ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Probably the worst game of tag ever..."}]

Smile 26 7 2

<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026</title>

Probably the worst game of tag ever...

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui

Lopaka Kapanui and Tanya Kapanui

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

The old Restaurant Row was built in 1988, and popular eateries like Studebaker’s and Black Orchid brought crowds to the plaza. As soon as you parked your car and got out, the mouth-watering smell of burgers and steaks overwhelmed your senses. Many of us remember shooting toothpicks through straws into the ceiling at Rose City Diner. We appreciated the assortment of restaurants open late after a night out. If you worked nearby, dinner at the Row was an easy choice.

But the success of Restaurant Row was short-lived as those restaurants, once popular, began closing their doors due to decreased traffic. Some attribute the slowdown to Aloha Tower Marketplace and Chinatown’s First Fridays. But no matter what the reason, we still have our memories.

[{"type":"text","text":"And our ghost stories."}]

Stories of Waterfront Plaza, as it’s now known, begin with the history of the land and what was there long ago. Before the highrises of modern Kaka‘ako were built, this area was part of a coastal landscape of wetlands, fishponds, and salt pans. As Honolulu grew and changed, the place names remind us of what was once there.

Ka‘ākaukukui is an ‘ili, or traditional land division, that was located makai (inland) of Kewalo and west of Kukuluāe‘o. Trails that crossed the region connected Kou (now Honolulu) and Waikīkī. By the time the 20th century rolled about, that landscape had virtually disappeared.

In 1900, the Honolulu Iron Works moved to a block of land at Ka‘ākaukukui. The company had become an important part of Hawaiʻi's sugar industry, manufacturing machinery for sugar mills in Hawaiʻi and elsewhere. At its height, the Iron Works employed approximately 1,500 workers, many of whom lived in Kakaʻako.

As the sugar industry eventually declined, so did the need for the mill parts that the Honolulu Iron Works manufactured. After closing its doors in 1973, its buildings were gradually converted to other uses before being demolished. The final warehouse was torn down in 1982.

In 1985, construction at the former Honolulu Iron Works site uncovered human skeletal remains. The burial pits were found less than three feet below the existing ground surface, within an older sand deposit. Archaeologists associated the burials with Kaʻākaukukui Cemetery, which was said to have been used from the 1700s into the early 1800s.

Today, after more than a century of urban development, there is no visible cemetery marking the site, but that doesn’t mean there are no lingering remnants. Iwi kūpuna, ancestral Native Hawaiian remains, associated with Kaʻākaukukui continue to be found during modern construction and utility work in Kakaʻako.

Perhaps it is no surprise that places with such histories can also become the setting for stories of the unexplained. Over the years, people who have worked in and around this area have reported encounters they could not easily explain.

, in 2005. Soon after, I did book signings where I also shared ghost stories. At one such occasion, a very tall Hawaiian woman in a business suit approached me and said she was a manager at Restaurant Row. She went on to say she was having trouble keeping security guards employed because they would quit after seeing ghosts and spirits in and around Restaurant Row, which happened at all hours, even in broad daylight.

“These are big, tough Sāmoan and Hawaiian security guards,” she emphasized.

According to this woman, the guards said they saw half-torso apparitions floating through the parking lot, or heard voices calling their names. Worse, they would see spirits of children, covered in bleeding sores.

I was shocked to hear this, as I remembered that my late boss, Glen Grant, talked about the same thing on his ghost tours and in his books.

The manager said there was also a woman they would find crying in the theater bathroom. She went on to say that customers and employees would hear the woman crying miserably in the stall. Security comes and knocks on the door, the door swings open, and a woman is squatting on the floor, covering her face with her two hands, just sobbing. The security guard asks what’s wrong, and the woman removes her hands, and she has no face.

“If this is happening during the day,” I asked. “Then what’s going on at night?”

“If a guard isn’t getting physically assaulted, then something follows them in their car,” she said.

The woman seemed more frustrated than scared because she needed guards day and night to patrol and protect the row. She left before I could get her contact information to follow up. The restaurants all changed, closed, or made way for other businesses, but I often wondered how they finally dealt with the hauntings.

A few years ago, I was doing a personal ghost tour for some staff and students from Hawaii Pacific University. They had just recently moved to their new location at the Waterfront Plaza. I met them near The Row bar, and when I heard about their move, I asked how they liked it so far.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We need it blessed,” they said. “It’s haunted.”"}]

Apparently, chairs move, computers turn on and off by themselves. The security company calls late at night because they can hear people in the offices talking, but no one is ever found. Someone even said that no one would be sitting at a computer station, but you can see the keys on the keyboard typing away.

I think they were surprised that I wasn’t phased at all by their descriptions. I just nodded and said that the place has been haunted since the beginning.

Waterfront Plaza

<title>What Haunts Waterfront Plaza</title>

Back in the day, when this complex was known as Restaurant Row, many of us enjoyed being pleasantly haunted by ’50s tunes at Rose City Diner or catching sight of celebrities at Black Orchid. But even then, some people were haunted by far more disturbing sights, perhaps owing to a cemetery that had been at the same location long ago.

What Haunts Waterfront Plaza

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Business & Tourism

 is celebrating its 65th anniversary with discounted chili plates on Oct. 2 only. Customers can get the business’s signature chili plate (regular price $13.25 at Kapahulu location, $13.50 at Pearlridge Center location) for $6.50; the deal will be all day at the Kapahulu store and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Pearlridge Center store.

The plate features ground beef, kidney beans and garlic simmered with the eatery’s special blend of spices and herbs, according to marketing director Crystine Ito. All plate lunches come with two scoops of rice and one scoop of macaroni salad.

“It’s (the chili) something Rainbow Drive-In served from the beginning,” she says. “It’s the same recipe, the same prep; they cook chili every day. It’s something they’re proud of; it’s very local comfort food.”

Customers who stop by Rainbow Drive-In’s locations will also have the chance to meet third generation-owner Chris Iwamura from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Pearlridge location, and from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Kapahulu location. During this timeframe, customers can also enter to win prize giveaways like stickers, lanyards, keychains and gift cards, according to Ito.

“The big prize will be the $65 gift card, in honor of 65 years,” she says. “It’s kind of the grand prize; we will have a few of these (gift cards) to give away.”

On Oct. 2, the business will also be launching its new 65th anniversary shirts. The shirts will be available to purchase at Rainbow Drive-In Kapahulu and online (

“This is a special design that our friends at Project X made,” Ito says. “It’s made with the three generations in mind — there’s three cars, they’re showing three generations with three surfboards, and three bikes.

“Our other logo shirt has our 65th Infinity logo,” she adds. “Quintin (from Hype Graphics) did our 65th anniversary logo; he also did our 60th logo.”

Ito notes that it was important to Iwamura to celebrate the business’s milestone year.

“It’s not 75 (years), but he’s (Iwamura’s) proud he gets to continue the legacy,” Ito says. “He really wants the family business to continue.”

Rainbow Drive In Crystine Ito 092826

<title>Rainbow Drive-In is celebrating 65 years with $6.50 chili plates</title>

The eatery is offered discounted chili plates on Friday, Oct. 2, all day at its Kapahulu location and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at its Pearlridge Center location. Customers will also have the chance to win prize giveaways and meet Rainbow Drive-In third generation owner Chris Iwamura. The business’s 65th anniversary shirts will also be for sale starting that day at its Kapahulu location and online.

Rainbow Drive-In is celebrating 65 years with $6.50 chili plates

KWO authors

Hau‘oli Lorenzo-Elarco and Kenika Lorenzo-Elarco

Viewpoints

What does protection mean when even some of our most sacred and carefully protected ocean spaces are being reopened to commercial fishing? With World Ocean Day on June 8, there is a renewed attention to the need for marine protected areas that are strong not only on paper, but in purpose and practice.

While the world is being urged to strengthen ocean protections, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WESPAC), fueled by the Trump Administration, has moved to restore commercial fishing access of all four Pacific Marine National Monuments: Pacific Islands Heritage (PIH), Muliava (Rose) Atoll, Marianas Trench, and Papahānaumokuākea.

Despite massive opposition, WESPAC took final action recommending the reopening of commercial fisheries in the 3 to 200 nautical mile (nm) zone of Papahānaumokuākea. Additionally, they voted to reopen commercial fisheries in the 12 to 50 nm zone at Muliava, Sāmoa, 0 to 50 nm in the Marianas Trench Islands, and 50 to 200 nm at Jarvis and Wake Islands, and Johnston Atoll in PIH.

These final recommendations will move into further federal review by NOAA and for public comment. Papa- hānaumokuākea, with the extra protective national marine sanctuary designation layer, would require additional congressional steps.

That procedural detail matters, but only up to a point. The deeper issue is not simply what zone might be opened or under what regulatory conditions, but what it means to revisit commercial extraction in places already recognized as culturally sacred and ecologically critical.

At the WESPAC meeting, Papahānaumokuākea Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group (CWG) member William Ailā Jr. warned the council that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Commercial fishing, though labeled as “sustainable” and with the misappropriated term “pono,” risks repeating past mistakes.

Since the commercialization of fishing in Hawaiʻi, particularly in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), unsustainable and harmful practices have caused irreparable damage to both the ecological and cultural wellbeing of our ocean.

As early as the 1840s, foreign commercial traders nearly wiped out the Hawaiian pearl oyster from Pearl Harbor within a short 30-year period. After a massive population of large pearl oysters were discovered at Manawai (Pearl & Hermes), an estimated 100 tons of pearl oysters were extracted from Manawai in just three years (1927-1930) for global trade. Nearly a century later, that population still has not recovered.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the lobster fishery in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) caused a near ecosystem collapse. Lobster populations plummeted, precious coral reefs were damaged by traps, and the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, which depends in part on lobster as prey, also declined. The fishery was closed in 2000 to avoid further catastrophe.

That same year, the shark population in NWHI was ravaged by a single commercial fishing vessel that killed 990 manō in just 21 days. In 2014, longliners reported a catch of 11,700 ʻahi from the now protected expanded area of Papahānaumokuākea, along with more than 5,600 sharks as bycatch, meaning one shark was caught for every two ʻahi. Most sea animals caught as bycatch do not survive.

Fishing is a rich cultural practice shared amongst many people. Native Hawaiians, like many of our Pacific cousins, have lived in harmony with the ocean through pono fishing practices since time immemorial.

However, commercial fishing is not a cultural practice, and it threatens our ability to live respectfully with the ocean.

In just a few decades of colonial, destructive, and profit-driven fishing, populations of important species have plummeted resulting in near-catastrophic ecosystem collapses. With this renewed push to restore commercial fishing, we no longer risk repeating past mistakes, we are deliberately choosing them.

Commercial fishing continued in Papahānaumokuākea until 2016. The late Uncle Buzzy Agard was one of the commercial fishermen in NWHI. Over a 10-year period, he witnessed a massive fish population decline from fishing in the area.

From that point forward, he along with many other respected kūpuna including Aunty Laura Thompson, Uncle Eddie Kaʻanāʻanā, Uncle Walter Paulo, Aunty Wilma Holi, Uncle Kawika Kapahulehua, Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell, Dr. Carlos Andrade and others lobbied state and federal agencies to establish a marine protected area called the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve in 2001.

Through their efforts, the CWG was established. Guided by these kūpuna, Papahānaumokuākea was born as a national marine monument in 2006, expanded in 2016, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010, and designated a national marine sanctuary in 2025.

WESPAC argues that Pacific Island peoples carry an unfair burden of global marine conservation goals. But that argument ignores a central truth: these protections were never forced on Pacific Island peoples. We fought for them.

Indeed, we embody the words of late Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hauʻofa, “No people on earth are more suited to be guardians of the world’s largest ocean than those for whom it has been home for generations.”

Rather than framing ocean protection as a burden, we should instead ask why Pacific Island peoples, and our protected and sacred oceans, are forced to bear the unfair burden of industrial fishing.

As World Ocean Day on June 8 calls attention to strong marine protected areas, Hawaiʻi faces a harder question: what does protection require of us when the place in question is sacred, storied, and entrusted to future generations?

Papahānaumokuākea reminds us that some places are not meant to be measured only by what can be taken from them, but by the relationships they carry, the memory they hold, and the responsibilities they call forth.

This article is reprinted with permission from 

OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "Commercial Fishing is Not a Cultural Practice" by J. Hau‘oli Lorenzo-Elarco and Kenika Lorenzo-Elarco, in its June 2026 issue, Vol. 43 No. 6. Read more at 

Fishing Nets

<title>Community Voices: Commercial fishing is not a cultural practice</title>

Rather than framing ocean protection as a burden, we should instead ask why Pacific Island peoples, and our protected and sacred oceans, are forced to bear the unfair burden of industrial fishing, write two members of the Papahānaumokuākea Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group.

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026

Daily Smile: Monday, Sept. 28, 2026

Daily Smile: Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026

Most read

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026

Daily Smile: Monday, Sept. 28, 2026

Daily Smile: Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026

Most read