Pfleuger defaults on Kauai dam settlement, 200mw wind farm coming to Molokai, Oahu affordable housing to become less so, Maui finds tax inequities, world's fastest sailing ship visits Honolulu, more news from all the Hawaiian Islands

Nene geese (c) 2011 All Hawaii News

Nene geese on Kauai are beginning a $7.2 million migration to Maui and the Big Island via air.  Civil Beat.

Hawaii’s government boards and commissions are required to inform the public about the times, locations, dates and agendas of upcoming meetings. But for the public, gaining access to this information is not always an easy task, and government officials themselves seem confused about what is required of them. Civil Beat.

The Federal Aviation Administration is stepping up enforcement of flight regulations in Hawaii of powered hang gliders. Associated Press.

More than 150 delegates from 14 international cities will gather at a sister-cities summit hosted by Hawaii’s four counties this week in Waikiki. Pacific Business News.

Appointments to apply for a Hawaii state identification card can now be made online. Associated Press.

Oahu

Residents at the city's 12 affordable-housing properties can expect to pay more rent when private companies take over the properties, city officials said. Star-Advertiser.

The number of wildfires on Oahu has dropped sharply this year, thanks to a ban on fireworks and unusually wet weather from La Nina. Star-Advertiser.

The world's fastest sailing ship is here in Honolulu. KHON2.

Rice enthusiasts jammed Magic Island Sunday for the second annual Rice Festival. Hawaii News Now.

Hawaii

Unlike its state counterpart, the Hawaii County Redistricting Commission is excluding nonresident military and students when drawing new political boundaries. West Hawaii Today.

A Kona pediatrician plans to show people born with congenital heart defects and others how far they can go. West Hawaii Today.

Maui

Council member says change needed to fix inequities in assessment of ag land value. Maui News.

A Paia resident's most recent rhyming picture book, "Maggie Goes on a Diet," has set off a controversy over its story of a teenage girl and her efforts to lose weight. Maui News.

Kauai

Retired Auto Dealer Jimmy Pflueger has defaulted on his promise to pay several million dollars to Kauai residents who lost their loved ones - and property - when his Ka Loko dam breached in the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 14, 2006. Hawaii Reporter.

Kaua‘i secures $138M in state CIP budget. Garden Island.

Molokai

Molokai Renewables developers confirmed last week they will place a bid to build a 200 megawatt wind farm on Molokai once a new request for proposals is released this fall. Molokai Dispatch.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to bring back Kakahai`a’s healthy wetlands and native birds – and it now has plans to make that happen. Molokai Dispatch.

'Honolulu' author to sign books on Oahu

She had the great misfortune to have been born a girl in the waning days of the Yi Dynasty in Korea, and so her parents named her Regret.

Forbidden from learning to read alongside her brothers, she grew ever more determined to pursue an education. When she discovered women in America were allowed to attend school, she enlisted as a picture bride and moved to Hawaii.

The reality of 1914 Hawaii wasn’t the paradise she expected, but Regret, now known as Jin, perseveres. Honolulu, the new mini-Michner style book by Moloka’i author Alan Brennert, follows Jin’s journey through the sugar plantations and into the seedier side of Honolulu, touching on historical footnotes as diverse as the trial of Hawaiians accused of raping a white woman, and the creation of the aloha shirt.

The sweeping saga is already attracting the attention Brennert’s first book, Moloka’I, which was hailed as “a dazzling historical saga” by The Washington Post. Iit told the rich, compelling story of the island’s early leper colony and the human drama that was played out there.

Brennert will be signing copies of his books today and tomorrow on Oahu:

Bookends
Friday, March 13 @ 6 PM
600 Kailua Road, #126
Kailua, HI

Barnes & Noble
Saturday, March 14 @ 1 PM
1450 Ala Moana Blvd.
Honolulu, HI

Interview with author Alan Brennert

Q: Did the idea for Honolulu come out of your research for your previous book, Moloka’i ?

A: In a way. One of the most colorful periods of modern Hawaiian history was the so-called “glamour days” of the 1920s and 30s. Though I read about it in my research for Moloka’i, it was a time period I couldn’t really explore in depth in that book, since my main characters were held in isolation at Kalaupapa. These were the years when Hawai’i made its deepest impression on the American consciousness: the years of Matson liners, the China Clipper, Hollywood celebrities vacationing in Honolulu, and the Hawai’i Calls radio show that broadcasted popular hapa-haole music to the mainland. I found myself wanting to tell a story against that romantic backdrop.

Q: But Honolulu also presents a very different picture of Hawai’i in those “glamour” days.

A: Yes, there were almost two Honolulus existing alongside one another—or more accurately, interwoven, like the Korean patchwork quilts I write about in the book. Because at the same time this romantic, glamorous image of paradise was being exported to the American public, many Native Hawaiians and immigrants to Hawai’i labored on plantations for low wages or lived in poverty in Honolulu tenements. So Honolulu, the novel, is partly about this collision of image and reality...and how, in fact, the reality was actually far richer and more captivating.

Q: Is this why you’ve used so many actual historical figures in the book?

A: They’re not “historical” figures in the conventional sense; my whole point in using them is that many of these people have been largely lost to history. Chang Apana, for instance, was one of the great characters in modern Hawaiian history: a small, two-fisted Chinese-Hawaiian police detective who became one of the most celebrated police officers of his day. But most people today—if they know of him at all—know him primarily as the real-life inspiration for Earl Der Biggers’ “Charlie Chan.” The fantasy has eclipsed the reality. Yet Apana was really a much more colorful and fascinating character than his fictional counterpart, and that’s who I wanted to bring to light—along with other real-life people like “Panama Dave” Baptiste, May Thompson, and Joseph Kahahawai.

Q: Your protagonist, Jin, is a young Korean woman who comes to Hawai’i as a “picture bride.” Was she based on any specific person?

A: Like Rachel Kalama in Moloka’i, Jin is a fictional creation, but is inspired by any number of actual women who emigrated to Hawai’i between 1903 and 1924—Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. I chose to make her Korean because there had already been several fictional representations of Japanese picture brides, but once I started researching Korean culture of that era I saw the rich potential it held as a dramatic motivation for Jin’s journey. It’s been said that Korea in those days tried to be “more Confucian than the Chinese,” and for women it was an especially oppressive environment—which is what motivated many of them to seek a better life elsewhere, through matchmakers who promised a life of adventure and affluence in Hawai’i.

Q: How many picture brides actually made this journey?

A: Estimates range from between six hundred and a thousand. But these women were just a small part of a larger influx of immigrants—Asian, Portuguese, Spanish, Filipino—brought to Hawai’i by the sugar barons who needed laborers to work on the plantations. Those immigrants formed the basis of a polyglot population that today mirrors the kind of multi-ethnic society America is becoming. It’s a subject that’s more pertinent than ever since our new President is himself a product of Hawai’i’s uniquely multicultural society. Honolulu tells of how that culture came to be—and how its story is really the story of America itself.

About the Author:
Alan Brennert is the author of Moloka’i, which was a 2006-2007 BookSense Reading Group Pick and won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year. It appeared on the BookSense, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Honolulu Advertiser, and (for 16 weeks) NCIBA bestseller lists. He lives in Sherman Oaks, California.