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.
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
