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Stephanie Salmons

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Haley Lehman

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Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros

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A. Kam Napier

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ASD Staff

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I have plans tonight, sorry...\""}]

Smile 26 9 30

<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026</title>

"I have plans tonight, sorry..."

Daily Smile: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 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

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Crime & Courts

The Moanalua High School girls wrestling team has won five state titles in a row. That is the sort of sentence that usually ends a story. This week it begins one.

Sean Sakaida coached that team through four of those titles. He is 

, accused of producing child pornography with one of his wrestlers. Court records say he began dating the girl when she was in ninth grade.

Within a day of the FBI posting a tip form, two more possible victims came forward.

The morning after Sakaida’s arrest, the mother of his three children walked into Family Court with a handwritten petition for a protective order. She alleged that he abused her children, and she asked the court to keep him away for 20 years.

The courts have not yet ruled. But the public record is already heavy enough to ask: How did he get here?

The wrestlers were children. Their parents signed the permission slips and drove them to practice and trusted a man — and the school that hired him — to help form their daughters.

That formation is what a coach is for. A parent lends a child to a coach for a few hours a day so the child can learn to work hard, compete well, and get up off the mat.

Sakaida, by his own account, made himself available at all hours. In 2012, at Roosevelt High School, a parent accused him of kissing a 13-year-old wrestler and texting other girls as late as 3 a.m. He denied the kiss. He did not deny the texts. He told the Star-Advertiser he was only helping students with their problems, and that former students still called him “because he was always available.”

Every parent should hear alarm bells in that sentence. A 30-year-old man texting other people’s teenage daughters at 3 a.m. is not “available.” He is a threat. Teens have problems, and they should carry those problems to their parents. A coach who becomes the person they carry them to instead has not added something to a family. He has taken something from it. The best-friend coach is a type we have learned to admire. It is a type we should learn to resist.

The Department of Education investigated in 2012. But it never called the police. Sakaida was placed on leave. The next year Moanalua hired him. Moanalua’s athletic director has 

 whether the school knew about the 2012 allegations.

, and anyone with a search engine could have found it in under a minute. If Moanalua knew, that is one kind of trouble. If Moanalua did not check, that is another.

Then Sakaida won: First a few individual champions, then four state titles in a row. In 2025 the school received a complaint that he was in a relationship with a 17-year-old wrestler. The school investigated. Again, no one called the police.

Sakaida was placed on leave, his contract lapsed, and his name went into a confidential registry. According to federal prosecutors, the relationship continued for months afterward. It took a private citizen tipping the FBI in January to bring in anyone with a badge.

Wrestling is a fine sport. It builds tough, hard-working people, because the mat does not lie. It teaches responsibility, because a wrestler who loses cannot blame a teammate.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to win, and nothing wrong with winning. But the desire to win is like fire: useful in the hearth, ruinous in the curtains.

We know what that desire looks like when it gets loose. Students who live in the weight room and skip the classroom. Teenagers taking steroids to gain an edge. Schools that hire a coach with a complaint already on file because his teams bring home hardware.

The desire to win at any cost is idolatry, pure and simple, and idols always want to be fed. In this case, it appears, girls were the offering.

Here is what happens next if nothing changes. The victims will rightly sue. The DOE will settle out of court to avoid the headlines. The settlement will be sealed, and the public will pay the bill without ever learning who knew what. Records requests will die under “pending litigation.” The criminal trial will produce details, and we will consume them the way we consume cold-case podcasts, and then we will forget.

We should not. Every detail that emerges should be read as a specification for reform. A school is not a police department. When a complaint involves a possible sex crime against a child, the school’s first call should be to the people whose job is investigating crimes.

That is already the law. Hawaiʻi makes every school employee a mandated reporter, required to report suspected abuse immediately to Child Welfare Services or the police. It’s not clear that the schools did. The Legislature should ask why, in public, before the settlements seal the answer.

A coaching hire should require a check of past complaints across the whole system, not just a clean criminal record. Parents should ask who is texting their daughter at midnight, and a coach should be dismissed if the answer is him.

Moanalua has a case filled with trophies. At what cost?

Moanalua HS BANNER 16x9

<title>Moanalua won four state titles: Who paid?</title>

In 2012, a parent accused a Roosevelt coach of kissing a 13-year-old wrestler. The next year, Moanalua hired him and he won four state titles. ASD columnist Sterling Higa on idolatry, mandated reporting, and the trophy case nobody wants to look inside.

Moanalua won four state titles: Who paid?

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Arts & Entertainment

’s Oktoberfest celebration is coming up Friday, Oct. 2, from 5 to 10 p.m. The event is free to attend and open to the public.

Attendees can look forward to giant steins, German-inspired dishes, dancing and more, according to Candice Ishikawa, Aloha Beer Co.’s head of marketing and brand.

“Oktoberfest is always one of our favorite events of the year because the beer garden completely comes alive,” she says. “This year, we're bringing back the giant steins, line dancing, Oktoberfest food specials, and we're expecting another really fun, high-energy night.”

The business’s Aloha Fest Bier, which is a seasonal release, will be available during the celebration. Aloha Beer Co.’s signature keepsake steins will be available for $25 each (unlimited $10 fills all night).

Oktoberfest food specials include a giant pretzel, spicy salame-basil pesto pizza and paprika chicken karaage sliders. The soft, Bavarian-style, salted pretzel is served with Hop Lei beer mustard and Hop Lei beer cheese sauce.

Meanwhile, the specialty pizza is topped with beer mozzarella cheese, chili flakes, Genoa salami, sweet onions, Roma tomatoes, mushrooms, basil pesto, garlic oil and parmesan cheese. The sliders feature chicken karaage with paprika seasoning, blue cheese-buffalo-ranch-honey barbecue sauce and celery curls in buttered brioche buns. The sliders are served with bacon-beer cheese fries.

The evening will also feature a dirndl and lederhosen contest — attendees are invited to show off their best Oktoberfest style — and German dancing.

VIP tickets ($35 each) are also on sale for the event. VIP tickets include guaranteed beer garden entry, a reserved section, and a keepsake stein ($25 value). A limited number of VIP tickets are available for the event.

“It's (Oktoberfest) become one of those events our regulars look forward to every year, and we love seeing everyone come out and celebrate with us,” Ishikawa says.

Valet parking will be available for $6 (with validation from Aloha Beer Co.).

For more information, visit Aloha Beer Co.’s 

Aloha Beer Co Oktoberfest group shot 092826

<title>Aloha Beer Co.’s Oktoberfest celebration is coming</title>

The event, which is from 5 to 10 p.m. on Oct. 2 at the Kakaʻako brewery, is open to the public and free to attend. Attendees can look forward to giant steins, a seasonal Aloha Fest Bier, German-inspired dishes, dancing and more. A limited number of VIP tickets are also available for the event.

Aloha Beer Co.’s Oktoberfest celebration is coming

Government & Politics

Aloha Spirit

Public archives are known for documenting land and genealogy, but Hawaiʻi State Archivist Adam Jansen said Hawaiʻi State Archives does much more than that. 

Archives Month, a month-long virtual exhibition that begins on Thursday, Oct. 1, highlights the archives’ special collections that people might not know about. The month will explore how Waikīkī is represented in art and music, and has changed over time through a virtual exhibition. Some of the material has never been displayed online before.

The first week of Archives Month focuses on 19th century history of Waikīkī, including the first known map of the area documented by a Russian expedition. The second week looks at the representation of Waikīkī in art and music and the third week is all about Waikīkī hotels. The fourth week is about the development of Waikīkī, featuring photos from the Williams Family’s collection of construction projects between Chinatown and Waikīkī. The last week focuses on the conservation of Waikīkī with the display of the personal files of Nancy Bannick, who advocated to preserve Oʻahu’s historical places.

Archives Month material will be available on the 

is open to the public between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays,

 will also post daily on their social media pages.

Jansen said that not everyone has the availability and ability to visit the archive in person, so celebrating Archives Month virtually makes the archive more accessible and equitable. More Kānaka Maoli live on the 

 than on the Islands, and Jansen said that the archive hopes to help Native Hawaiians maintain connection to the ʻāina.

The archive “collects, preserves and makes available to the public

” government records and special collections. 

Making records available to the public is at the core of Jansen’s role as State Archivist.

“We can protect by putting things in a vault and locking the vault door. We’ve preserved it. But our founding legislation is to preserve arrange, describe and make accessible,” Jansen said. “It does not belong to us, it belongs to the people, so providing them access to their documentary heritage in a format than they can use, appreciate, enjoy is incredibly important to our overall goal and mission.”

He pointed to the Hawaiian proverb “I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope,” which means “the lessons of the past are the keys to the future.”

Jansen said, “He who controls the record controls history, controls knowledge, controls power, and as the public archives, we need to make sure everybody has that, that no one person controls it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Meet the State Archivist"}]

Jansen doesn’t have a favorite item or collection at the archive but said that Queen Lili‘uokalani donating her 

which includes her diaries, draft constitution, letters and more 

inspires and drives him to do more to support the people of Hawaiʻi. The archive has digitized approximately 24,000 documents as part of the queen’s collection.

“She entrusted us with her most intimate words because she wanted us to share her voice with everybody for generations to come,” he said. “How can we pay back that faith and trust that she placed in us?”

The Hawaiʻi State Archives is also home to 

Jansen said that there’s still “societal angst regarding overthrow and annexation” and generational trauma.

“We have records dealing with that time period that need to be more globally understood, so when these discussions happen, everybody is starting from the same foundational knowledge of the words from the people who were there shaping that history,” he said.

Jansen said that he took an atypical path to his career as an archivist. He originally planned to major in chemical engineering but changed his mind halfway through college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“I quickly learned that while I had a deep love of science and math, the concept of working in a small lab with two other people and no windows for the rest of my life really didn’t appeal to me,” he said.

He decided to get his bachelor’s in history instead. The university librarian asked him, “if you love history so much, why don’t you think about protecting it?”

Jansen went on to work in information management at Microsoft and UNOVA. He served as the Deputy State Archivist for the State of Washington, where he managed the Washington State Digital Archives while earning his Master of Science from Eastern Washington University in Business Administration and Computer Science, and later obtained his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

Jansen moved to Hawaiʻi in 2013 to consult the Hawaiʻi State Archives on digitization and fell in love with the state and spirit of aloha. He stepped into the role of State Archivist in April 2016 and now oversees a team of about 20 staff.

“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” he said.

The people have kept Jansen passionate about his work, and he sees archives changing lives daily.

Jansen remembers an aunty in tears looking at the microfilm readers who had told him that she found the land record that her grandmother had signed, making it the first time she’d ever met her tutu.

“The impact that I see that these primary sources can make in (people’s) lives is absolutely irreplaceable,” he said.

Hawaiʻi State Archives has been upgrading its hardware to photography equipment over the last five years to improve digitization efforts. According to Jansen, the archive has digitized approximately 1% of their collection. As they make progress digitizing records, people continue to donate materials.

Hawaiʻi State Archives is developing artificial intelligence to increase accessibility of public hearings and aims to roll it out by the end of the year, Jansen said. The system will transcribe thousands of hours of hearings into a system researchers can search.

“We understand some of the fears and limitations and dangers of AI, so we are very cognizant of the fact that our language model that we are using, all of the AI tools are only on the corpus that we give it,” Jansen said. "It knows nothing about the grand universe beyond. It’s not finding anything other than those hearings and the documents we give it.”

Waikiki songbooks

<title>'Archives change lives': Archives Month kicks off this week</title>

The Hawaiʻi State Archive kicks off American Archives Month on Thursday with a five-week long virtual program about Waikīkī. Aloha State Daily sat down with State Archivist Adam Jansen to learn more.

'Archives change lives': Archives Month kicks off this week

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

A 24-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with last weekend’s fatal shooting in Kailua.

The Honolulu Police Department announced late Monday that homicide detectives identified a suspect who was arrested for second-degree murder and firearm offenses just before 11 p.m. Monday night. HPD arrest logs 

 Hilinaikailimakualopali Keeno as the suspect.

Keeno’s was possible through the assistance of the HPD’s Criminal Investigation Division’s Forensic Video Unit. HPD had previously requested that members of the public submit photos or videos of the Kailua Fall Festival, which was ongoing at the time of the shooting, that could help identify the suspect, who at the time was described as “a local male in his late 20s.”

HPD’s announcement also identified the victim: 30-year-old Thomas Malone, the son of Michael Buntenbah, who owns the 

Friends and family of Malone gathered at the Kailua Target parking lot Tuesday to commemorate him with flowers, candles and memorabilia. Also in attendance were Malone’s old soccer coach and former teammates.

Malone had a decorated athletic career during high school, having played football, soccer and track and field at Kaiser High School. Hawai‘i sports website ScoringLive 

 Malone their Offensive Player of the Year for the 2013 football season, saying that Malone — then a senior going by the name Buntenbah-Leong — accumulated 149 points over 12 games.

Aloha State Daily's Christian Shimabuku and Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros contributed to this article.

 The Honolulu Police Department is seeking photos and videos of the Kailua Fall Festival that can shed light on the shooting death of a 30-year-old man.

On Sept. 26, shortly after 8:30 p.m., a gunshot was reported in the parking lot of the Target in Kailua, where a 30-year-old man was found with a fatal gunshot wound and was declared dead at the scene.

Initial investigations by HPD determined that two groups of people got into an argument at the Kailua Fall Festival, which was adjacent to the parking lot. That argument spilled into the lot, where somebody pulled out a gun and shot the victim.

The shooter, however, was unidentified beyond the description: “a local male in his late 20s, wearing a black sweater and his hair in two braids.”

HPD has initiated a murder investigation and has received surveillance footage and other pictures from the festival. However, detectives are requesting additional photos from the event that could help identify the shooter. Even photos that don’t explicitly show the shooting can still contain relevant information, HPD has stated.

People with information or recordings regarding the incident are asked to call 911 or CrimeStoppers at 808-955-8300.

[{"type":"text","text":"The investigation remains ongoing."}]

Kailua shooting victim memorial

<title>UPDATED: Woman arrested for weekend Kailua shooting</title>

Photos and videos from the Kailua Fall Festival have helped identify alleged shooter Sunday at the Target in Kailua. On Monday, HPD also named the victim: 30-year-old Thomas Malone, the son of Michael Buntenbah, who owns the Defend Hawai‘i clothing brand. Malone had a decorated athletic career during high school, having played football, soccer and track and field at Kaiser High School.

UPDATED: Woman arrested for weekend Kailua shooting

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