Paradise Lost and Regained in Honolulu

I had seen pictures of modern Honolulu, but I was not prepared for the shock of its reality.

It was as if I were an alien from space, discovering an entirely new kind of civilization.

I had first seen the city from the bow of the Matson liner Monterey as she rounded Diamond Head. I was a scullion, working in the galley, but had escaped for half an hour to see that thrilling landfall. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel stood like a pink cake on the shore of Waikiki. Near it stood the six-story gray Moana. To the west, almost hidden by foliage, was the Halekulani and its cottages. Few other structures were visible. Scattered rooftops climbed the green foothills. Above them rose the dark green, blue and purple mountains in shrouds of gauzy clouds. Further west, at the harbor, stood the Aloha Tower--at nine stories the tallest building on the island. That was in 1937.

Now the entire waterfront, from the base of Diamond Head to downtown Honolulu, was a forest of high-rise hotels and office buildings. Our cruise ship docked below the Aloha Tower, which was dwarfed by a ring of taller buildings, and we took a bus to our hotel in the concrete jungle of Waikiki.

The hotel fought for identity, thrusting two 40-story towers up among its dozens of competitors. All had a texture made by the lanais or balconies that extended from every room. Our room was on the 21st floor--halfway up. From our lanai we looked toward the mountains.

Our time was short. We caught the bus to Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona Monument. My wife and I had heard the Arizona blow up on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. We were just leaving an all-night party. We laughed at the sound. “It must be the gas works,” someone joked.

The monument is free and efficiently run. First we sat in a theater on shore and saw a film of the Pearl Harbor disaster. It recalled graphically the horror of that morning, including what obviously was much Japanese film. It reminded us that the Arizona had taken some direct hits and blown up with more than 1,000 men below decks. The Arizona sank. Their bodies remain within her, including 21 pairs of brothers.

Then we got into a launch with a smart-looking woman officer at the wheel. She took us out to the monument and we disembarked. The monument is shaped like a rocker, with a low point in the center. Our guide said it was meant to symbolize the high and low points of the war. In a tomb-like gallery at one end the names of her dead crewmen are engraved. A heavily rusted gun turret, like an iron pot, rises above the water on one side. Below the monument, transversing it, we could see the ghostly hulk of the battleship. The flag is fixed to a part of the ship’s superstructure that remains above water.

The harbor was serene and blue. The only warship we could see was a submarine. Sailboats moved across the water. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a family of swans.

Finally, I felt, we had put Pearl Harbor in the past.

We caught our bus and plunged back into the labyrinth of Waikiki. For a time we had lived in a cottage directly across the street from the garden grounds of the Royal Hawaiian. Not only had our cottage vanished, but the Royal Hawaiian seemed to have vanished too. It was hidden by a screen of higher hotels.

The old Moana, we were happy to see, still stood on Kalakaua Avenue. It now had a high-rise annex, but the classic facade of the old hotel was being restored. We had often had drinks on the terrace overlooking Waikiki, and, later, after we had left the Islands and I had joined the Marines, I had spent an inglorious night in the hotel with a group of my comrades riotously celebrating our escape from death on Iwo Jima.

Hawaiian music is pervasive. It emanates not only from elevators; it floats on the air. We stood on our lanai and heard an old Hawaiian love song that seemed to be coming down from the mountains.

Hawaii is paradise, and they don’t let you forget it.