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ASD Staff

Hawai'i Skies

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Peter DeForest in Honolulu. "I just thought the combination of city and nature was an interesting photo."

To submit your Hawai'i Skies photo, visit us 

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<title>Hawaiʻi Skies: An interesting combo</title>

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Peter DeForest in Honolulu.

Hawaiʻi Skies: An interesting combo

Today&#039;s Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Peter DeForest in Honolulu. &quot;I just thought the combination of city and nature was an interesting photo.&quot; To submit your Hawai&#039;i Skies photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 opened on Smith Street as Honolulu’s first Ethiopian restaurant, remembers chef Abraham Samuel.

“When we were in Chinatown, we had a full restaurant; the pandemic killed it,” Samuel says.

The biz now pops up several times a week in the space next to Bevy Bar at SALT At Our Kaka

ako. It opened earlier this spring, and features the same menu as its former Chinatown location.

The eatery is known for its house-fermented injera bread, family-style Ethiopian platters, and vegetarian- and vegan-friendly dishes.

“We have 11 different kinds of items for vegetarians and vegans,” Samuel says. “It’s like a dream come true for them.”

Most customers begin their meal with sambusas (two for $11). The homemade pastries are stuffed with brown lentils, green onions and herbs, and served with a house spicy sauce.

Samplers — including a veggie option ($21) and ET Love sampler ($25 for one, $48 for two) — are designed to be shared, according to Samuel. The veggie sampler comes with options like yellow split pea stew and red lentil stew.

All samplers are accompanied with injera, which is like a “very flat thin bread,” Samuel says.

“Injera is fermented,” he says. “We ferment it for three days and bake it in house. Every time we serve it, it’s freshly baked.”

He also explains that customers unroll the bread and use it to pinch or scoop up the platter’s contents, as no utensils are provided (Ethiopian food is traditionally eaten with your hands).

Other sampler options include collard greens, tomato salad, sauteed brussels sprouts, turmeric chicken stew, spiced beef stew, lamb stew and cauliflower with Ethiopian herbs.

Customers can also order meat options — like the awaze wot ($25), or beef stew, and turmeric braised chicken stew ($24) — as a la carte entrees.

“Our awaze wot is slowly cooked beef stew; it takes five to six hours to make,” Samuel says. “It’s slowly cooked with Ethiopian herbs and spices.”

Diners usually conclude their meals with the eatery’s unique peanut tea ($8) — a special house recipe with peanuts and honey — and either baklava or tiramisu for dessert. The latter is a newer addition to the menu, according to Samuel.

Ethiopian Love is currently open from Fridays to Tuesdays for dine-in or takeout. Those who want to dine in can enjoy outdoor seating in Bevy Bar’s patio area.

Open 5 to 9 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, Mondays-Tuesdays; open 4 to 9 p.m. Sundays

Ethiopian Love chef 081726

<title>Ethiopian Love is now in Kakaʻako</title>

The restaurant — which closed its Chinatown location during the Covid-19 pandemic — now pops up in the space next to Bevy Bar at SALT At Our Kakaʻako. The eatery is known for its vegetarian- and vegan-friendly dishes, especially its sampler platters.

Ethiopian Love is now in Kakaʻako

De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

Kaka‘ako today is, for the most part, completely cut off from the ocean that is very close by. This was not always the case, however.

The ocean connection to this neighborhood for much of the 20th century was through Kewalo Basin. The construction of this small boat harbor began in 1925 as the Hawaiian Dredging Company’s equipment chewed through the shallow coral flats just offshore to dig down to a uniform depth of 25 feet while creating a channel to reach the open ocean. A concrete pier of 25 feet in width and 460 feet in length was completed in April 1926.

The instigation for the creation of Kewalo Basin was to move the fleet of approximately 140 small fishing sampans, crewed by Japanese men, away from crowded Honolulu Harbor where they used Piers 15 and 16 near the mouth of Nu‘uanu Stream. The numerous sampans got in the way of the much larger cargo and passenger ships that had to take precedence. Although the sampans migrated at the time their new Kewalo dock was completed, conditions there were not ideal. A breakwater was needed for protection of the docked fishing boats during Kona storms, and the channel needed enlarging and deepening to prevent waves from breaking across it. These improvements would come later.

A very important adjunct to the sampans themselves was the relocation of the Hawaiian Tuna Packers fishing processing plant to Kewalo, which happened in January 1933. The company had started in 1917 and by five years later was operating a fleet of seven sampans and was producing 10,000 to 12,000 cases of canned tuna annually. By 1933 these numbers had jumped to 65 boats and over 100,000 cases each year. The cannery employed 1,000 people at its peak operating times; 25 tons of fish were caught and 65,000 individual cans of prepared fish were produced daily. Their product was mainly sold under the Coral label, and was available all over the United States.

In time, as with many other Hawai‘i-based businesses, the tuna cannery eventually ran into difficulties. In October 1984 it closed down for what was supposed to be only a few months, but in fact it never reopened.

With all this ocean-based activity happening at Kewalo, it was understandable that associated businesses would come to Kaka‘ako as well. This included fishing supply stores along with small boat builders who constructed both commercial sampans along with pleasure vessels of varying sizes.

Playing off the fishing activities that were going on at Kewalo, the Spencecliff restaurant chain in April 1952 bought the existing Felix Florentine Gardens and renamed it Fisherman’s Wharf. A second floor was added a few years later and for decades, till the entire company gradually shut down, diners could look out the windows to see real-life sampans unloading their catches that were usually bound for the nearby cannery.

Kewalo Basin still functions as a harbor for small vessels, but these are no longer the active fishing boats of the past. Today this is the site for tourist-related activities – group tours to Pearl Harbor, nighttime “booze cruises”, or charter fishing runs. And the onshore businesses that once supported the fishing industry are gone from Kaka‘ako, along with the connection it once had to the sea.

1 Tuna Mid Pacific crop 16x9

<title>Changing Kaka‘ako: The ocean connection</title>

The hundred-year-old Kewalo Basin was originally made to move fishing sampans out of busy Honolulu Harbor. At one point, 1,000 people worked in the adjacent Hawaiian Tuna Packers facility, producing up to 65,000 cans of tuna per day under the Coral brand for sale locally and on the Mainland. In time, the famous Fisherman's Wharf restaurant appeared, thrived, then shut down as well. It remains a harbor for fishing boats, but of the recreational variety, as well as for boat tours and "booze cruises."

Changing Kaka‘ako: The ocean connection

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

Aloha Spirit

With a quick gesture, fuel to the fire in the rivalry between the University of Hawai‘i men's volleyball team and Long Beach State was amplified.

 took a pair of road matches against The Beach

 in late March, the two teams met up again in the Big West Conference championship match on April 25 in Irvine, Calif. The Rainbow Warriors had a 2-1 lead and served for match point five times until The Beach survived to force a fifth and final set.

The Beach jumped out to a comfortable 10-4 lead in the deciding set on a 

Wojciech Gajek kill. Gajek, a freshman opposite hitter, 

flashed double shakas to the Hawai‘i-partisan crowd before flipping his hands upside down

. Long Beach State went on to win 20-25, 27-25, 22-25, 30-28, 15-11, winning the Big West tournament after Hawai‘i 

Hawai‘i went on to earn the national No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, while Long Beach State earned the 3 seed. UH hosted USC in the national quarterfinals and 

won in four sets at the Stan Sheriff Center

, while Long Beach State swept Loyola Chicago, setting up another matchup between the 'Bows and The Beach, this time in the national semifinals. The rivals will go at it on Saturday at UCLA's Pauley Pavillion at 3:30 p.m. HST on ESPN+, with the winner advancing to Monday's national title match. 

While the action could be compared to the 'Horns Down' gesture meant to taunt the University of Texas and its 'Hook 'Em Horns' sign, the 

 represents more than the University of Hawai‘i. In 2024, the shaka was 

officially declared by Hawai‘i as the state's official hand gesture

Before the Rainbow Warriors boarded the team bus for the airport on Wednesday, multiple players were asked about the upside down shaka gesture. The memory remains fresh in their minds. 

"It touched us, too," Hawai‘i standout outside hitter Adrien Roure said. "I think that's bad for them, because it's going to fire us even more. And we're really, really excited for that game and to get revenge."

[{"type":"text","text":"Did UH players take the gesture personally? "}]

"Of course we take that personally," said UH junior Louis Sakanoko, who was named to the AVCA All-America first team on Wednesday. "At the same time, I don't think it should matter that much. We should just play our game. We're not here to get too mad and play a game that we're not playing. So, we should just focus on what we know and what we will do, and the celebration after we win the national championship is the best thing to actually brag about."

The first national semifinal on Saturday will be a matchup featuring UC Irvine, which shocked No. 1 UCLA on its home floor on Saturday, taking on No. 4 Ball State. 

Since the Big West branched off from the MPSF to create its own six-team men's volleyball conference in 2018, Hawai‘i and Long Beach State have been the standard-bearers from the get-go. The 'Bows and The Beach are the only two teams to have won regular season titles in the conference's existence. Additionally, one of the two programs have won every single conference tournament, with the exception of UC Santa Barbara in 2021. LBSU has won three national titles since 2018, while UH has won two.

On Saturday, the team looking to advance to the national championship match will have to beat their chief rival in order to do so. Hand gestures aside, that alone should provide enough motivation. 

"Regular season, postseason, seems any time we're playing each other, it means something," Hawai‘i head coach Charlie Wade said. "Both teams are always highly ranked. League postseason or national postseason, they're big-time matches, and this one should be no different."

UH mens volleyball 050726

<title>'Of course we take that personally': Hawai‘i men's volleyball set to battle Long Beach…</title>

A pair of upside down shakas gestured toward UH's fans in the most recent matchup between the 'Bows and The Beach has stoked the rivalry's fire.

'Of course we take that personally': Hawai‘i men's volleyball set to battle Long Beach State in Final Four

Arrasmith Portrait

Perry Arrasmith

Government & Politics

The most bizarre section in Hawai‘i’s 

 is the one that relates to the state’s regulation of population growth. It is a testament to a bygone era informed by misguided local anxieties. 

Runaway population growth across the Hawaiian Islands once occupied the Hawai'i zeitgeist. While much of this mindset persists in the halls of society, it contrasts with Hawai‘i’s contemporary demographic woes. 

Between April 1960 and April 1970, Hawai‘i added 115,510 residents to its population, totalling 748,182 residents across the islands. It was a meteoric rise that stressed the Hawai‘i’s poor infrastructure, corrupt land management practices, and limited housing across the islands. 

Hawai‘i was a young, growing society. The median age of a resident was 25. Much of the State’s dynamism and vigour, in turn, were informed by a mix of talent both local and non-local.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Perhaps it was too much of a good thing. "}]

During this time, national commentators were fretting about the global population’s growth. Paul and Anne Ehrlich had co-authored 

in 1968. Internationally, the Club of Rome furnished the

report, which only further argued against overconsumption. Political views wrapped in scientific dogma started-off a new movement whose cultural salience was confirmed by the 1973 film 

While societies were wasteful and inefficient, these reports didn’t necessarily call for more efficiency. Instead, they called for fewer people. 

While the times have changed, our Constitution’s outdated language shows how we are still stuck in the ’70s. Through national debates over population control, Hawai‘i became a tragic guinea pig that used environmentalism to justify population control, opening the floodgates for arguments against urban development, immigration, and economic growth. 

These conversations continue to plague Hawai‘i’s zeitgeist, most notably when it comes to unnecessary conflict between economic growth and environmental stewardship.

In 1970, the Hawai‘i State Legislature passed Senate Resolution 305, establishing the State’s Temporary Commission on Population Stabilization. A 1972 report issued by the Commission suggested an inverse relationship between environmental stewardship and population growth. 

“It remains to be seen whether or not we will achieve a balance with the limits of the Hawaiian environment in this present period of growth in Hawaiian history,” the 

 warned, “but it should be recognized that with respect to maintaining the quality of the environment, population and prosperity are ‘trade-offs.’ If we expect to maintain a fixed level of pollution and impact on the environment by people in Hawaii, then any increase in one will require a corresponding decrease in the other.”

In the following year, the State Senate once again adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of an optimum state population. “The question of population equilibria among the Islands is a difficult one to answer quantitatively,” a 

 from the Department of Planning and Economic Development warned.

“One must consider the impact on the environment, what ‘quality of life’ should be used as a measure, means of developing a viable economy within a stable population, and the size of population on each Island which will bring about a desirable balance with the social and natural environment of Hawai‘i.”

Nationally, the Commission on Population and the American Future had been established by federal law in March 1970. A final 

 issued by the Commission was submitted to the U.S. Congress in March 1972, with proposals ranging from increased abortion access to voluntary sterilization to stricter immigration controls. Out of political embarrassment for its recommendations, the Nixon Administration largely distanced itself from the Commission.

However, the rhetoric which argued for limits on immigration had devastating consequences. In the present-day, arguments blaming immigrants for environmental degradation have had devastating 

Back in Hawai‘i, the reports stacked on one another. In 1972, Earl R. Babbie of the civic organization 

, a major argument for a cap on Hawai‘i’s population at one million (Hawai‘i’s population reached this threshold in the mid-’80s). 

These reports built a case for a more permanent state agency tasked with controlling the state’s population growth. As a result, the Commission on Population Stabilization and the Hawaiian Future was 

A primary architect of the measure, Nadao Yoshinga, was not solely worried about the influx of outsiders. Natural population growth among existing residents was another worry. Yoshinaga, an influential member of the State Senate, would 

 in the name of limited Hawai‘i’s population growth over the coming years. Limiting population by whatever means necessary (in the confines of the law) was the objective.

At around this time, Robert C. Schmitt, the State Statistician of Hawai‘i, 

 of the emerging field of population policy. Proponents of population control, at least in the early Statehood era, had started to organize in the late ’60s through such organizations as the University of Hawai‘i-sponsored Zero Population Growth-Honoulu, Citizens for Hawai‘i, Life of the Land, the Sierra Club, and Save our Surf. 

These groups advocated for policies to halt population migration, economic development, and other factors like densified communities in the name of environmentalism. Perhaps tragically, this misguided approach to Hawai‘i’s prevailing problems created a manichean world of values in conflict with one another.

Arguments for population control in the name of environmental stewardship had a real impact on policy in the late ’70s. Most notably, this came to a head in 1977.

During his annual State of the State address, Governor George Ariyoshi directly addressed population control, arguing for immigration controls and density regulation in the name of the ‘aloha spirit.’

“The problem of excessive population seems to be central to nearly every problem in the State.” he started. “Too many people means too few jobs and too much competition for them. Too many people means too little land for agriculture, parks, and scenic vistas. Too many people means too much crime and too much erosion of possibly our single most important commodity: the Aloha Spirit. Too many people means too much pressure on all our governmental and private institutions.” 

Ariyoshi wanted fewer people in Hawai‘i, plain and simple. To reinforce his views, the State Legislature even sponsored a 

 on population and the Hawaiian future in March 1977. 

One piece of legislation would have discriminated against recent arrivals to Hawai‘i through residency requirements for state jobs. A Federal Judge based in Honolulu, the part-Hawaiian Sam P. King, condemned the State of Hawai‘i’s flirtation with a flagrantly “anti-migratory” statute.

These attempts provide a marked contrast with the present day. In January 2025, the Department of Human Services 

 that the State suffers from a vacancy rate of 24% of all civil services positions (equivalent to more than 4,000 jobs). 

Nevertheless, Hawai‘i still inserted a section into its Constitution at the 1978 Constitutional Convention that called for population planning. To date, it is the only Constitution in the United States with such explicit language.

Instead of promoting smarter urban planning methods that conserved space while reducing sprawl or incentivizing farmers to bring more fallow agricultural land into cultivation, it was more convenient to blame the outside migrants for Hawai‘i’s development problems.

Instead of fostering solutions which invite greater societal innovation, it is more convenient to fall for an ideology wrapped in the veneer of science. 

Since 1970, Hawai‘i’s population fortunes have reversed.

Global population growth is not exponential, nor could it sustain the growth rates witnessed after the Second World War. In fact, our planet’s 

 will likely begin declining before 2100. 

The paranoia of the ’70s became irrelevant over the following decade. By 1983, the Commission on Population and the Hawaiian Future had been abolished.

For a majority of Hawai‘i’s residents in 2025, the ’70s are a foreign, unknown domain. Since Hawai‘i’s 

 was 41 as of 2024, it’s safe to conclude more than half of Hawai‘i’s population was born after 1980.

Today, Hawai‘i is missing people. It is one of the fastest aging states in the United States. The population is contracting, with more than half of all Native Hawaiians on the planet living outside of the archipelago.

Culturally, it is still easy to blame the outsider for our own problems. Instead of acknowledging our own complicitly in failing to plan for the future, it is far easier to find that the outsider is only exacerbating the problems we are not addressing. Policies which now arrest growth not only injure potential migrants. They also hurt residents.

The debates over population control in the ’70s were about a fear of change and a society’s failure to properly navigate the pressures wrought by new forces.

Contemporary conflicts over growth still magnify this attitude. Not unironically, stewarding Hawai‘i’s environment means Hawai‘i’s environment needs to also steward Hawai‘i’s people.

“It should be remembered,” Governor John Burns said in 

, “that the key ingredient in any environment is man himself: he is part and parcel of and the key to the value of our total system of symbiotic relationships on this earth. Being a part of the environment demands that we consider human economics together with biological ecology.” 

“If man is hungry, ill-housed, undereducated or poorly treated in his society,” he wondered, “what service is it to him that his environment remains in its pristine, natural state?”

A society without one cannot have the other. We need to think about growth, not stabilization. We need to think about people.

In our own time, we need a Constitution whose thinking is not tethered to the past. While the language in outdated documents like our Constitution locks our zeitgeist in another time, we need to get over our history. We need a better zeitgeist.

Hawaiʻi Skies: An interesting combo

ASD Staff

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Hawaiʻi Skies: An interesting combo

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Hawai'i Skies

Hawaiʻi Skies: A thumbs up

Hawaiʻi Skies: So many kinds of clouds

Hawaiʻi Skies: A perfect emergence

Hawaiʻi Skies: Throwback Thursday

Most read