke aloha nui i ke Kapena ame na alii kipakipa o KE AU HOU, ke kaomi malie nei ka peni hulu koloa a ke keiki o Kapaa i ka uhiwai. –– Mahalo nui loa.

KIU HANU MEA HOU

Waipii-o-Oneawa, Kailua,
Oahu, Apr, 14, 1911

Kini Kailua Lives Because of a Big Fish, a “Beached Whale”

On a clear day a few weeks ago, a large, thick-bodied humpback whale came ashore here in Kailua at Alāla point, on the windy side, as if it had turned inland to smell the fragrant līpoa seaweed of Oneawa, and it was caught by fishermen when it was stranded in the shallows. Men, women, and children were all engaged in distributing chunks of its rich meat which had been stripped and cleaned in the ocean; some of the choicest cuts were taken to feed the Japanese and Chinese at the cost of twenty dollars. As for the remaining pieces, these were tossed into a stew with palai which, when eaten with finger-fulls of poi, was extremely tasty. If the same were to happen with another large fish, Kailua’s multitudes would again eat in delight and their backsides would grow plump. Satisfied.

With great love for the editor and chiefly readers of KE AU HOU, this child of Kapaʻa in the mist is gently putting down his duck-quilled pen. ––Many thanks. 

SPY [WHO] SNIFFS OUT NEWS[i]

One of the things we learn from this article is that we’d better be alert to word play. Its title announces the presence of a palaoa pae (beached sperm whale), but its first sentence tells us that the fish is a koholā, a humpback. Either the writer doesn’t know his whales or he is making a joke. Palaoa can also mean “flour, bread, cake.” Pae can be pronounced and read as the English “pie.” Or it can be seen as shorthand for palai, the Hawaiianization of the English “fry, fried.” The big beached humpback, then, is a fried flour pie, a pelagic pancake, a tasty, ready-for-the-taking hunk of food. The writer’s use of quotation marks around Palaoa Pae alert us to the wordplay and identify him as a punster. As does the his pen name at the end of the article. He’s a reporter, a Spy-[who]-Sniffs-out-News. He’s pretty funny,

We also learn a neat turn of phrase: “ka huli makani o Alaala”(the windy side of Alāla) is probably a reference to Kaʻōhao, and makes for the kind of indirection that Hawaiians love. We say it without saying it. It is interesting, too, that Kiu-Honi-Mea-Hou, although apparently committed to avoiding Kaʻōhao’s actual name, is very specific about his own residence: Waipii-o-Oneawa. Oneawa is a familiar name for the land at the opposite end of Kailua beach from Alāla, but Waipiʻi-o-Oneawa is new to us; if it isn’t the author’s fanciful invention (as is his nom de plume), then we have learned a new Kailua place-name. Again this is very “old” Hawaiian: he shares knowledge without flaunting it.

We learn that the whale was harvested by men, women, and children, that its meat was in high demand, and that this “poke iʻo kelekele” (rich, fatty flesh cut into cubes) was clearly viewed as a delicacy. This may or may not be significant to our beliefs in the sanctity of kanaloa (whales) as ancestors.[ii] We need to wonder about this. 

We learn, too, that palai is an essential ingredient in the author’s recipe for the tasty stew (or soup[iii]) that was made from the left-over meat: “ua hiu ia i ke kupa me ka palai” (it was thrown into the stew with palai). Palai, as discussed above, means “fried,” or “to fry,” but it is used here as a noun, the name of a food item that we can’t identify with any confidence. We know that palaoa palai is “fried flour, pancakes.” Maybe the word is used here in that way: flour, bread, starch. Something to further thicken the stew. And maybe the writer isn’t quite done with his “palaoa pae” joke. 

We re-learn that Kailua was once famous for its fragrant and delectable seaweed. Its limu līpoa. Our Kiu Hanu Mea Hou jokes that even the whales found it irresistible. There is no līpoa in Kailua anymore, and hasn’t been for at least two generations. Certainly not to the extent described here or by Solomon Kekoʻowai on his 1923 visit to Kailua where he shared in a feast that included poi, lomi ʻōʻio, pēpē ʻōmaka,[iv] and līpoa so excellent (and strong smelling) that it nearly knocked him out: “o ka hanu paoa ae o ka lipoa pakela ua make i ka ono.”[v] There is a seaweed restoration project now underway at Pāhonu, Waimānalo. Perhaps we Kini Kailua should  consider one of our own. 

Finally, when circle back from the writer’s closing “ko Kailua mau kini’ to the first half of the his title, it becomes apparent to even our lazy eyes that the old phrase “Kini Kailua” (Kailua’s multitudes, Kailua’s forty thousand) was still being used in the early 20th century as an expression of pride in a thriving population that, in fact, had long-since been decimated.

As best we can figure out, “Kini Kailua”  originated more than a century earlier in a less-than-pleasant context; in one version, an aggrieved grandmother threatened the multitudes of Kailua and Kāneʻohe with death by sorcery; in another, a kahuna of Kamehameha I suggested sorcery as a means of “destroying the enemies” of the two districts.[vi] In both instances, the full expression was “Kini Kailua, mano Kaneohe” (Kailua’s forty-thousand, Kāneʻohe’s four thousand). Over time, the negative connotations of sorcery and death dropped away, and the four words became a celebratory epithet for the two ahupuaʻa.[vii] This is evident, for example, in the closing lines of the seventh paukū (section) of a kanikau (lament)for Mrs. Kaaa and in a number of shout-outs to the native citizens of both districts:

Aloha wale ia wahi a kaua e noho ai
Aloha wale no hoi na makamaka oia wahi
He kini Kailua he mano Kaneohe

Beloved is this place where we two lived
Beloved as well are the dear people of this place
A multitude are they of Kailua and Kāneʻohe[viii]

…nolaila, e ala e Kini Kalua Mano Kaneohe. E ala e Waimana[l]o i ke ehukai o Makapuu, e hawele ia oe iho me ka pahikaua o ka uhane…

 …therefore, arise O Kini Kailua, Mano Kāneʻohe. Arise Waimānao in the sea spray of Makapuʻu, gird yourselves with the sword of the holy spirit…[ix]

E kini Kailua mano Kaneohe,
E Waimanalo i ka hone a ke kai,
E apo mai i KA LANAKILA

O kini Kailua, Mano Kāneʻohe
O Waimānalo in the sweet song of the sea
Seize and hold on to [the newspaper] KA LANAKILA[x]

Population statistics for Kailua in the 19th and early 20th centuries are sometimes sketchy and hard to come by, but there is nothing in these stats, however approximate, to indicate that Kailua’s people were thriving at the time of Kiu Hanu Mea Hou’s article or in the 80 years that preceded it. Carol Silva provides us with the three earliest counts:[xi]

• 760 in 1831-32.

• 762 in 1835.

• 749 in 1846.

and Thomas Hall offers the following numbers with the understanding that the native Hawaiian population of Kailua was, by the early1900s, about 25% of the total:

• est. 500 in 1853 after a smallpox epidemic; similar epidemics afflicted Kailua in 1861, 1873, and 1879-80.[xii]

• est. 100 in 1900, “so negligible that a separate count for Kailua was not provided.”[xiii]

• 1,045 in the 1920.[xiv]

David Stannard has argued that the native population of the entire pae ʻāina (island chain) was reduced from more than 800,000 at the time of Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi in 1878 to a little more than 40,000 in 1890 – a decline of 95 percent.[xv]Kini Kailua was not exempt from this decimation. In the space of four generations, its celebrated multitude of old, the 40,000, was quickly reduced to a mano (4,000) and then to a lau (400). To understand this in more personal terms, we need only look to the 1895 testimony of Hikaʻalani to the Koʻolaupoko District Water Commission. The old Hawaiian woman, a lifetime resident of Kailua, is asked if there are any other old-time taro planters living near her home. Her answer:

No, there is none of those old folks living…They are all dead excepting myself and my foster mother, the person who took care of me, she is now so old that she can’t walk, she has to crawl. 

And when asked about the children of these old-timers, she replies:

The biggest portion of them have died off and some of them have gone here and there and all around, and at present I don’t know where they are.[xvi]

Our big take-away is this. Kiu Hanu Mea Hou launches the phrase “Ola Kina Kailua” into the face of erasure. He does so with defiance and humor in a little atikala about a beached whale. He’s no quitter, no giver-upper, no wallower in despair. The entire population of Kailua today is about 40,000; the Hawaiian population is less than 4% of that, somewhere between a lau and a mano.[xvii] Still, we take up his call and example. 

—

[i] Kiu Hanu Mea Hou, “Ola Kini o Kailua i ka Iʻa Nui he ʻPalaoa Pae,” Ke Au Hou, April 19, 1911. My translation.

[ii] AsAmNews, “Native Hawaiians Criticize Handling of Beached Whale,” https://asamnews.com/2023/02/08/kauai-wailua-lydgate-park-beached-whale-kiai-kanaloa-noaa-fisheries/

[iii] Kupa can mean both.

[iv] Lomi ʻōiʻo: raw bonefish, worked with the fingers. Pēpē ʻōmaka: crushed wrasse.

[v] Samuel Kekoʻowai, “Kailua Alo Lahilahi Ka Huakai Pokole Ia Aina Kaulana,” Kuokoa, June 7, 1923.

[vi] Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, #1801.

[vii] The Kāneʻohe half of the phrase also dropped out of five of the 41 Papakilo results of my “Kini Kailua Mano Kaneohe” word search. “Kini Kailua” appears alone, for example, in “No ka Aoao Hikina o Koolaupoko,” (Ke Au Okoa, November 12, 1866) where W. N. Pualewa explains that “no keia aina no o Kini Kailua, he nui wale aku no na mea kahiko aole e pau ke hai aku” (As regards this land of Kini Kailua, there are so many more things of old that are not shared here). I found no results for a stand-alone “Mano Kaneohe.”

[viii] Josepa S. Kekauai,“Ka Moolelo o ka Make Ana o Mrs. Kaaa,” Kuokoa, January 2, 1875. My translation.

[ix] Rev. Samuel K. Kamakea, “Ke Ala o ka Malamalama,” Kuokoa, October 9, 1908.

[x] “He Leo Poloai na Ka Lanakila,” Ka Lanakila, July 1, 1909.

[xi] Carol Silva, “Kailua in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Kailua, Kailua Historical Society, 2009, p.10.

[xii] W. Thomas Hall, The History of Kailua, Dolphin Printing and Publishing, 1998, p. 57, 61, 74. Hall provides no sources for any of his information.  

[xiii] Ibid, 105.

[xiv] Ibid, 130.

[xv] David Stannard, Before the Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1989. Even the most conservation estimate of Hawaiʻi’s 1778 population – 200,000 – yields a single-century decline of 80%.

[xvi] Testimony of Hikaʻalani before the Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights for the District of Koolaupoko, Island of Oahu, 1895. English-translation of the proceedings of Wong Leong et al. v W. G. Irwin, a single copy of which was found in the archives of Kaneohe Ranch. Hikaʻalani’s testimony, found on pages 47-55 and 72-99 of that document was reproduced in the Kailua Hawaiian Historical Society’s Kailua, 2009, pps. 139-144; our quote: p. 142.

[xvii]https://datausa.io/profile/geo/kailua-hi; https://www.hawaii-demographics.com/kailua-cdp-honolulu-county-demographics