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By ROBERT W. BONE
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 21, 2001
HONOLULU -- Hawaii has been an American state for more than 40 years, but there are several unusual aspects of the place that still surprise visitors to the Islands. For instance:
1. To the average newcomer, Hawaii is composed of eight islands: Oahu, Kauai, Maui, Molokai, Lana'i, Hawaii, Kahoolawe and Niihau. The last two are generally off-limits to casual visitors.
But actually, there are 132 islands in the archipelago, which stretches for 1,600 miles from Hawaii (also called the Big Island, to separate it from the chain) to Kure Atoll.
2. There are no "city limits" to Honolulu, unless you count the shoreline. The city and county of Honolulu include the entire island of Oahu, both urban and rural areas. And for administrative purposes, the string of tiny islands west of the islands of Kauai and Niihau are officially part of Honolulu.
3. Waikiki, Honolulu's most famous neighborhood, is often wrongly referred to by tourists as being "downtown." Actually this coastal neighborhood is about 3 miles from downtown Honolulu, the seat of commerce and government. The real downtown features unusual buildings such as Kawaiahao Church, constructed of coral blocks cut from Honolulu Harbor, and Iolani Palace, known as the "only royal palace in the U.S."
4. Iolani was built in the 19th century by Kalakaua, Hawaii's last king -- but not its last monarch. That was Queen Liliuokalani, who was forced from her throne in 1893. A prolific songwriter, Queen Lil composed Aloha Oe, perhaps the quintessential Hawaiian song, and it is still heard everywhere.
5. The Hawaiian language is regularly spoken in daily life only in one place -- on Niihau, the small island just offshore from Kauai. (Privately owned Niihau has no electricity or central water supply, and visitors are generally not welcome.) If you think you are hearing Hawaiian on the streets of Honolulu, it is more likely Samoan, spoken by an immigrant population from that Polynesian Island.
6. Many islanders, young and old, take pride in speaking variations of Hawaiian pidgin -- basically English, with some unusual grammatical construction and verbal inflection. Words and expressions are thrown into the mix from Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese and other languages.
7. Because Hawaii is the 50th state, island residents prefer not to hear expressions such "back in the States." Instead, they refer to the rest of the country as "the Mainland." Hawaii has been a state since 1959, the same year Alaska was admitted to the Union. However, Hawaii was an American Territory from 1898 until that year.
8. Credit is given to Capt. James Cook, of the British Navy, for the "discovery" of Hawaii. Many in the state, however, prefer to say the islands (then uninhabited) were discovered by Polynesian sailors somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. Further, there is some credible evidence that the islands were visited in the 16th century by the Spanish, who kept it to themselves.
9. The islands were all created by volcanic action, punched out, in effect, by magma breaking through from the Earth's core. The lava built higher until it eventually broke the ocean's surface. (Another potential island, already named Loihi, is growing but is still submerged, some distance southwest of the Big Island.)
10. The Island of Hawaii (the Big Island) is the only place in the United States where you can safely view a live volcano. Kilauea, centerpiece of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, has officially been erupting since 1983, and it occasionally puts on spectacular shows.
11. Many Hawaiians still believe Kilauea and its companion crater, Mauna Loa, is the home of Pele, the goddess of the volcano. She is said to visit the roads of the island from time to time, disguised as either an old or young woman, or a little white dog. If islanders see any of these on the roadside, they will probably stop and offer a ride. It is supposedly bad luck not to do so.
12. One of the staples of the Polynesian diet is poi, the root of the taro plant that has been pounded into a brown paste or fluid. The food, usually difficult to enjoy for most mainlanders, is actually nutritious and easily digestible and is regularly used by island mothers as baby food.
13. A favorite food in Hawaii is the fish called mahi mahi in Hawaiian. (It is dolphin fish in English.) Mahi mahi is so popular that the seas around the islands no longer provide enough to fill the demand. Most mahi mahi is now shipped frozen into Hawaii after having been caught off Taiwan or Ecuador.
14. You won't find any billboards in Hawaii. This is the result of a state law that dates to the 1920s, enacted on the theory that a beautiful landscape should not be obscured by advertising.
15. Nor will you find any snakes or dangerous animals in its mountains and forests, with the exception of some wild pigs, descendants of those brought by early explorers. However, there is is a colony of rock wallabies living in the mountains behind Honolulu. These are descendants of a pair that escaped from a private zoo in the 1920s.
16. Hawaii has no squirrels, with the exception of a few in cages at the Honolulu Zoo. Sometimes called the "Hawaiian squirrel" is the Indian mongoose, imported into Hawaii in the late 19th century in a futile attempt to destroy rats that threatened the sugar cane harvest. Unfortunately, the rats are nocturnal and the mongoose diurnal. They only met occasionally at the change of shifts. The mongoose has survived mainly by eating ground-nesting birds.
17. The steel guitar, sometimes called the Hawaiian guitar, was invented when a Honolulu schoolboy noted an unusual sound when he slid a comb along the strings of a conventional guitar. However, the famed ukulele was actually imported by Portuguese immigrants in the 19th century. Then it was known as the braga or the cavalquinho. It was named the uku (flea) lele (jumping) when Hawaiians noticed the hand of its player seemed to emulate a dog scratching an itch.
Robert W. Bone writes frequently about his home state, Hawaii.