These three snapshots were taken from an apartment in the Ilikai somewhere around 1960-61, if I recall correctly. I found the among the many things left after the deaths of my parents and my sister.
I believe our family stayed at the Ilikai for a day or two while our house was being fumigated for termites.
It’s interesting to see what existed at that time and what didn’t.
There’s Kaiser Hospital. The Ala Moana Building can be seen, but the shopping center appears to be still under construction. The dome of the Blaisdell Center can be seen in the distance. High rise buildings downtown are still in the future. Magic Island is also still in the future.
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It’s interesting to note that in the early 1980s the Kaiser hospital site was “blown up” for the Hawaii Prince hotel. Now, State leaders talk about “medical tourism” — and there WAS a hospital (with amazing views, close to the Hilton lagoon site) that could have evolved into a UH JABSOM teaching hospital, research center for Asia-Pacific MDs and public health experts — plus a “hotel” for wealthy Asian visitors who subsidize a higher level of health care for local residents. Seattle’s Virgina Mason hospital, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic — all developed as global medical centers (with mutli-lingual staff, halal food, top accommodations for family members). In a different reality, Hawaii would be the Asia-Pacific research center for COVID and other diseases, and also would have raised health care levels throughout Hawaii rural communities and Neighbor Islands. Once something is lost, it is impossible to recover.
The health and wellness opportunities have slipped thru the bruddah-bruddah political web of construction planning: zero innovation and foresight. Hawaii’s unique elements are not given the credit deserved in this C-19 “safe” strategy for low death rate.
Hawaii 5-0!
I visited my Uncle Hugh and Aunt Ann and cousins at the Ilikai in ’62 I think it was. They stayed there for 2 weeks because Uncle Hugh switched from his Hutchinson Sugar job in Naalehu to one with Dillingham in Honolulu. It was my first time in a massive high-rise with views that gave an 8 yr more information about her surroundings than ever before. Your photos brought all those feelings back
Was the harbor better kept then?
As a kid I remember the advertisement on TV with the jingle: “It just happens to be happening at the Ilikai Hotel” …. funny how something stays in one’s mind for all these years. A woman’s hand holding a martini glass with a cherry, if I recall correctly, then came up on the screen.
We also overlook the enormous entrepreneurial risk and innovation of Chinn Ho: when he acquired the Ilikai Hotel (designed by the same architect who did the Seattle Space Neede) from the Big Mainland insurance firm, he was betting on a new tourism paradigm: the 707. The Boeing 707 capacity meant that with one flight arriving at HNL airport, 250 tourists descended onto Waikiki — and they would depart in an average of five nights (middle-class families, in need of kitchen facilities for grandparents and kids). The languid, expensive, long-term stay Royal Hawaiian, Moana, and Halekulani (the other GMs scoffed at the “new tourists”, as well as the wave of GIs on R & R from the Vietnam War) were not the right fit for this new tourist profile. The rest is history. The Ilikai’s association with Hawaii 5-0 was leveraging the learnings of the Neolithic Age B & W TV series “Hawaiian Eye”, where the Hawaiian Village was the backdrop for the detective series (with an Asian star named Ponce Ponce, from Maui). At the Village Henry Kaiser put in a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome and an “Asian”-theme mini-mall – again, we forget how incredibly innovative the 1960s were for Hawaii.
Great info FHSGrad.