Honolulu

V

Recreation

Honolulu has many accessible beach parks and ocean sites where residents can swim, surf, snorkel, sail, fish, kayak, or canoe. Some of the more popular places include Magic Island, Ala Moana Beach Park, and Hanauma Bay, all located on Oahu’s southern shore. Many parks offer facilities for tennis, basketball, baseball, soccer, and other activities, and Oahu has more than 30 golf courses. Other recreational sites, such as Honolulu Zoo and Waikiki Aquarium, just east of Waikiki Beach; the Polynesian Cultural Center, in northeast Oahu; Sea Life Park, at Makapuu Point; Waimea Falls Park, just inland from Waimea Bay on Oahu’s northwest coast; the Hawaii Nature Center, in central Oahu; and several arboretums all provide places for tourists and residents to experience nature.

With its year-round pleasant climate, Honolulu is an ideal location for walking and bicycling. The Honolulu area has an extensive system of hiking trails and a growing network of bicycle lanes, paths, and trails. In addition, many major shopping centers have become places for recreational and social activities as well as shopping. Walking the malls is a routine form of exercise for many of Honolulu’s senior citizens.

Other than winter league baseball, Honolulu has no professional sports teams. The most popular local teams are those associated with the University of Hawaii and the high schools in Honolulu. Professional golf tournaments are often held in Honolulu. The Honolulu Marathon, held each year in December, attracts more than 25,000 runners from around the world. In addition, major professional surfing competitions are held on Oahu, including a contest dedicated to the memory of Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau. This event is held every winter, but only on days when the waves exceed 6 m (20 ft) in height.

VI

Economy

Honolulu is the economic center of Hawaii. It developed as a port city, serving first as a center of the sandalwood trade and later as a supply port for whaling vessels. Later, Honolulu became a shipping hub for Hawaii’s sugar and pineapple crops. Today, the city’s port has extensive shipping facilities and is located at the crossroads of transpacific passenger liners and cargo carriers.

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Despite its role as a port, Honolulu’s major industry is tourism. Every year millions of visitors from the U.S. mainland, Canada, Japan, and many other countries come to Honolulu, spending billions of dollars. The major tourist destination within Honolulu is Waikiki. Separated from the rest of Honolulu by the Ala Wai Canal, Waikiki encompasses an area of 182 hectares (450 acres) and contains the largest concentration of hotel rooms (over 30,000) in the state. However, since the 1970s many new hotels and resorts have been built outside the Waikiki area, and an increasing number of visitors have been traveling to these less populated and less developed destinations. The construction of the $350-million Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki, completed in 1997, was justified as a necessary improvement to draw tourists back to the hotels and to improve the visitor industry in the area.

Another important part of Honolulu’s economy is U.S. military expenditures. Pearl Harbor is the home of the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and headquarters of the Third Fleet. In addition, Honolulu houses Hickam Air Force Base and Tripler Army Medical Center, both of which provide jobs and dollars for the local economy.

Honolulu is also a manufacturing center, although the economic importance of that sector of the economy lost ground to tourism and services in the second half of the 20th century. Major manufactures in the city include processed food (especially canned pineapple), machinery, clothing, building materials, and metal products. The floral industry is also significant in Honolulu.

Because of its dependence on tourism and military expenditures, much of Honolulu’s economy is oriented toward trade and services. The city suffered a decline in tourism and its associated revenues in the late 1990s, caused in part by the economic slowdowns in Asian countries and the weakening of currencies against the U.S. dollar. Cutbacks in military spending have also hurt the local economy, as has the completion in the late 1990s of large public works projects that had pumped jobs and dollars into the local economy.

Honolulu is the major deepwater port in Hawaii and a popular port of call for cruise ships. Honolulu International Airport is Hawaii’s largest airport, one of the busiest in the United States. Honolulu is also the hub of an inter-island airplane service within the state. Buses provide public transportation in the city and to many points on Oahu. Several short highways radiate out from Honolulu, including the H-3 Freeway, completed in the late 1990s, that connects Makapuu Point with the south central part of the island.

VII

Government

All of Oahu is governed by the City and County of Honolulu, which incorporated in 1907. The Honolulu government provides a broad array of municipal services. These services include police and fire protection, highway and street construction and maintenance, sanitation, social services, public improvements, planning and zoning, water supply, and administrative services.

Honolulu is governed by a mayor and a nine-member city council. The mayor is elected on a citywide basis. The council members are elected from nine electoral districts. The mayor and the council members all serve four-year terms, and none may serve more than two consecutive terms.

There are several semiautonomous government agencies in Honolulu, including the Board of Water Supply and the Public Transit Authority. The Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, which coordinates some federal, state, and local transportation programs, is also located in Honolulu. In addition, Honolulu is one of the few cities in the United States to have an extensive Neighborhood Board system. Under this system, elected board members advise city and state officials on public policy issues.

VIII

History

It is not known exactly when the first settlement was established in what is now Honolulu. There is archaeological evidence of human activity in the area from ad 1100, although the actual date of settlement may have been much earlier. In 1794 the English ship Butterworth, commanded by Captain William Brown, became the first ship to enter Honolulu Harbor (also known as Kulolia). He named the harbor Fair Haven. Other foreign captains referred to it as Brown’s Harbor.

In 1796 Kamehameha I, ruler of the island of Hawaii, conquered Oahu while uniting all the Hawaiian Islands under his rule. In 1804 he moved his court from Hawaii to Waikiki. Five years later he relocated to the area that is now downtown Honolulu. In 1850 Kamehameha III proclaimed Honolulu the capital city of his kingdom.

In the 1820s the first missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands, American Congregationalists of Calvinist ideology, arrived in Honolulu. Other missionaries arrived soon after—French Catholics in 1827, Mormons in 1850, and Anglicans in 1862. The missionaries brought new religious ideas, built churches, and imposed new rules on their Hawaiian converts, including the banning of traditional Hawaiian cultural practices such as hula. Thousands of Hawaiians were baptized in 1836 and 1837, at the beginning of a mass conversion movement. In 1848 the missionaries, in alliance with other whites primarily involved in shipping and other businesses, promoted a change in the traditional system of land ownership. Traditionally, the king had held title to all the land in Hawaii and it had been viewed as a communal resource. Under the reforms, known as the Great Mahele (great division), commoners were allowed to buy small plots of land. In 1850 a law was passed that allowed foreigners to own land. By 1893 foreigners owned or controlled nearly 90 percent of the lands of Hawaii. By replacing traditional rights of land ownership and use with a Western system in which anyone who could afford it could own land, the Great Mahele enabled businessmen, sugar planters, and plantation operators to accumulate land, wealth, and political power. The Mahele severed the connection between indigenous Hawaiians and their lands and, by introducing a set of cultural values based on capitalism and Western ideas, led to the further erosion of the indigenous culture.

On January 17, 1893, powerful white interests in Hawaii, backed by the U.S. military, overthrew the government in Honolulu. Commander G. C. Wiltse of the USS Boston sent ashore a unit of armed marines who took over Iolani Palace. In 1898 the U.S. Congress passed a resolution to annex Hawaii as a territory.

The outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) transformed Honolulu. Pearl Harbor had been highly prized by the military because of its strategic location, and the United States had begun building a military base there just after annexation. The surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by the Japanese led to the imposition of martial law in Honolulu. The government suspected many local Japanese of being spies. But because the Japanese population at the time was so large (160,000), there was no mass internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii like there was on the U.S. mainland.

The outlook for Honolulu in the early 21st century is mixed. The city enjoys a high standard of living, with a rich natural and cultural environment. There is a strong sense of community in the city, which is illustrated by the growth of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement, dedicated not just to the preservation of Hawaiian culture but also to the empowerment of the community. Honolulu’s economic woes, however, mean that the government of the city and county has been searching for new public works projects to create jobs. This kind of development, while generally backed by the construction and trade unions, is opposed by community organizations and environmental groups who prefer more limited development. The city has also been forced to come up with new ways to attract tourists, such as the development of cultural and ecological tourism programs and the promotion of the Hawaii Convention Center. At the same time, others in Honolulu envision a high-tech future for the city. There has already been substantial investment in telecommunications infrastructure in Honolulu and in initiatives to strengthen the ties between the University of Hawaii and the economic development of the state. To some, a new economy based on education, high-tech industries, and health care offers the best hope to Honolulu.

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