Island Down Time in the World War II Years

By Scott Pawlowski, Curator, Pearl Harbor National Memorial

The Black Cat Café, a favorite of the military viewed from the Army/Navy YMCA on Hotel and Richards Street, Honolulu T.H.

With war on the horizon, the United States began shoring up its defenses across the Pacific. Major construction began in Hawaii during the late 1930s. The population began to swell, creating a housing crunch from all the new war workers and additional military personnel in Hawaii. For comparison, the ten years from 1930 to 1940 saw Hawaii’s population increase approximately 14.9%. The rest of the United States grew at a rate of roughly 7.3% in the same decade. Then 1941 rolled around, and the City and County of Honolulu grew another 19.02%! No wonder housing was in such short supplies with military men and civilian war workers living in tent encampments or double-bunked around the island.

As the population increased on Oahu, the need for recreation and respite increased as well. Where could these hard-working individuals find solace, rest, and recharge? Oahu is an island after all, and its size limits recreational places. What would these workers be doing in their limited free time? Dancing and watching movies were favorites, along with sports, live music, and talent performances. Traveling around the island and exploring its beauty in trams, cars, trains, and buses took up many soldiers’ free time. A variety of sports also were popular like baseball, football, and boxing. After a long day of work or time off, people on Oahu enjoyed an alcoholic drink, beer, or Sake. At the beginning of the war, there were at least a few Sake breweries, beer breweries, a distillery, and a couple of illegal stills. Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company, Fuji Sake Brewing, Honolulu Sake Brewery and Ice Company, and American Brewing Company were producing beer and Sake. Hawaiian Okolehao Distilleries refined Okolehao, a product made from fermented Ti plants. Hawaiian Distilleries made a traditional gin, rum, and brandy. While the quality may not have matched the imports, Oahu could produce its own alcohol. Islanders consumed wine as well, but none was vinted on island. While a few of these island companies declared bankruptcy, others just closed their doors during the war years. The ones that stuck around through the war emerged in a better business position.

One of the initial actions taken under martial law was to ban the sale of alcohol. The resumption of sales began less than three months later, on 23 February 1942. One of the arguments for reinstating alcohol outlined in a newspaper was that the entire population was working so hard that they needed a cold beer or drink to help relax after a long day.

The only bar that existed in the war years and remains is Smith’s Union Bar in downtown Honolulu. It opened in 1934 and now stands as the oldest existing bar on Oahu.

Pearl Harbor National Memorial’s Museum collection has a number of photographs, letters home, postcards and oral histories that mention enjoying free time on the island. Here are few illustrations of sailors or soldiers enjoying a drink and relaxing in their own way.

This is an Oral History of Ernest Golden (USAR 462) on April 28, 1993. He was a civilian war worker. Interview was conducted by Warren Nishimoto, a former PHP Board member.

WN: I would imagine, though, the restrictions being imposed upon someone who's in the military was a lot harsher or stricter than people like you.

EG: Not much, not much, I don't think. We were still . . .

WN: There weren't much difference?

EG: I don't think that much different. I think there's a difference in the clothing you wore. I didn't see that much difference. For a while there was a curfew, so you had to be in the barracks or in your dormitory, wherever you were, by ten o'clock. And I think they [military personnel] had the same sort of thing. I didn't see any big distinction. We made more money. I think that was the biggie, we made more money than they did. For a long time, sailors or soldiers hardly made any money at all, you know. They had access to some of the foods and stuff that we didn't have because they ate better than we did. They had better booze than we had because there was rationing. There was gasoline rationing. There was rationing on whiskey. There was rationing of cigarettes. But the guys in the military, whenever they had an opportunity, they made friends with some of the civilians because I guess that sort of gave them a taste of getting away from the military. So, whenever they could they made friends with us. But they had some of the things that we needed, and we had some of the things, I guess, they wanted. Because I recall with our ration cards, we could only get whiskey. We could get Five Islands gin and Ninety-nine. Those were the two local brews. And they were some bad whiskeys. But guys would come in from the military and we would buy theirs, you know. And they really didn't want it, so we could buy whatever. I guess some of the time it was some of the booze that we were using for our parties. We could get military connections.

WN: The military had less pay but they had a lot more perks [i.e., perquisites].

EG: They had a lot more perks than we had. They had the perks that we really wanted. But looks as if we were both pretty much in the same boat. We worked in the same place. At Ford Island, military had it better than we did, I guess. The guys that I knew at Ford Island one works for me right now. I met him a long time ago. He was a chief at that time—chief of the mess hall. And Smitty was in the Navy long before I came to Hawai`i. But he was in charge of one of the mess halls then, and I knew that he had it good. He had a good life.

This is from an oral history with Charles William, "Bill" Guerin (USAR #205), survivor of the USS Arizona. The interviewer was Jim Martini.

JM: How was Honolulu as a Navy town in those days, when you had time off?

BG: At that time, there was 20,000 sailors in town. And not very many places to go, maybe Wo Fat's or down on Canal [River] Street, or Ted Lewis' place. I was a roller skater and I used to roller skate in the skating rink out on the other end, at that time. In fact, we, sometimes, with a couple of beers, we roller skated all over, all the way back downtown then. But that was my thing and I still like to do it.

JM: When you said that there was a lot of rivalry between ships and all that, were there certain bars or places where certain ships would frequent or was it in town that it was pretty free association.

BG: It was pretty free then. You know. Some of the older people did. Of course, when I went to the bar and my friend Teddy Hamilton and the rest, they would say, "How are you," let you look in the door and then throw you out, 'cause we wasn't twenty-one years old. So we got throwed out a lot of bars.