Category Archives: History

From my Kahoolawe archive:
Emma deFries

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Aunty Emma deFries outside Honolulu’s old federal courthouse, May 1977

I recently came across these two photos among my Kahoolawe archives. I believe they were taken on May 19, 1977, when members and allies of the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana gathered at Honolulu’s old federal courthouse. I was there at the court that day with a camera. This was one of a series of gatherings at the court when proceedings were scheduled to stand with those who had been arrested and charged with trespassing during unauthorized landings on the Navy-controlled island.

It was, I believe, the first time that many PKO supporters came to court in traditional garb, from gourd helmets to malo as they asserted Native Hawaiian cultural identity and ancestral rights as part of the movement to stop the bombing.

And in the midst of the scrum trying to get past security at the doors in the top photo, I spotted the familiar face of Emma deFries, a key spiritual advisor of the PKO. I don’t know if she was ubiquitous at PKO meetings, social gatherings, and public events, but it felt that way.

I did a litle edit to lighten her face so that it would stand out in the crowd. In this original B&W version, she ends up looking almost ethereal.

The second photo was taken later just outside the courtroom.

When I went looking for more information on her life, I found most of it unsatisfying. The search found plenty of facts, but offered little to appreciate her spirit. For example, here’s a standard obituary, full of awards and recognitions, which I think was originally published by the Honolulu Advertiser.

But a brief obituary by Star-Bulletin writer Murry Engle captured a more meaningful and satisfying (at least to me) moment.

I’m taking the liberty of reprinting Engle’s short piece below.

Emma deFries
Knew That Her
Time Had Come

By Murry Engle
Star-Bulletin Writer
December 9, 1980

Emma de Fries demonstrated in her lifetime that she knew how to live. She was the most visible 20th century
kahuna of the la’aukahea (healing) order of Hawaiian kahunas, whose power or mana is in prayer and analysis.

Yesterday in the cool of early morning, under bright stars set in a velvet black sky, on the aina (land) and beside the sea, she showed that she also knew how to die.

She had spent Sunday night at Queen’s Hospital, where she had been a patient for a week. Sometime after mid-night, she told the more than 30 family members friends who were with her that she wanted to go to Kaaawa Beach.

“She had all her faculties together, but she was getting pretty low,” said Olga Mitchell, a hanai daughter and former assistant curator at Queen Emma Summer Palace. “I think she knew that death was near.”

Dr. Emmett Aluli, Molokai physician and spokesman for Protect Kahoolawe ‘Ohana, said he was encouraged that her Oahu physician let her “die the way she chose, with the people she loved and on the aina.”

MITCHELL SAID, “She loved the elements – the earth, the sun, the wind, the rain and the water. She liked to go to Kaaawa because it was peaceful.”

Arriving at 3:23 a.m., she was taken to the beach and then, “She was resting, really resting,” Aluli said.

She died at 4 a.m.

“The people who gathered and who were part of the whole process of dying, were left with her spirit,” Aluli
said.

Another vintage memory restored: Somewhere near Whitman College c.1967

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I’m sure you’ll spot me immediately. I was a sophomore at Whitman College at the time the photo was taken during the Spring of 1967. Location-somewhere near the Whitman campus in Walla Walla, Washington. I can place it because I spent the next academic year at UH trying to build my grades and my confidence before returning to Whitman to graduate. By the time of my senior year, several people in this photo had graduated. So best guess–late Spring semester 1967.

The photo captures a group of Delts–members of Whitman’s Delta Rho chapter of Delta Tau Delta fraternity during a “kegger”–an outdoor gathering somewhere out in the countryside centered on a large keg of cold beer–in a “secret” location we all referred to as “Delt Island.”

The location was passed on each year to the few Delts who had cars and would be called on to ferry groups out to the island for these occasions. I recall that a man known as “Orville” would approach in his truck to check on our gatherings. A cold beer would be thrust into his hand as soon as he exited the truck. I doubt he was the owner, but he might have been. Or perhaps just an employee in charge of maintaining order. But, for whatever reason, the Delts were invited to party there. Must have been some history, which would have been interesting to know.

I suppose my grades for the first two years at Whitman might have been better of I had picked up books more regularly than I picked up beer mugs!

This photo was restored from the scan done years ago of an old B&W print from one of my stashes of photos. It was done by Google’s Gemini after ChatGPT refused to process the photo, saying that it could violate the company’s policies regarding teens and children. I tried to reassure ChatGPT that these were college friends, but to no avail. But Gemini processed the photo without delay.

Okay, to be honest, there are a lot of underage drinkers in this photo, including myself. But officialdom seemed to look the other way and ignore these common infractions. And we all thought it was perfectly normal. As I recall, I became a regular at the Green Lantern, a popular college hangout, before my 20th birthday. I think my claim of legal age had been vouched for by someone trusted by the management, and after that I just walked in and ordered another beer without being carded. I guess it was good for business, although beer cost almost nothing in those days. A dollor or two per large pitcher, as I recall.

The bold colors in this restored photo are unnaturally strong and bright. That’s really kind of a problem. But I’ll have to experiment with prompts that direct Gemini to tone them down in a reasonable manner.

A Faded Memory Restored

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My mother’s car in front of our house in Kahala c. 1958 (restored by ChatGPT)

This is a two-part post. It’s about my mother’s car, but it’s also about the photo, and my success in using ChatGPT to restore the original color slide, which was seriously degraded after 60 years of poor storage conditions.

First, the car

Sometime in about the mid-1950s, my mother bought a car of her own. It was used, purchased from someone in the neighborhood. It provided her new mobility, and initially allowed her to drive my sister to school at Punahou in the mornings. A few years later, she would drop both of us at University lab school when Bonnie and I transferred there beginning in the fall of 1959.

My dad built a little lean-to addition to the side of the small carport without benefit of a permit. You can see that in the background on the left of this photo. You can see some other things as well. My parents had a number of coconut trees in their yard at this time. The shower trees along the street are already quite large. The are still there, older but trimmed so they don’t appear too much bigger. And the giant bird of paradise plant to the right of the front door was already full grown. It’s still there today producing blooms about 70 years later.

My mom named her car “Goliath.” It was an Austin, dated somewhere around 1950. It was a very dark green. I recall it was a 5-gear shifter on the floor. It’s turn signals were little orange “arms” that flipped out from the appropriate side of the car when to let other drivers know which way you were going to turn. I remember that it had a knob marked “Choke” on the dashboard which had to be pulled out in order to start the car, then slowly eased back to normal as the engine warmed up.

And it another issue. Its starter would “stick,” or at least that’s how my mother described it to us. So if the starter didn’t respond, the three of us-my mother, sister, Bonnie, and I-would dutifully open the doors, get out, each stand at one of the doors, and then jump up and down, rocking the car wildly until you would hear an audible click. That was the started unsticking. At that point, we would compose ourselves, get back in the car, and my mom would start the engine.

I’m pretty sure she had that car until around 1960 or 1962, when she bought a used Chevy Corvair from the mother of a classmate and friend of mine who lived down at the end of Kealaolu. I learned to drive on that Corvair. I remember both of these cars fondly.

The photo

I found the original image of Goliath in a box of my mother’s slides. The color was faded, and some kind of fungus had eaten away at the emulsion, leaving the basic image intact although very washed out, with orange splotches across the frame.

I uploaded a copy of the photo to ChatGPT and typed in a basic instruction: “Clean up this vintage photo, repairing damage and artifacts. Render in color.”

The result was dramatic, now with bold colors, although this first effort had obliterated the bold black letters on the mailbox that spelled out my dad’s name rather than the street address, an interesting sign of the times.

So I gave an additional instruction: “Please repeat the same process, but restore the lettering on the white mailbox visible just in front of the car. It spells out, in black letters, my father’s name: John M Lind”

And that did the trick. It doesn’t look totally correct, but I didn’t know how to phrase an instruction to tone down the lettering so that it looked weathered. Perhaps I’ll try again another time.

Portrait of Hawaiian power

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Makua 1976

I appreciated a comment by “Rebecca in Hilo” on an earlier post in which she provided encouraging words about my early photographs as a participant-observer in the nascent modern Hawaiian rights movement of the 1970s.

Her comment made me realize how rare it is to get positive feedback on images that, to my eye, remain powerful and meaningful.

It sent me back yesterday to take another look at some of those photos, and I ended up browsing through images from a “Stop the Bombing” rally on the beach fronting Makua Valley on February 28, 1976. The rally was held less than two months after the original protest landing on the island of Kahoolawe by a group later dubbed the “Kahoolawe Nine.”

Here’s one that was flying under my radar, a portrait of four giants in the Hawaiian movement. From left to right, Gard Kealoha, Winona Rubin, Gayle Kawaipuna Prejean, and Peter Apo. Only Apo is still living, well into his 80s and remains active in the Royal Order of Kamehameha I. In retrospect, quite an inspiring cast of characters!

The photo was taken after the Army sent a female officer to speak to the Hawaiian leaders present at the day-long Makua protest.

I’m sure none except Apo will be familiar to the general public or even activists today, so I asked Google’s Gemini AI to help me with profiles of those who have died. These are dry, factual profiles that don’t convey their colorful natures and powerful personalities. But they do serve to place them in the politics of the period.

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