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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

But if it gets you from point A to point B, it’s still good right?

_Junyaa

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: She go</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @_Junyaa, who might need a new ride.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: She go

But if it gets you from point A to point B, it’s still good right?  Make sure you follow @_Junyaa on Instagram!

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Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

Columnists

Rick Hamada wrote this week about our long failure to invest in 

. The wreckage left by the hurricane proves his point.

Storm drains backed up into the streets. Sewage went where sewage should never go. In some neighborhoods the taps ran dry. And power failed all over.

Infrastructure is the kind of thing you notice only when it breaks. This week, a great deal of it broke at once. But none of it should have surprised us.

Seven years ago I co-authored a report called 

. It went to the Hawai‘i Executive Conference, an annual gathering of the state’s chief executives and decision-makers. We tried to put a number on what Hawaiʻi owes its future: retiree healthcare and pensions, infrastructure repair and replacement, and the cost of preparing for storms and a rising sea.

The counting was hard, because few agencies publish what their systems will cost to maintain or replace. Still, the number we reached was $88 billion, and the room agreed with it.

Agreement, more or less, is where the story ends. Infrastructure has not moved up the priority list since. The Islands’ two signature projects — rail and the stadium — are new construction, the shiny kind.

Ask why and you will hear that maintenance is not glamorous. A ribbon-cutting makes for a better photo than a repair schedule. Both answers are true.

But there is another reason, less flattering and more important. Infrastructure belongs to the world of atoms, and atoms are indifferent to rhetoric.

A pipe holds or it leaks. A grid carries the load or it fails in the dark. Taking a project from concept to completion in that world takes real executive skill. Our politics neither selects for it nor rewards it.

Consider a career we have seen more than once. A young man serves in student government, rises to president of the student body at UH Mānoa, interns at the legislature, manages a legislative office, and then wins an open seat. Or he is appointed, skipping the campaign.

He was chosen at every step for ambition and persistence, which are real virtues, but never once for having built or repaired anything. When his car dies on a Tuesday he stands over the engine as helpless as a child. By Thursday he has recovered his confidence to reform the economy. He has simply never worked anywhere his words could be tested against material, and no one has loved him enough to tell him so.

The people who do have that skill get bid away. Honolulu’s managing director, Mike Formby, left city government to run a maritime company whose businesses include ship repair. Few politicians or civil servants could follow him. You can’t fake it until you make it on the open seas.

The room that received Troubled Waters was full of executives, though, and executives have bad habits of their own. The people who complain loudest about government waste have sometimes bankrolled stadium campaigns and rail coalitions. New construction generates business.

Meanwhile, the convention center roof leaks, and highways are sinking into the sea.

A government that attempted less could maintain more. 

Every agency should publish, every budget cycle, what its systems will cost to maintain and to replace. Then the bill stops hiding. No new vanity project should clear the budget until maintenance of the old ones is accounted for. Fix-it-first is not austerity. It’s just honest accounting.

And voters might begin to ask of a candidate the question we ask of a contractor: What have you built? The plumber who has sweated a joint knows something about the world that a law seminar cannot teach. We should stop pretending otherwise.

Another storm will come. Before it does, we need more than pretty speech from our political leaders. They should spend some time in the world of atoms.

Touching grass turns out to be good advice, even when the grass is wet.

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<title>The $88 billion bill we agreed to ignore</title>

Seven years ago, a room full of Hawaiʻi’s most powerful executives agreed the state faced an $88 billion problem in investing for the future. Then everyone went back to work. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why the maintenance never comes.

The $88 billion bill we agreed to ignore

Hannah Coburn HPR

Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn

Viewpoints

Aloha Spirit

The final resting place of Aunty Muriel “Puni” Ioane’s ancestors lies at the Mākua Protestant Cemetery, just makai of Mākua Valley on Oʻahu’s leeward coast.

A large yellow gate blocks the road to the cemetery, where a warning sign reads: “Danger. This area is a munitions response site. Munitions may be present.” Beyond the yellow gate is a bridge that collapsed during the Kona Low storms earlier this year, making the cemetery inaccessible by car.

Ioane is a direct lineal descendant of Mākua. She grew up on Mākua Ranch, in ʻŌhikilolo, the neighboring valley. Two generations of her family are buried at the cemetery, and for more than two decades, she has been unable to visit the grave sites.

Whether the barrier stems from military restrictions, decisions of the private caretaker of the cemetery, or a combination of both, has been unclear to Ioane.

The author reached out to the U.S. Army multiple times for comment, and no one responded.

While visiting cemeteries is a common tradition in many cultures to honor loved ones, Ioane cannot access the graves of her own ancestors whose ties to Mākua span generations.

In moʻolelo, Mākua (meaning parent) is where Papa (earth mother) and Wākea (sky father) meet, making Mākua a place of deep cultural and spiritual significance.

Before the military’s presence in Mākua was established, it was home to many Hawaiian and immigrant families.

Ioane was born in 1950. Her father, William (Willie) Pali Enos, was born and raised in Mākua, where he grew up with his father, mother and seven siblings. She remembers stories her dad used to share of him riding a donkey or taking an old truck to get to Waiʻanae Elementary School in the late 1920s.

“On days when the kids wanted to play hooky from school, they would do something to the truck, so no one would have to go,” Ioane laughed.

Ioane recalled her dad sharing memories of taking the train to Kawaihāpai to visit his grandma and packing food in burlap bags to share with everyone. Back then, there was no electricity, running water, or telephones.

Her father eventually met her mother, Miriam Akama Enos; she first noticed him while riding the train through Waiʻanae.

“She said that she never thought she’d meet him,” Ioane recalled. “But back then, all the cowboys used to have a night out and go into a rest camp for dancing. My mom said that’s where she saw him again.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The two married in 1949 and raised their family in Mākua."}]

Growing up on Mākua Ranch in the 1950s, Ioane learned to fish, hunt, ride horses and raise her own pigs. “My dad taught us how to go up in the forest,” Ioane said. “He was a hunter, and my mom’s thing was the ocean.”

Her mother made her own throw nets to catch fish, taught Ioane and her siblings how to catch and clean eel, and kept a vegetable garden that helped feed their family.

Ioane’s dad was the ranch foreman at McCandless Ranch in Mākua and a true paniolo. He slaughtered cattle and pigs, hunted goats, and even made his own saddles, ropes, and chaps.

The Enos family lived a subsistence lifestyle, growing and gathering what they needed to feed themselves, their family, and even sharing with other families in the village.

When some Hawaiʻi residents began living at Mākua Beach, Ioane said that her parents would always take care of them.

“We don’t call them homeless; they were just living on the beach,” she explained. “But they didn’t have food or any place to go, so my dad and mom used to bring them home to the ranch because we had small houses around they could live in.”

They would get their water from wells in Mākua but still did not have any electricity. Ioane said that they had lanterns and kerosene stoves.

During summers, Ioane and her two sisters would work for 32 cents a week helping with the charcoal holes their dad built and they looked forward to saving their money together so that they could visit a store in Māʻili to buy one can of sardines, one loaf of bread, and one big bottle of strawberry soda.

The military first began using parcels of land for training in the 1920s but seized control of Mākua Valley in 1941. A year later, the military evicted everyone living in the valley. The Army promised those families that their lands would be returned six months later, but that promise was never fulfilled.

In 1964, the Army signed a 65-year lease with the State of Hawaiʻi for Mākua Valley that is set to expire in 2029. It cost the Army $1.

Ioane said her father would speak about how Mākua was taken away and never returned. While some families left for different valleys, others had nowhere to go but into the bushes, she recalled him sharing.

Ioane grew up after the evictions, and she recalled the military’s presence in Mākua.

She explained that the military had no relationship with the local families. Even as military exercises, live-fire training, and bombing took place in the valley, there was no communication or concern for the damage being inflicted on the land.

Ioane and her family remained on Mākua Ranch. After her father died in 1966, they stayed four more years and later moved to their relatives’ property in Waiʻanae.

Friends have tried to help Ioane make arrangements to visit the cemetery, but confusion over who controls access has made the process difficult.

“According to state park staff, there is another entrance on the north side of Mākua, but access through this entrance has also been compromised by the storm (damaged culvert),” Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) Communications Specialist Ryan Aguilar said in an email. “Currently, the only way to gain access is to walk along the beach.”

The Division of State Parks is handling repairs for the damaged bridges, though a start date has yet to be determined. Aguilar said designs and plans are required first.

For kūpuna like Ioane, who is 75, accessing the cemetery on foot via Mākua Beach is not ideal. The route would require going down a steep, rocky drop-off, walking up from the beach, and locating an unmarked path.

A chain-link fence surrounds the cemetery, with the entrance secured by a dial combination lock. At least 25 burial plots are enclosed. Although access is restricted, the cemetery appeared well maintained.

The caretaker likely keeps the cemetery locked to protect the graves from disturbances and vandalism. However, this also keeps lineal descendants of those buried there, including Ioane, from accessing it.

DLNR did not comment on restoration efforts, though they connected Ioane to the cemetery’s private caretaker. She is now one step closer to visiting the cemetery.

“The caretaker of the cemetery called me,” Ioane said. “He said anytime I want to visit the cemetery, to give him a call.”

The cemetery’s presence serves as a reminder of the families who once called the valley home. For descendants like Ioane, it is a connection to generations of her family, history, and place. Ultimately, returning to Mākua, and the cemetery, means returning to her parents.

[{"type":"text","text":"“When I see Mākua, I see my dad,” Ioane said."}]

This story is an adaptation of an article originally published on July 15, 2026, by “Hawaiʻi Public Radio” under the title “Returning to Mākua: A lineal descendant’s journey to revisit her family.”

This article is reprinted with permission from 

OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "Returning to Mākua" by Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn, in its August 2026 issue, Vol. 43 No. 8. Read more at 

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Aunty Puni 16x9

<title>Community Voices: Returning to Mākua</title>

While visiting cemeteries is a common tradition in many cultures to honor loved ones, Aunty Muriel “Puni” Ioane cannot access the graves of her own ancestors whose ties to Mākua span generations.

Community Voices: Returning to Mākua

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 just opened today in Waimalu Shopping Center. This is the business’s third and newest location. It features a full-service, sit-down dine-in experience, along with a takeout window. 

The biz is celebrating its grand opening tomorrow, Aug. 15, with a lion dance at 11:30 a.m.

Customers can expect a variety of manapua, along with dim sum, peking duck and plate lunches; this location features an expanded menu.

The business’s Hong Kong-style dim sum selection was crafted in partnership with its sister restaurant, Mei Sum Dim Sum. The dim sum menu comprises spring rolls ($4.95), potstickers ($6.35), shrimp pork hash ($6.35), half moon dumplings ($6.35), shrimp dumplings ($6.35) and more.

[{"type":"text","text":"The business’s classic char siu manapua is a bestseller."}]

Besides manapua and dim sum, customers can choose from a variety of local-style plate lunches. Entrees include ginger fried chicken, kalbi ribs, garlic butter shrimp, hamburger steak and more. Seafood and steak combo plates are also available. 

Island Manapua is re-branding its other two locations in Mānoa and Waipahu as Aloha Manapua.

“Over the years, we’ve grown from being a neighborhood manapua counter into a gathering place for families, friends and our community,” states Christy Tong, owner of Aloha Manapua. “Rebranding as Aloha Manapua celebrates our local roots, our commitment to serving our community, and the relationships we’ve built with our customers. While our name is changing, our dedication to the food and service our customers know and love remains the same.”

The ‘Aiea store will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. For the rest of August, customers can take advantage of a 10% discount.

Aloha Manapua shrimp dim sum 081426

<title>Aloha Manapua is open in Waimalu Shopping Center</title>

This is the business’s third and newest location; it’s celebrating its grand opening Aug. 15. Customers can enjoy its signature manapua, along with dim sum and plate lunches. The business is featuring a 10% discount for the rest of the month.

Aloha Manapua is open in Waimalu Shopping Center

De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

There was a time when neon signs were all over the place in Honolulu, and indeed pretty much all over the world. Today they are rare to nearly nonexistent, and they mostly evoke memories of the middle decades of the 20th century. What is neon? What made it popular, and why did it go away?

First, scientifically, neon is a rare gas which is naturally present in a small amount in earth’s atmosphere; it was first identified as an element in 1898. A French inventor, Georges Claude, discovered that if pure neon gas enclosed in an airtight glass enclosure was electrified, it would give off a bright orange-red glow. In 1912 Claude’s company, using this technology, began manufacturing the first neon advertising signs. (Although known just as “neon signs” they did, in fact, use other gases as well to produce different colors.) After coming into use in France, the first such electric signs were displayed in the USA in the early 1920s (said to specifically have been by a Los Angeles car dealership in 1923), and Americans immediately took to these amazing and striking new lights that soon would dramatically alter downtown streets by night.

Initially, the Claude Neon company registered patents in the United States for specific processes that they used in their manufacturing process. From this fact they implied that they alone were the only authorized makers of neon signs and that all competitors were potentially in legal violation of their patents. In Honolulu, as neon was first promoted to customers in 1928-1929, two competing sign companies (with confusingly similar names) that represented two manufacturers mildly battled about this in their ads. The Electric Shop, licensed by Claude Neon through a California company, stated the former “controls the neon sign patents in America” and that customers must “Beware of Imitations.” Meanwhile the Electric Supply Company, agent for QRS Neon, said it would protect customers from claims of patent infringement if any such arose.

The Electric Shop was the first to offer neon signs in Hawaii, but under cumbersome restrictions. Such signs were not sold to customers but only could be leased for three years, requiring monthly payments, with the option to extend the lease at half price after that. Meanwhile the Electric Supply Co. boasted that it sold signs outright, which probably was more attractive to buyers. The Electric Shop started things off in a big way in February 1928 by installing 33 neon signs on both Standard Oil gas stations (13 of them) and Shell stations (20 out of the 88 then on O‘ahu). The latter were said to “sparkle with beautiful Neon signs by night” in a newspaper ad on May 1, 1928. By July of the following year, some of the Honolulu businesses with neon included the Benson Smith Drug Store, Manufacturer’s Shoes, Hub Clothing, Henry May & Co. groceries, and two of the Consolidated Amusements movie theaters. By the 1930s, the latter would be adding significant amounts of neon to their theaters’ marquees and facades.

Into the 1960s, neon would be a growth industry locally. For sign companies, neon could be financially lucrative since the fragile glass tubes that created the colorful glows required constant care and maintenance. Not only could these be broken, either by mistake or intentionally by vandals, they also tended to gradually flicker or go out completely through damaged electrical connections. Signs that blinked in successive patterns would eventually go out of whack as well. And since neon was almost always mounted high up on poles or the fronts of buildings, intentionally out of reach of the public, servicing it required climbing ladders or using other mechanical means of getting to it.

All this trouble meant that customers increasingly began to choose cheaper and less problematic signs made from plastic panels illuminated from behind by fluorescent light bulbs. And as these replaced neon, the exacting technique of bending the thin glass tubes into the required shapes of letters or other designs by holding them over a very hot flame like a bunsen burner was gradually lost by the experts who once had done this work.

During the 1930s neon was mostly perceived as being a colorful and lively part of urban areas, but by the late 1940s its reputation began to slip. In detective novels and Hollywood’s famous “film noir” crime dramas, neon instead began to symbolize the sleazy parts of cities where dangerous things happened and bad guys ran wild. In Hawaii specifically, neon began to be criticized in the 1950s. Don Beachcomber, restauranteur and eventual developer of the International Market Place, advocated that all neon be banished from Waikīkī since Kalākaua Avenue was “already taking on the aspects of any mainland street at night.” A visiting ad agency executive from Minnesota warned “... for heaven’s sake, don’t make [Hawai‘i] a neon paradise and over-commercialize it." A visitor from Connecticut wrote in a newspaper letter in 1956: “Everywhere neon signs! What has happened to the people of Hawai‘i that such desecration is permitted?” But at the same time a spokesman for a group of neon dealers countered that such signs “tend to aid crime prevention” (??) and that “many tourists have inquired why Honolulu doesn’t have huge sign displays like New York’s Times Square or Florida’s Miami Beach.” (Dubious).

In the end, it wasn’t a bad reputation that brought neon’s reign to an end; it was just cost, fragility and changing technology. A revival of interest and appreciation for neon began in the 1970s but this of itself was not enough to keep its use at the level of decades past. The incredibly specialized training necessary to bend the glass tubing into complex shapes stopped and those capable of doing it died off, and eventually LEDs replaced it with equally bright colors and even more changing patterns. While neon will, it’s hoped, always survive in some fashion, never again will Hawaiian skies be as widely lit by its glow as in the 20th century.

1 Neon montage ca 55 16x9

<title>Neon, its birth and death in Hawai‘i</title>

Bright, colorful neon signs debuted in the Islands nearly a century ago, with literal Hollywood glamor — the Waikīkī, Kūhiō and other movie palaces used them. Restaurants and small businesses of all kinds went for neon, too. Over time, they became associated with dive bars and the bad side of town. ASD history writer DeSoto Brown revisits and the highs and lows of this distinctly 20th-century form of advertising.

Neon, its birth and death in Hawai‘i

ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Mothers are mothers..."}]

Smile 26 8 11

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026</title>

Mothers are mothers...

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026

[{"type":"text","text":"There’s a new salt bread bakery in Honolulu."}]

 officially opened in the former space of Hawaiʻi Banchan Co. on Kapiʻolani Boulevard. The bakery is currently open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or until sold out.

The business specializes in salt breads. Right now, flavors like original, truffle and spicy arabiki are available; salt breads are limited to four per customer.

Salt breads are baked fresh throughout the day, according to baker Edrian Bautista, who says it takes about two hours for a batch to be ready.

’s mostly inspired by a Filipino bread called pan de sal, Japanese milk bread, and Korea’s salt bread,” he explains.

When asked about a good salt bread’s qualities, Bautista refers the bread’s crispy bottom and soft, fluffy interior.

“It’s like a milk bread inside,” he says. “It’s not dense at all; it’s still fluffy. Personally, I like to eat it when it’s cooled down.”

Eventually, the business will have a total of eight salt bread flavors, according to Bautista. The menu lists flavors like mentaiko, kimcheese and avocado.

While only the original, truffle and spicy arabiki salt bread flavors were available during our visit, Kilo Deli will also offer other desserts like ube butter mochi ($4), brown butter mochi ($4) and Kouign-Amann ($8).

Customers can look forward to a variety of beverages, ranging from strawberry milk ($6) and strawberry matcha ($9.50) to honey oat lattes

The salt breads are conducive to takeout, but there's limited customer seating inside the cafe. 

 for updates. There’s limited customer parking in front of the store.

Open daily, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or until sold out

Kilo Deli salt breads 080526

<title>New salt bread bakery in Honolulu</title>

Kilo Deli just opened on Kapiʻolani Boulevard, in the former space of Hawaiʻi Banchan Co. The bakery specializes in salt bread, which is available in flavors like original, truffle and spicy arabiki. Salt breads are limited to four per customer. Kilo Deli is currently open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or until sold out.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: She go

Kady Pascual

Social Media & Marketing Manager

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: She go

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media & Marketing Manager

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Enter for a chance to win tickets to see Disney’s live action adaptation of the animated film ‘Moana’

Hawai‘i Scene on Social meets Hawai‘i Skies

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Island vibes

Most read