The Story Of

Honolulu

New Book supplies Interesting Cross-section of Polyesian History

THERE is timeliness in the publication of “Tropic Landfall” —in less pic turesque language, the history of Honolulu—by Clifford Gessler, published by Doubleday Doran, of 14 West 49th St., New York, at 3 dollars 50 cents. Even as the last words of the book were being written, the semi-human yellow men of the East were hurling themselves upon Hawaii and, to use the author’s words, “death and suffering and destruction were in the flower-hung city around the gracious port, that our friends there were at the spear-point of peril, and that our

nation’s life was at stake on that wide, blue frontier of which Honolulu was the centre and the gate”.

But the book has little to do with war.

It is the story of how “Brown’s Harbour”,

a native fishing village in 1790, became within a century Honolulu, the world famed city of tropical glamour. One is taken, step by step, through a most romantic and colourful history the period of the rival kings; the rise and fall of missionary influence; and brutalising decades of the sandalwooders and whalers; the extraordinary story of the an £ es i ation; anc * then, “Americanisation” —that period in which lei selling is a stnctly commercialised industry, in which the haunting ukulele music wafted from the crowded pier is synthetic and only remotely related to the ancient chants of Hawaii, m which the diving boys were

designed and trained as bait for sen timental tourists. Nevertheless, as the author insists, Honolulu has an “atmos phere that is distinctive and unfor gettable, like that of Tahiti.

Americanisation ” —was there a sneer in the use of that word? There should not be because, if American enterprise and industry have capitalised the glamour of Honolulu, they also have turned the once remote group into the richest, most pro ductive and most useful territory in the Pacific. And what America has done to Hawaii, America can and will do to many South Pacific lands, after the war, when she has saved them from Japan’s barbarous hordes.

The author wanders over a wide, but fascinating field. His history bristles with stories of sea-adventure. In 150 years, there came into Honolulu an extra ordinary number of folk who had been either shipwrecked, suffered mutiny, been boarded by pirates, or were searching for buried treasure; and Mr. Gessler, with a keen eye for drama, has lined up most of the stories, and the essential dates But one hopes that he, as an historian, is more accurate in his other stories than he is in the chapter which he devotes to “Bully Hayes”. He appears, in his sum mary of the career of that famous old sea-rover, to have gone for his “facts” to the novelists, pamphleteers and penny-a liners who, by the score, wove semi romantic stories around the picturesque “Bully”. It so happens that this reviewer holds (for publication, one day) a couple of lengthy old manuscripts which contain the complete and true story of the life of “Bully” Hayes; and, while they are as interesting and exciting as any modern writer could ask, they show the liberties that have been taken with the story of Hayes, and that the real man was very different from the incredible creation of the pamphleteers and penny-a-liners Mr. Gessler tells the story of Hawaiian immigration—so that one begins to under stand how the territory acquired that amazing agglomeration of Chinese, Por tuguese, Gilbert Islanders, Japanese and Filipinos. He tells also of how these races are mixing. He says they are producing an attractive hybrid people, loyal to the United States, That clearly was written prior to the Pearl Harbour incident.

Australia and New Zealand, Canada and California were often attacked on their policy of barring their doors against Jap immigration; but everything they ever did is justified by what happened in Hawaii in December, 1941—the story of which has not yet been told.

The author delves most interestingly in the field of Polynesian origins and Polynesian migrations. He accents the theory—already well proved—of the Euro poid origin of Polynesia: and is content with the explanation of an exploratory eastwards voyage, to account for the presence of the kumera and other South American things in Polynesia.

He is not sure about the technique of Polynesian navigators—is inclined to dis miss the claim that they used ingenious instruments of their own design. Mr.

Gessler should get in touch with Mr.

Harold Gatty, Pan American Airways manager at Auckland, and the navigator who first flew around the world with Wiley Post. Mr. Gatty has a remarkable collection of material for his forthcoming book on the history of navigation, and he knows more than any other man about Polynesian navigation. Mr. Gatty probably will prove that the Polynesians did use the devices referred to by Mr. Gessler.

“Tropic Landfall” is a big volume, most “readable”, and valuable as a book of reference. One notes, in the copious index, the names of practically every event, trend, person, and ship which has gone on record in the Polynesian section of the Pacific during the past hundred years.—R.