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They had been born these islands of a mating of fire and water.
A fiery cauldron in a vastness of ocean.
They had been settled, these islands, by voyagers from the Marquesas and from Tahiti.
They had been welded into a kingdom, these stubborn islands,
by a man whose daring in war was matched only by his wisdom in peace.
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This is Hawaii.
Reaching from the past to our own century and centuries beyond.
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There is, in Washington, D.C., a National Hall of Fame.
Each of the United States has selected two of its most famous sons and daughters to represent it.
The state of Virginia chose George Washington, the father of his country,
and Robert E. Lee, that country's most beloved rebel.
Humorous Will Rogers is here, a choice of the state of Oklahoma,
and one of Colorado's choices is Dr. Florence Sabin, who'd advanced the cause of men.
Hawaii's choices are Kamehameha the Great, who founded the royal line that steered his kingdom through the stormy 19th century.
And Father Damien, a Belgian priest.
Both were men of heroic proportions, yet utterly unalike.
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In the 1800s, diseases brought by outsiders, cholera, smallpox, even measles,
drastically reduced the native population of Hawaii.
Then, in the 1860s, came the greatest scourge of all, leprosy.
Today, it's called Hansen's disease, and there's a cure.
But in the last half of the past century, human beings stood helpless against this most dreaded, disfiguring disease.
The way in which the Hawaiian government dealt with the disease is echoed in the Old Testament.
The leper shall cry, unclean. He is unclean. Out of the camp shall his dwelling be.
Hawaiian lepers were hunted down by bloodhounds, torn from their families,
and banished to the Kalupapa Peninsula on this island of Molokai.
Turbulent seas and unscalable cliffs forming a prison made by nature.
Yes, prison, for then leprosy was treated as a sinful crime.
This place was called a colony. In truth, it was a chaos.
The government failed to enforce order, and no one dared come close to the reeking, rotting, festering lepers.
Not doctors, not clergy.
Today on this peninsula, you can see proper graves. But in 1873, there were no decent burials.
Graves were shallow, and wild pigs would humbly snout up the dead.
Since there was no cure, there was no hope, and no law.
Then to these shores came a remarkable man, a Belgian of peasant stock, named Joseph de Wurster.
Bred from faith and hard work, he is known to the world as Father Damien.
Unlike other clergymen, Damien came and lived at the colony for the rest of his life.
These are among his few possessions, tools with which he built sturdy houses for the lepers.
Houses that kept out the endless rain and chill wind.
He cleaned sewers. He dug proper graves for the dead.
He created out of chaos a community. In spirit, he became one with the lepers,
and he strove to make them realize that God loved them too, as he loves all his creation.
Over these grounds, the lepers made their way to Damien's church.
Processions of the living dead, some on toeless feet, some hiding their sores with flowers.
One day, after many years of Sundays and holy days, Damien walked to the altar rail
and addressed his congregation as, we lepers.
He himself had contracted the disease.
Now he was one with them, not only in spirit, but in body.
For the next four years, he worked furiously to see that homes for the leper orphans would be completed.
Then he took to his bed.
Leprosy had ravaged his body from without. Now it attacked his throat, lungs, intestines.
On the 15th of April, 1889, he died and was buried outside his lepers' church at the Colony.
Because of this one man, the attitude toward leprosy in the Western world changed from persecution to compassion.
In the spirit of this man, this saint, as many call him, is still here on the wild shores of Molokai.
As the whole Western world waltzed into the 20th century to the strains of the Belle Epoque,
the balmy period of peace between the 1890s and the Great War,
the stars and stripes were hoisted high over Hawaii, exactly at noon on the 12th of August, 1898.
The islands had passed from being a kingdom to a republic.
Now they were simply annexed as a U.S. territory.
For the Royal Hawaiians, it was the saddest day in history.
For the Anglo-Saxons, the most glorious. Business boomed. Steam power ruled the day.
It offered infinite travel possibilities for the wealthy, even as far as romantic Honolulu,
in the new star-spangled territory of Hawaii.
There, though a minority, Haoles set the standards by which all of Hawaii's people were to live.
Haoles. That's what Americans and British were called in Hawaii.
At one time, Haole was applied to all foreigners. Now it was being narrowed down to Caucasians.
Haole businessmen and sportsmen favored Hoffman's Chop House on Hotel Street.
Haole ladies held teas in elegant gardens, and Haole society attended openings at the Honolulu Opera House.
What was natively Hawaiian was shameful, suppressed.
Enterprising Haoles were determined to turn the islands into a vacationer's paradise for the rich.
In 1903, the Hawaii Promotion Committee was created to blow its own horn. It blew it well.
The Moana Hotel was built at Waikiki.
Honeymooners and health nuts were drawn to the accommodations, as was high society.
They came to sun on the Waikiki sands.
The more adventurous would take an inter-island steamer to the Big Island for an eye-smarting view of the volcanoes.
Despite the frowns of Hawaii's Haoles, tourists were fascinated by the hula.
Celebrities discovered the islands, novelist Jack London, silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.
Swedish-born William Matson began launching luxury liners between San Francisco and Honolulu.
By 1935, the Matson Navigation Company had a great fleet of 50 vessels.
In 1926, Honolulu built its own city landmark, the 184-foot Aloha Tower.
Then, with much fanfare, a wonderful pink palazzo was opened, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
Now, even more celebrities of the day flock to Waikiki.
Spencer Tracy, Eddie Cantor and swimmer Buster Crabb.
For most, a vacation in Hawaii was the trip of a lifetime.
If one started in New York City, it could take close to a week by Pullman to the West Coast,
and then another week or two by steamer to Honolulu.
Then the Matson line launched the luxurious Malolo, which made the crossing in four and a half days.
Now, Pan American inaugurated Hawaii Clipper flights.
The Clipper brought passengers from San Francisco to Honolulu in just 20 hours.
Hawaii was indeed a paradise for a lucky few.
But it was no paradise for languishing Native Hawaiians, the few who remained.
Their way of life was suppressed, their contributions ignored,
except in one spectacular arena.
That arena was the sea itself.
In Hawaii, fast-moving waves swell, slap the coral reefs, then move toward shore with unleashed power.
It became Hawaii's entry to the world of sports.
Though the origins of surfing are lost, it was the ancient Hawaiians,
men and women, who perfected surfing to an unparalleled degree,
and Hawaiians who introduced it to the rest of the world.
Today, surfers flock to Hawaii in pursuit of the perfect wave.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Waikiki was a quiet beach,
a palm-lined golden strand curving to diamond head.
It had been a royal fishing ground.
Now, it is home to the world's largest fishing port,
and the largest fishing port in the world.
A palm-lined golden strand curving to diamond head. It had been a royal fishing ground.
Now, ragtail boys swam here and wanted never to get out of the water.
When, in 1901, the Moana Hotel opened, it opened unto opportunities for these aquatic youngsters
who, as bottom-of-the-heap Hawaiians, had little future.
So they gave canoe rides, they taught surfing, they played the ukulele and sang beautifully.
They took catchy nicknames, Scooter Boy, Tough Bill, Hock Shaw, Splash, Turkey Love, and Laughing John.
Hawaii's beach boy era ran from the turn of the century to the late 50s.
It wasn't a job, being a beach boy. It was a lifestyle.
Maybe that's why the world insisted on referring to these grown men as boys.
They played for a living.
But there emerged a man who changed the world's perception of a beach boy,
from something as frothy as sea foam to something as deep and noble as the sea itself.
Duke Paoa Kahanamuku was born in 1890, a child of the sea.
His family taught him that he had come from the sea, and to the sea they would return.
Years of rough swimming and canoeing had turned him into a superb athlete.
He had the long arms and powerful legs of a born swimmer.
They said he had fins for feet.
When he was clocked swimming the 100-yard freestyle faster than any human being in the world,
he was entered in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
The crowd cheered as Duke received from the Swedish king his first Olympic gold medal.
When he wasn't winning Olympic medals, Duke was on the beach.
He'd say, out of the water, I'm nothing.
He was acknowledged as the world's fastest swimmer and foremost surfer.
In four Olympic Games over 20 years, he had won five medals.
Elected sheriff of Honolulu, he became Hawaii's unofficial ambassador.
He even got the queen mother of the British royal family to dance the hula.
Duke Ohanamoko was struck down by a heart attack at age 77.
Hawaii mourned.
A procession of canoes paddled out to sea.
Their Duke's ashes were lowered into the water.
Those closest to him were silent, remembering Duke's favorite saying.
Don't talk. Keep it in your heart.
In the meantime, those original Hawaiians whose Polynesian forebears had found this other shore a paradise
were sinking into the hell of extinction without a whimper.
Haoles, a few Anglo-Saxons, held the wealth of Hawaii in their manicured white hands
and wielded power like a war club.
Sugar was the hub of Hawaii's economy.
Sugar production would rise to more than a million tons a year.
The Haole sugar barons lived like barons indeed,
especially Klaus Spreckles, titan of Hawaiian sugar.
Best jobs in the plantations went to Haoles, too.
Americans, English, Scots were the overseers.
As plantations grew, there was a pressing need for more and more field hands.
Recruiters combed the world for cheap labor, docile labor.
Workers with strong backs and no education, 10 to 12 hours a day for 20 to 30 dollars a month.
Between 1852 and 56, several thousand Chinese were shipped in as contract labor.
Coolies, they were called.
They were good workers, well-behaved. The sugar barons liked that.
Those Chinese were also smart and raring to get ahead.
As soon as their labor contracts were fulfilled,
those Chinese workers headed straight for Chinatown, Honolulu.
There they'd open their own businesses.
Soon they were opening their own banks and sending their sons to college on the mainland.
The barons needed field hands, not college boys.
So they netted whole families of poor Portuguese.
Their women worked the fields as hard as the men, but the Portuguese wanted more money.
They pulled in Puerto Ricans, boatloads of Koreans,
and between 1907 and 1931, nearly 120,000 Filipinos.
But to the chagrin of the sugar barons, one of those Filipinos, Pablo Manliped,
put up a terrible fight for higher wages.
For many of these immigrants, Hawaii became their other shore.
To them, the cane fields were only a landing place.
No immigrant group would exert more influence on the islands than the Japanese.
They built temples and shrines and kept their Japanese language.
They built teahouses.
Since they married only their own kind,
there was a lively commerce between Hawaii and Japan in mail-order brides.
But in the 1920s, Japanese language newspapers were urging their readers to concentrate on Hawaii, not Japan.
And Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans, were getting educations.
McKinley High School in Honolulu was nicknamed Tokyo High.
At the turn of the century, more than half of Hawaii's population was of Japanese origin.
By 1930, they were running almost half the retail stores on the islands.
They were increasingly successful, so they were resented, objects of suspicion, of distrust.
This distrust was reinforced by events in Japan itself,
the rising sun burning higher and hotter over Asia,
the military mode, the war with China, and the increasing tension between Japan and the United States.
It was near the breaking point.
America anticipated sabotage in Hawaii, not an attack.
But an attack is what it got.
Pearl Harbor, just outside Honolulu, was a colossal naval base for the U.S.
Battleship Roe.
Between Ford Island and the Navy Yard lay America's invincible Pacific fleet.
There were 94 vessels in all, moored in a space not three miles square.
Bomber and fighter planes at nearby airfields were lined up wingtip to wingtip
to prevent the Japanese sabotage that the military was expecting.
In reality, the planes were sitting ducks in rows.
December 7, the day that the Japanese Empire would strike like lightning.
That early morning, at 06 hours, at a launching point in the north central Pacific,
Japanese warplanes were revving up for takeoffs from the decks of carriers.
Thus was launched the greatest gamble in modern military history.
Sunrise over Hawaii was 6.26 a.m. that Sunday morning.
Most of the island's population was sleeping in and dreaming of a lazy Sunday.
In the 1930s and early 40s, Americans contented themselves with the smug notion
that Japanese manufactured goods were shoddy, fell apart.
But there was nothing shoddy about the Nakagena 97 bombers,
the Aichi dive bombers, and the deadly fighter planes called Zeroes
that were filling the airspace over Pearl Harbor that Sunday.
That time, 7.50 a.m.
At the war cry, Tora, Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, the first wave swooped across the bay.
Dive bombers screaming on battleship row never had a target been so naked to an enemy.
A sheer splitting thunder.
A deadly bomb strike on the battleship Arizona with hundreds of men trapped below.
The Arizona went down in nine minutes.
Battleship row was mayhem.
In an hour and three quarters, 18 ships of war had been sunk or wrecked.
159 planes were damaged, 188 destroyed.
Total losses in human life, military and civilian, 2,409 killed, 1,178 wounded.
Hawaii caught its breath.
Martial law was declared, and it readied itself for an invasion.
Tanks rumbled in front of Yolani Palace.
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel became a Navy recreation center,
and 4th Street Honolulu swarmed with soldiers and sailors.
Now America wanted vengeance.
It snarled in blind hatred at the Japanese.
In California, where only 1% of the population was of Japanese origin,
American-born citizens as well as old folks were given as little as 48 hours
to get rid of their homes and farms and businesses.
They were herded into camps where they lived as prisoners behind barbed wire.
While mainland America was on its hate binge, Hawaii remained rational.
At first, Hawaii's Japanese were blamed for Pearl Harbor,
but no Hawaiian Japanese alien or American-born was guilty of espionage
or of the sabotage that Hawaii's top brass had prepared for.
To the island's credit, Hawaiian Japanese were loyal to the stars and stripes.
The young Nisei were hot to get into the war,
were hot to prove beyond a doubt the loyalty of Japanese Americans to the United States.
A special military unit was created for Japanese American volunteers from Hawaii.
The 100th Infantry Battalion, which joined mainland Japanese American GIs
in forming the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Go for broke was the battle cry of these eager warriors.
They put their whole lives into the fray.
For Uncle Sam, yes, and for their Japanese moms and pops and grandparents.
Their casualty rate was three times higher than the average.
Japanese Americans garnered 18,143 individual decorations for bravery,
including a Congressional Medal of Honor.
Hawaii's 100th alone earned the nickname the Purple Heart Battalion.
The combat record of these men stands unequaled in U.S. military history.
But as President Harry Truman said in honoring them,
they had won the biggest battle of all, the battle against prejudice.
They came back, back to these paradise islands,
those Nisei survivors of Hawaii's 100th Battalion.
They came back those brave sons of coolie laborers who had sweated in the cane fields.
Chinese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Portuguese, and Filipino.
They came back those heroic GIs who had sprung from tough New Englanders.
And there were those wearing GI helmets whose ancestors had worn
the feathered helmets of Hawaiian kings.
They came back having learned that there was much more to the world
than the cane field and the taro patch.
Hawaii took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights to higher education,
at schools and colleges, at Hawaii's university.
Armed with diplomas, they battled for their place in the shaping of Hawaii's future.
For a thousand years, new immigrants had been peopling these islands.
Dehesians came and imposed their gods on those Polynesians who had already settled here.
Captain Cook's crew began melding Polynesian blood with British.
Then came the Yankee strain from whalers, missionaries.
And in the land grab decades of king sugar, strains of Chinese and Japanese,
Korean and Filipino from Asia, Puerto Ricans from the Caribbean,
and Portuguese from Europe.
Now each bloodline, Polynesian, Caucasian, Oriental,
combine with the others to bring about the new Hawaiian.
A unique breed of islander.
A people of infinite variety.
And beauty.
They have outgrown Chinatown and mail-order brides.
The hands that dance the hula can also manage chopsticks, as well as three-finger poi.
Honolulu's fine old churches, which are rooted in Europe and America,
share community loyalties with Buddhist temples rooted in China, Korea, and Japan.
The new Hawaiian.
Racially, they encompass continents, and many can boast that coursing through their veins
is that precious pint of pure Hawaiian blood.
To all, Hawaii is home.
On August 21, 1959, the news reached Honolulu within minutes.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had declared Hawaii a fully fledged state of the American Union.
Bells pealed, sirens shrieked, flags were flying, flags were the star for the new 50th state.
The armed forces sponsored a display of fireworks.
And one new Hawaiian, of a hodgepodge of Polynesian and Oriental blood,
summed it up when he said, we are all Haoles now.
The airship was replacing the cruise ship.
Hawaii became affordable to masses of vacationers.
A paradise for everyone.
In 1967, for the first time in a one-year period, Hawaii played host to over a million tourists.
They too were seeking an other shore, an escape from the mainland rat race, a breath of innocence.
The first time visitors were amazed at the variety found in these islands, in sites, places, people.
Like the voyagers of old, visitors came to these islands to return home to tell of the wonders of this new land.
Touchdown at Honolulu, a 25-mile spread on the island of Oahu.
Oahu means the gathering place, and it's aptly named.
Though it ranks third in size among the islands, it holds more than three-fourths of Hawaii's population.
Lovers of old Hawaii are pleased to learn that the Royal Hawaiian Band still plays in front of the Iolani Palace, a hundred-year-old tradition.
And that the palace has been restored to look as it did when it was a royal residence.
For 75 years after royalty, it served as Hawaii's capital.
Today, a splendid new capital rises out of a shimmering pool as underwater islands might surface from the sea and is topped by a volcano-shaped crown.
The columns suggest royal palms.
But it is the black and gold Kamehameha the Great that presides over the capital district.
He is the Hawaiian David.
Kauaiaho still prevails, the Westminster Abbey of the Pacific.
It began back in 1820 as a chapel of thatch.
In time, Kamehameha III proposed a stone church.
Thousands of Hawaiians worked 20 feet underwater quarrying 1,400 slabs of coral, some weighing 1,000 pounds each, to build the new church.
It was finished in 1842.
This venerable old church has survived them all.
Coronations of kings, the fall of a monarchy, World War II.
Now Japanese tourists love to get married here.
On the church ground stands the tomb of King Lunalilo, the only Hawaiian monarch who willed not to be laid to rest, here with his predecessors in the Royal Mausoleum.
There are other graves of interest on Oahu, the burial plots of those zealous New England missionaries who built these houses and gave the Hawaiians the Bible, the alphabet, and the mumu.
After the discovery of Hawaii itself, the coming of the missionaries in 1820 is the most important event in Hawaii's history.
Chinatown is still thriving, exotic foodstuffs, chow mein potters, noodle factories, purveyors of herbal medicine.
Today the district is a first step for new immigrants, such as the Vietnamese.
Not many Hawaiian Chinese reside in Chinatown anymore, but historic Chinatown remains their focal point.
It had survived two disastrous fires.
And now all Oahu heads for Chinatown on Chinese New Year's.
Since statehood Waikiki is bustling as never before.
To many, this is Hawaii. It hosts half the state's accommodations.
The array of faces on the beach attest to the international character of tourism here.
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel is still here, still cushioned by tropical gardens and a golden beach.
A pink princess lost in a forest of high-rises.
In Waikiki, fun is in the air.
The trip to Honolulu's Bishop Museum satisfies a visitor's hunger for first-hand knowledge of the pure Hawaiians.
Indeed, all Polynesian peoples.
Here is housed the world's largest collection of Hawai'iana.
The museum itself is a memorial to Princess Bernice Waihi Bishop, the great-granddaughter of Kamehameha I.
First-time visitors were soon to learn that there was much more to Oahu than Honolulu and its beach at Waikiki.
Fifteen miles east is Sea Life Park.
Here, 4,000 sea specimens – fish, crustaceans, sea turtles – live together in a 300,000-gallon aquarium.
And there are shows starring dolphins, penguins, sea lions, and whales.
At sparkling Hanama Bay, lined with palms, one can get into the swim oneself.
This is a state park, an underwater state park.
One can scuba dive or snorkel about the reefs.
Hanama was the location of Blue Hawaii, the first of three films that Elvis Presley made in the Hawaiian islands.
Presley loved Hawaii, returning again and again to his island hideaways.
The Elvis Hawaii films clicked off a romance between show business and the islands, spawning such offspring as Hawaii Five-O.
In windward Oahu, visitors brave chilly gusts for turns on the Nu'uanupale lookout.
It offers a breathtaking view.
It was to here, the Nu'uanupale, that Kamehameha the Great drove Oahu's defenders.
Many jumped or were pushed to their deaths.
The island's north shore is famous for its surf.
And on the north side of the Waimea River is rain-soaked Waimea Falls Park and botanical gardens.
Cliff divers plunge into the handsome pool at the base of the falls.
Dancers perform hulas of many kinds.
In the recreation of an early Hawaiian village, Hawaiians relive their early history.
A glimpse of Hawaii's past, Oahu's most authentic cultural celebration.
The other big cultural performance is at the nearby Polynesian village in which the folkways of the people of the Pacific Rim, Tongans, Samoans, Tahitians, are relived.
These young performers are students at Hawaii's Brigham Young University.
On Oahu, Pearl Harbor draws its share of visitors.
No one leaves unmoved.
The Pearl Harbor Monument was built to commemorate the 1941 attack.
A concrete bridge spans the USS Arizona, one of the vessels that was sunk.
Oil still seeps from the ship's belly.
Its hull is a tomb for the 1102 men who were trapped on it when it sank.
A fifth of all visitors to this monument are from Japan.
Today, Americans and Japanese together pay respect.
A broad expanse of green with graves marked by simple white tablets, 28,000 of them.
This is Oahu's famous punch bowl, the National Cemetery of the Pacific.
But the most beloved hero buried here wasn't a soldier in World War II.
He's the war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
Again and again, Pyle had risked his life so that the leaders back home would know just what their boys were going through.
He fell by machine gun fire near Okinawa.
Many of the Nisei, Japanese Americans who went for broke in the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd, the most decorated units in American military history, lie here.
In the old days, small ships made regular sailings between the islands.
We'd find them slow.
Today, air transport makes those connections with long timetables of frequent flights for visitors as well as residents.
One hundred miles west of Oahu lies Kauai.
Flight time from Honolulu is just 30 minutes.
Kauai is the leftover of an ancient volcano and the oldest of the main islands.
It holds a special place in Hawaii's history.
Hawaiian myth says Pele first lived on this island, and it was here that the Menehune built their ditches and fishponds.
Kauai was the first stop on Captain Cook's famous first voyage to Hawaii.
He crossed the bar at Waimea on the west shore.
He reprovisioned from the island's rich agricultural bounty.
Today, native Hawaiians from the neighboring island of Niihau come to market on Kauai.
It's called the Garden Isle.
The hurricane first succeeded in Kauai's rich lava soil.
It's still grown extensively, and there are bumper crops of taro.
But much of the island is wonderfully wild.
Unripe and verdant, Hanalei's taro patches are a wildlife refuge.
Shelter to the threatened Hawaiian stilt.
Another wildlife refuge skirts the Kilauea lighthouse.
Tropic birds swirl in the air currents.
Visitors boat on the Wailui River to the Fern Grotto, a cool, damp cavern, lushly clothed in ferns.
Some couples choose it as a place with its feeling of a chapel built by nature to solemnize their weddings.
This beach, framed by black lava rock, was featured in the movie musical South Pacific.
In the center of the island rises Mount Waialiali, often shrouded in clouds and fog.
It's rarely visible.
With an annual rainfall approaching 500 inches, this is the wettest spot on Earth.
In a gully between the mountains oozes alakai swamp.
Thickets of ferns, rare plants, the bright red ohia blossom.
Here remain a few of Hawaii's rare birds, whose feathers were prized for capes of kings.
Southeast of the swamp, rafting explorations coast the secrets of Napali Cliffs.
This might very well be the most rugged, most beautiful coastline on Earth.
Inland, there is a sight that amazes the first-time visitor, a canyon.
To all the world, it looks like a little brother to the Grand Canyon.
This is Kauai's own Waimea Canyon, a gorge almost 3,000 feet deep, cut into the Koki Plateau.
The reds and ochres of volcanic walls are offset by mossy greens and blues.
There is more scenic variety on this little island than in whole regions of the American mainland.
Kauai's eye view of the island by helicopter is spectacular.
100 miles southeast of Oahu, Maui.
Maui is the valley isle, the state's second-largest island.
Once Maui was two islands, which are joined now by an isthmus created by erosion.
It was here, in the beautiful Iao Valley, that the bloodiest of battles was fought
when Kamehameha the Great reached beyond his own territorial island of Hawaii to conquer Maui.
In taking Maui, Kamehameha was aided by an American cannoneer.
Today, sugar cane is king.
This train carries not sugar cane, but people to Lahaina Station.
Lahaina is legendary, whaling town, pleasure port for seamen.
A small stretch of precious town frontage preserves Lahaina of the mid-1800s,
when thousands of whalers anchored their ships offshore.
This is the old jail where rowdy whalers of that time were constrained.
In this cemetery, Melville's cousin is buried.
But most of Front Street is lined with souvenir shops and t-shirt outlets.
Shopping malls, bistros and bars have mushroomed all over Lahaina.
The spirit of old Lahaina is found in this replica of a 19th century brig, the Carthaginian.
Its cargo is an exhibit on the world of the whale.
Whale watching is a long-running event in Lahaina.
After summering in Alaska, humpback whales return to these waters to breed and give birth to their young.
They arrive in early December.
So do the whale watchers.
On the other side of Maui, the seven pools of Kipalulu, near Hana, were special to the Hawaiian people.
A series of cascading waterfalls and fern-lined pools.
The Hana area is a holdover of old Hawaii.
Tarot patches, banana groves.
Queen Kaahumano, Kamehameha the Great's favorite wife, was born here.
Even today, most of its residents are part Hawaiian.
From Hana, sailing canoes skirt the rugged coast.
Paddling hard and powered by the wind, fiberglass descendants of the ancient wooden outriggers follow traditional sea paths.
Racing the boat is hard work, exhilarating.
These fast boats brave even the roughest seas.
Outrigger canoe sailing keeps alive the tradition of the ancient Hawaiians.
This same side of the island boasts Haleakala National Park.
Among other things, this vast area is a refuge for plants and birds native only to these islands.
The rare silver sword.
The nene, land-loving goose, and the state bird of Hawaii.
But the sight that sears itself upon human memory is the Haleakala crater.
Visitors begin arriving before dawn, anticipating the moment.
They are 10,000 feet above sea level.
The air is thin, frosty.
Then a shimmering sun rises, as though from the beginning of time.
The world is seen anew.
Now the visitor can fully understand the meaning of the word Haleakala, dwelling of the sun.
There is a legend that a mischievous demagogue named Maui came to this crater's rim and lassoed the sun's rays, making captive the life-giving orb.
He released the sun only after obtaining a promise that the sun would travel more slowly across the heavens, thus shedding more daylight on the earth.
This dark crater, a thing of beauty in its bleakness, slopes to a depth of 3,000 feet.
It reaches seven and a half miles in length.
The crusty volcanic cones of vivid hues, the sculpting of a million years of erosion.
The eerie silence of this great, primordial maw.
Molokai is 50 miles east of Oahu.
It's the fifth-largest of the islands and shaped like a shoe.
People call it the Friendly Isle.
Molokai is old Hawaii.
Down-home Hawaii.
Crowing roosters are a visitor's wake-up call on this island.
Molokai is pleasant, sleepy.
People speak Hawaiian on the streets.
They are so wonderful. Faith, hope, and charity. But the greatest of this is charity.
Of the row of churches fronting the Royal Coconut Grove, several still hold services in the Hawaiian language.
This island has more full-blooded Hawaiians than any other but Nihi'au.
There are sandalwood pits on this island.
During the last century, foreign traders destroyed whole forests of fragrant Hawaiian sandalwood.
These pits, dug to simulate a boat, were used to measure the precious wood.
Yet here, in sparsely populated Molokai, there are still stands of sandalwood and forests rich in the plants and trees native to these islands.
Some of Hawaii's most spectacular scenery is found on Molokai.
This is the Pali Coast, with its soaring green cliffs and plunging waterfalls.
No roads lead to the Lepa Colony, but determined visitors arrive by airplane, by mule, even by foot.
There are many monuments to Father Damien here.
The few victims of Hansen's disease remaining in the colony live in Kalapapa.
They are free to leave, but prefer to live here in their cottages, with their gardens and TVs.
This is home. Their privacy is protected, and it is against the law to photograph them.
Lanai, 70 miles from Oahu, is sixth in size of the eight main islands.
Lanai is an extinct single crater volcano. It's 17 miles long and 13 miles wide.
Ghosts get the island of Lanai from early settlement. At least that's the legend.
Lanai was haunted. Only ghosts lived here, evil spirits.
So the early Hawaiians shunned it.
But roll away the legend, and one finds an exquisite island of pristine and deserted beaches.
Pineapple became a ghost breaker.
In the 19th century, enterprising Haulies turned Lanai into the world's largest pineapple plantation.
For many years, these islands produced 90 percent of America's pineapples, with Lanai in the lead.
The pineapple was brought to the islands during the first Kamehameha's reign by a Spanish Johnny Appleseed named Francisco de Palo y Marin.
Today, only a few pineapple fields are still being cultivated.
And Lanai's ghosts are friendlier now.
But perhaps that spooky old legend keeps this mini-paradise off the popular tourist tracks.
It keeps the resort's fuel and expensive, helping to preserve the untouched loveliness of this island.
Sometimes it's called the Orchid Island, or the Volcano Island.
Two hundred miles southeast of Oahu, the island of Hawaii is the youngest of the Hawaiian chain.
Since it is nearly twice the size of all the other islands combined, it is rightfully called the Big Island.
It is also big in contrasts.
It produces the only commercially grown coffee in the United States, Kona coffee.
At the same time, it provides the islands with most of their Christmas trees.
It boasts beautiful beaches of black sand, tropical fern forests, and skiing on the lava slopes of Mauna Kea Peak.
While hulas are being danced at Hotel Luau's, Hawaiian cowboys might be rounding up cattle on Parker Ranch,
which is huge, three-fourths the size of the island of Oahu.
Cattle ranches have a big stake in Hawaii's history, hence Hawaiian cowboys called Paniolos.
More than a century and a half ago, three Spanish Mexican vaqueros were brought in from California to punch cattle.
Paniolos is the way Espanoles came to be pronounced in the islands.
Kailua Kona on the Kona Coast is becoming the island's tourist hub.
The King Kamehameha Hotel offers a lively luau with ping barbecued in a pit, Polynesian style.
On the hotel grounds, an authentically restored heiau, one of Kamehameha the Great's favorites.
He died here in 1819. His bones were hidden to protect his mana.
Nearby, also on the shores of Kailua, is Hulihi Palace. This charming museum preserves a glimpse of Hawaiian royalty.
The Kona Coast has some of the best deep sea fishing in the islands.
World record catches of Pacific blue marlin, mahi mahi and tuna.
Without our manufactured gear, the old Hawaiians were skilled fishermen.
They fished with hooks made of bone, turtle shell and sometimes whale ivory.
They spear fished. They used nets some 250 feet long.
Now, the sport of windsurfing is catching on, a marriage of surfboard to sail.
Though Hilo is the largest city on the island and the fourth largest in the state, it feels down home.
It's a sugarcane town grown big. It spreads along the edge of Hilo Bay and up into the hills overlooking the water.
Yet once a year, this folksy town explodes with a merry monarch festival and Hawaiians from all over the islands high to Hilo.
Hula groups vie for the honor of performing in memory of King Kalakaua, the merry monarch.
The ancient hula, mistaken by 19th century missionaries as a nasty form of dancing, had been stashed away with other misunderstood arts of the Hawaiian people.
It was Kalakaua who rescued this noble dance form from its cultural mothballs, if not from its tomb.
Now, it's being celebrated anew. The ancient hula, Kahiku, which had almost been done in by censorship and suppression.
The modern hula, Awana, derived from the ancient hulas.
The merry monarch was a fine musician.
He ennobled a small Portuguese instrument known as the ukulele, now much associated with Hawaii.
It was his sister, Queen Niliokalani, who composed Aloha Owe.
It's become the anthem of these islands. Hawaiian music continues to change and grow, like the landscape.
The fiery heart of this astounding island is Volcano's National Park.
This island is the fastest growing and most volcanic outcrop of land on the face of the earth.
Volcano House, a venerable hotel styled as a sprawling hunting lodge, is inside the park.
It offers a rimside view of Kilauea crater.
The legendary Pele, goddess of Hawaii's volcanoes, makes her home in Kilauea's fire pit.
Two active volcanoes dominate the park and Kilauea is the collapse summit of one of them.
There is a belief in Pele on the part of many Hawaiians.
If not a belief, a healthy respect for what she stands for.
Once on a fire binge, Pele destroys anything in her path.
Forests, highways, spanking new subdivisions.
In 1880, Pele was on an eruption rampage.
The town of Hilo lay innocently in the path of her lava flow.
The old Hawaiians begged 63-year-old Princess Ruth, the 400-pound granddaughter of Kamehameha the Great, to save the city.
Ruth didn't hesitate.
She transported her tremendous bulk with all due speed to the rim of Kilauea caldera.
There she offered Pele a bottle of good brandy, for which the goddess has a weakness.
Pele was appeased. Hilo was saved.
The lava flow halted at the town's door.
The first haoles to come to these islands were greeted in a spirit of welcome.
Of warmth, of loving, called in Hawaiian aloha.
As Hawaiians learned new ways, their old ways were suppressed.
Their dance, their music, their way of life.
They were taught that what was Hawaiian was shameful.
Hawaiiana was brought out only for tourists.
What had once been sacred rituals became show routines.
Today, after 200 years of decline, there is a revival of authentic Hawaiian culture.
A renaissance.
Now, Hawaiians take as much pride in the day honoring King Kamehameha as they do the Fourth of July.
And revel in the joys of the Merry Monarch Festival.
The values of the old rural lifestyle are being renewed.
Ancient crafts revived.
Racing outriggers, canoes first designed by the ancients, is today's sport of choice.
Artists are probing the Hawaiian spirit to inspire and delight in contemporary painting.
The hula has been restored to its nobility as a dance expressing the mythic origins of a people.
There is a new respect for folk medicines and for the ways of the kahunas, the Hawaiian priests of old.
Again, the Hawaiian language is being taught to the young.
Demands are being made to correct the injustices of the past.
One is proud to be Hawaiian again.
There is among Hawaiians a revived spirit of graciousness and love and warmth.
The spirit of aloha.
May it thrive.
For more information, visit www.mooji.org
www.mooji.org