Category Archives: History

Puzzle solved with an unexpected twist at the end

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In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it’s deja vu all over again!!

While I was spinning my wheels yesterday afternoon, several readers were doing their due diligence and solving the puzzle.

A reader commenting as “Joel” was the first to point out late Sunday afternoon that I went through this same exercise in a “Throwback Thursday” post almost exactly 10 years ago!

“Hi Ian, I think the consensus the last time this was discussed is that it’s the contessa taken from hale manoa,” he wrote in a comment.

Honestly, I had no recollection that this was the second time around on this littel mystery, but it’s true!

And back in 2016, several people quickly recognized the location.

The photo is taken from Hale Manoa at the East West Center. For a period in 1970, I was the primary photographer for the East West Center, paid as a student worker. It was a lot of fun and gave me my own darkroom to work and play in. I must have spent some time in the Hale Manoa living quarters and took this photo of the view looking down toward Waikiki.

Screenshot

The street is East West Road, heading towards Dole Street, where the low rise building shown is Johnson Hall B, a student dorm.

The building under construction across the street, at the corner of East West Road and Dole Street, is the UH enginerring building, Holems Hall.

And at the very bottom of the photo, in the center, is the back of the sign welcoming welcoming visitors to the East West Center.

And this Google Map shows the approximate line of sight from Hale Manoa to the Contessa down on King Street, where construction appears to have been nearing completion.

Still spinning my wheels trying to ID the building in that 1970s photo

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A post here on Sunday asked for help in identifying this high-rise building under construction back somewhere in the 1970s (“A 1970s condo under construction“). You an click on the photo to view a larger version.

I’ve been making some progress today, but haven’t gotten to a clear answer that accounts for everything in the photo.

One problem is that the photo was taken with a telephoto lens of undetermined length, which compresses distances and distorts relative locations.

I did make a small step forward.

• The low-rise building behind the construction site is quite distinctive. It appears to be the apartment building at 2873 S King St. There is a smaller building that fronts King Street, and 2873 is right behind it, just off of church lane.

Here is how it looks today in a photo lifted from a real estate ad, with the Contessa right behind it.

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At first, I thought the high rise under construction had to be the Contessa, which is right next door to 2873 S. King.

I still think this is most likely.

However, I can’t figure out a vantage point from which the photo could have been taken, and from which the Contessa lines up with 2873 S. King in the same manner, and the street in front–whether a section of King Street, Kapiolani Blvd, or Kapahulu Ave–appears as it does in the original photo. It seems to me all those pieces have to fall into place before we have the answer.

Then I found myself considering whether it night be the Regency Tower, as suggested in a comment by Clyde Kobatake.

But if that’s the Regency, then where is the Contessa (built in 1971)? It should be visible elsewhere in the photo. Where is it?

I’m thinking the photo might have been taken from a spot along the west-bound Kapiolani off-ramp from H-1, which could approximate the perspective.

Other info. Before I hit a daily limit, I asked ChatGPT to identify buildings seen in the original photo. It made several obviously incorrect identifications, but after a back-and-forth with me, it offered this annotated version.

I don’t have much confidence in it, but still this might be useful.

Screenshot

I’m hoping all you amateur sleuths are going to contribute to finding the answer!

A 1970s condo under construction

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I ran into this one today in one of my photo archives.

It’s one of those condos adjacent to Iolani School.

But which one? I’m not sure.

Perhaps the Royal Iolani, but I’m not familiar enough with the buildings to tell.

So help me out–What building is this under construction nearly 50 years ago?

Click on the photo to see a larger version.

Tear Gas Mirabella

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Guest Post: A first-hand account by Neal Milner, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, and a columnist and regular contributor to Civil Beat, now living in Portland, Oregon.

ICE didn’t target anyone.
The agents on the roof did worse than that.
They targeted everyone.

My wife Joy and I were tear gassed at Portland’s Labor Against ICE demonstration on Saturday, January 31. So were a lot of others.

With no warning or provocation, ICE agents wildly and indiscriminately fired gas canisters and flash bombs into the crowd.

Several thousand people had marched the few blocks from a small park, where the rally started, to ICE headquarters.

Parents brought children, elderly people came with walkers, (there is a large retirement community across from the park). Families pushed strollers while others walked with dogs. Many cyclists too.

A surprisingly sunny Portland afternoon. Noisy but pleasant. Chanting. Calls and response. “Fuck Ice!”

No talk of violence or even confrontations. The organizers had not planned any purposeful civil disobedience. The only cops visible were a few directing traffic on nearby streets.

Overall, union based and family friendly—at least at first.

Joy and I were a couple hundred yards from the front of the crowd as it arrived at the ICE building. There was one agent observing from the roof. The crowd was across the street with no barriers, human or otherwise, between.

We were talking to two guys holding their small terrier when with no warning and no provocation, a few agents came onto the lower roof of the building and began firing the gas canisters and shooting off loud flash devices.

Before we even knew what was going on—remember there had been no warning—what we thought was smoke but was gas enveloped us and many people behind us. The stuff travels indiscriminately and really fast.

Joy and I immediately felt the effects of the gas. It’s very painful and disorienting. Fortunately, with some help we were finally able to walk on our own the few blocks to our building.

ICE didn’t target anyone. The agents on the roof did worse than that. They targeted everyone.

To make that more real, think of what that meant for three groups of people at the rally.

Older people who were less mobile: Who knows how they managed to navigate the crowd and move to shelter, trying to outrace the rapidly spreading tear gas. Our 80+ year old neighbor was hit blocks away.

Union people: besides their own struggles with the attack, how different it must have felt from picket lines where rules are so predictable.

The children: Parents brought their kids to teach them something about being a citizen and in a setting a lot more interesting than middle school social studies.

The Oregonian has a video of a little girl sitting on the ground, saying, “Owie, Owie.” That’s sure not the civics lesson her parents hoped she would learn.

There’s ongoing litigation about these Portland ICE tactics. A few days ago a judge ruled that ICE can’t act as arbitrarily as it did on that Saturday.

Good, it’s important to have a victory for freedom of assembly and the First amendment.

But what will linger with me most is the vision of that stunned, crying little girl in a pink sweatshirt covered with butterflies.

They tear gassed our children.