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HONOLULU 1. Western Mail 21st
June 1935
ENCHANTMENT
AND
DISILLUSION IN HAWAII
By GARETH JONES
When in the hazy distance on one blessed Friday
morning I faintly distinguished a lofty range of mountains rising from
the expanse of ocean, I felt, as the crew of that vessel in the “Bay of
Biscay – Oh!” felt, on seeing a sail and on escaping from the loud roar
of the dreadful thunder and from the tossing of the billows.
For over six days the small vessel which was carrying
me from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands had, by its continuous
jigging and dancing, by its habit of almost turning topsy-turvy, and by
its game of hop, leap and jump shown that the Pacific Ocean had
conceived an extreme dislike for me. There were other passengers
against whom the ocean’s revulsion had been even more extreme, such as
the young American lady who, on the first evening out of ‘Frisco, had
been hurled violently from her seat at table, had fallen on her head and
bad been carried unconscious to her cabin.
Hawaii was to us, therefore, Heaven or Nirvana, and
had the streets of Honolulu been paved with gold for all to take thereof
they could hardly have been more welcome to those of us who came ashore
from the gales and almost embraced the porters, the taxi-drivers, and
even the Customs officers from sheer joy at feeling the firm sidewalk
beneath our feet.
Cat Out of the Bag!
From the unknown dark maidenly figures came and
gently surrounded my neck with garlands of orange, red, and white
flowers until I looked like a successful world-flier being received in
the South of Prance. It was in this garb that I confronted the Customs
officer.
“If you’d come a few years earlier you’d have had a
more thorough search,” he said, passing my bags without looking at them
and explaining that during the Prohibition era they had to examine the
baggage carefully lest liquor be smuggled into the Islands.
A smart young man of the Kansas City travelling
salesman type joined in our conversation.
“I know a guy who was too smart for you Customs
folk,” he said. “He was a mate on one of the liners and he wanted to
bring a dozen bottles of whisky ashore. He came with a bag, and the
Customs officer shouted, “Stop! What’s in that bag?”
“It’s the ship’s cat,’ said the mate.
“‘Yer kent kid me,’ says the officer. ‘Open that
bag.’ He opened it and out jumped the ship’s cat, ran away, and climbed
on board again.
“‘Guess I’ll have to catch him again,’ says the mate,
goes in with his bag, fills it, but not with cats this time, but with
good old hooch, and comes out. The Customs officer salutes him,
apologises for not believing him, and the dozen bottles of whisky go for
their little walk to some apartment in Honolulu!”
We laughed, and soon I was rushing to a hotel which
lay on the world-famous Waikiki Beach. In travel bureaus in all parts
of Europe and America this beach had beckoned me in a thousand different
forms. To tread upon its golden sands and to listen to the lilt of
Hawaiian music beneath swaying palms (I think that is how the
advertisers describe it) was to know a bliss which only this gem of the
South Sea Islands could give.
Disillusioned
In that mood I leapt like a sprightly fawn
from my room to the shore. At last I should feel the velvety embrace of
its sand and revel in the onrush of its surf. I entered the water, but
no surf did I see. Suddenly, a sharp, cutting knife seemed to jab my
toes, and I jumped, but descended on more “knives.” It was coral, and I
was the latest of its victims. I went in further and further; sometimes
coral would bite into me, sometimes seaweed clustered loathsomely round
my legs, but never did I approach the surf, and however far I walked I
could not go out of my depth.
I returned disillusioned, and I still maintain that
there is scarcely a beach in all South Wales which is not infinitely
superior to the much-vaunted millionaire-infested but disenchanting
beach of Waikiki.
The rest of the main island, however, with the array
of delicate colours which play upon the waters, the palm trees, the
twanging of ukuleles, the interplay of women’s voices singing in rhythm
and harmony, and the fascinating movements of the grass-skirted
hula-hula girls is not so disenchanting, and as a human study is
remarkable. It Is the spot where America meets Asia, and its streets
and villages are a hotch-potch of Asiatic and Pacific races, a Tower of
Babel where the twangs of the plains of the United States mingle with
the long, moaning vowel-sounds of the Polynesians, with the sharp cracks
of the Japanese tongue and the poppings and konkings of the Chinese
dialects.
Friendly Races
If you go through the streets you will see the
Japanese mixing with the Chinese, the Hawaiian children playing with the
“black Portuguese,” who are called thus because they are descended from
the Negroes who were imported long ago from the Portuguese Islands of
the African coast in order to labour on the sugar plantations.
This friendly feeling between peoples of various
races made the greatest impression upon me.
A Buddhist temple with Japanese gabled roofs of deep
blue, Chinese places of worship and houses with savage dragons carved
upon them, a brilliant white marble Mormon temple with Hawaiian Mormon
worshippers, a few grass shacks under palms heavy with coconuts, modern
American skyscrapers - these varied types of dwellings also showed me
what a number of civilisations are gathered in these volcanic islands in
the middle of the Pacific.
In peace they live, love and laugh, undisturbed by
riots and national hatreds. A cloud is appearing over the horizon,
however. Mars is invading these coral strands and palm beaches and
scattering the germs of conflict among the peace-loving populations.
What the problem in Hawaii is I shall tell in my next article.
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