If you have ever worked in Māpunapuna, you may have wondered why the area seems to flood so easily.
The simple answer is that water has not forgotten where it used to go.
Long before warehouses, auto dealerships, and busy streets covered the area, Māpunapuna was a low-lying landscape of wetlands, shallow lagoons, and fishponds. The coastal plain between Moanalua and Keʻehi Lagoon was shaped by both freshwater flowing from the mountains and the movement of the ocean. It was an environment well suited to the Hawaiian system of aquaculture, in which fishponds, wetlands, streams, and agricultural lands worked together to provide food for the people. A bustling landscape where people lived and worked for generations.
In the 1920s, maps of the area showed 13 loko i‘a (fishponds) covering more than 800 acres, along with extensive marshland, shallow lagoons, and other lowlands. That landscape began to change as Honolulu expanded. The Māpunapuna Industrial Subdivision was developed by the Damon Estate during the 1940s and 1950s. Wetlands were drained, fishponds were filled, and the low-lying coastal plain was gradually transformed into land suitable for roads, buildings, warehouses, and industry.
Much of the material used to fill the wetlands was coral dredged from Keʻehi Lagoon along with soil, rock, trash, and organic material. The shallow ponds and marshes that had once absorbed and held water were transformed into solid ground for roads, warehouses, businesses, and eventually the industrial district we know today.
The former wetlands once provided space for water to collect, spread out, and slowly drain toward the ocean. But once those areas were filled and covered with pavement and buildings, much of that natural water storage disappeared. Over the decades, the fill itself has compacted and settled. Some parts of Māpunapuna have sunk several feet, leaving portions of the industrial district at or below sea level during high tides.
There is another problem. During high-tide events, seawater can push back through the drainage system rather than flowing harmlessly out to sea. During heavy rain, enormous quantities of stormwater are moving through the same low-lying system. When high tide and heavy rain arrive together, the drainage system has nowhere to put all that water easily. The result is the familiar flooding of streets and parking lots.
So when Māpunapuna floods, it is not simply a modern drainage problem. It is the consequence of building an industrial neighborhood on a landscape that was designed by nature, and carefully used by generations of Hawaiians, to hold water.
When we say “the water remembers,” we mean that water has a way of returning to the places where it once flowed. We may change the landscape, fill the ponds, and build over the wetlands, but the water has not forgotten.
As the water remembers where it once flowed, perhaps the land remembers who once walked across it. Before Māpunapuna became an industrial district, these lowlands were part of a much older Hawaiian landscape. In that older landscape, we begin to encounter another kind of story. Stories of shadowy figures that would scare workers and customers. Tales of the huakaʻi pō, the night marchers, whose processions are said to continue along ancient paths even after the world around them has been transformed.
People used to talk all the time about the old 99 Ranch Market being haunted. Many have said that the night marchers used to walk right through the massive grocery store and indoor Chinatown, leaving a mess of furniture in their wake. It’s where the Home Depot is now.
My hānai brother Paul worked at the old Gibsons in Māpunapuna. Not in the store as a clerk, because he didn’t have the demeanor for it. He worked in the warehouse, bringing all the needed items out to stock the floor.
Paul said that the floor in the main part of the store would always sink, no matter how many times it was repaired and filled in. Rumors circulated that night marchers entered through an opening in the earth a few blocks away, walked right through the store, and exited where the floor sank in the middle of Gibson’s store. Employees also said they would see shadows and apparitions floating past customers as if they weren’t there. As a kid, I found it funny because I could imagine a customer losing their mind after seeing a ghost float right past them in a random aisle.
“I feel sorry for whoever gotta do inventory at night,” he’d shake his head. “Hopefully, they don’t have to work by themselves.”
He said that sometimes you got the feeling you weren’t alone, and it felt like a lot of people were pressed up against you. The experience made it hard to breathe, even though you could physically see there was nothing there. Paul would rub the crucifix on his necklace and pray the Our Father again and again, asking for protection.
His most traumatic experience came when his shift was over, and the sun had not set. He clocked out, walked to the parking lot, put the key in the ignition, and put his old Pontiac in gear.
“Paulito,” the voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t go home yet.”
My brother said he jumped out of the car and backed away, his heart pounding and his mind racing. The car was still running, but it began smoking for no reason, and suddenly, the radiator blew, spewing hot liquid all over the place.
Despite his Catholic upbringing, Paul attributed the warning to whatever presence was trying to make itself known in the warehouse and store.
“I knew they weren’t trying to harm us,” Paul said.
But the spiritual activity was still too much to bear, so he planned to quit and work with our father at Easy Appliance. But that’s another story.
The authors can be reached at hawaii.mysteries@gmail.com
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