The Return of Kapaemahu: A Year of Cultural Restoration and Public Engagement on the Shores of Waikīkī

At times Miss Richardson put on men’s clothes, and acted like a plantation luna [boss].

When she became liquored up she acted silly and made drunken love to men, though ordinarily when sober she had nothing to do with men.

The women’s personalities were reflected in their work during World War II, a period of social upheaval and major changes in everyone’s daily lives in Hawaii.

Baker wrote that starting in 1942 Alice had worked making camouflage netting material a short distance from their Waikīkī homes. This project had partly been created at the start of the war to provide jobs for lei women, who had lost their primary source of income selling lei at the Honolulu Harbor docks on days when passenger ships left. This was because tourist travel had been immediately prohibited, and all ship arrivals and departures had been made secret.

Helen’s war work was far different. Somewhere near Fort Shafter she and a number of other women of different races refilled used metal ammunition shells – from small individual bullets for machine guns to large artillery shells – which had been salvaged from battlefields. At the ordnance department where she was employed, these empties were straightened and dents removed. They then would be filled with live gunpowder to again be ready for firing. The metal shells sometimes arrived “covered with the gore of battle, with foul smelling and decomposing blood and flesh smeared all over them;” Helen “shuddered as she told of the stench they had to deal with sometimes.” She also criticized the other female workers who could be

…careless in connection with critical and exacting operations and how they endangered themselves and others sometimes with their lack of interest or inattention to details.

Helen told her story with dramatic emphasis and when she had finished warned me not to tell what she had told.

Conflict

The women’s relationship was not uniformly smooth. Baker wrote:

There was a bitter fight between Alice and Helen…Alice came and told me that Helen was drunk and that she could not live with her anymore. Told her she better come and stay in my house until she could make other arrangements. She brought clothes, personal effects and many bundles…Was much depressed. In the meantime Helen was full of booze, and ugly… (August 17, 1945)

Alice remained much of the day. Toward evening she decided to go and cook dinner for Helen. By this time Helen had become sober and after she had dinner which Alice had cooked, became agreeable again. Alice came back and said she had acted too hasty and that she was going back again. (August 18, 1945)

Helen’s alcohol intake was major problem.   

A bottle of beer sat in front of her plate and it was hers, without explanations or invitations to the others, exclusively.

Helen got to drinking a lot. Alice…tried to keep her sober.

In the late fifties she became a heavy drinker and was drunk much of the time. She became such a pest that all the liquor establishments forbade her to drink in their places…Alice would go out to buy liquor for her.

More Conflict

From 1948 to at least 1956, Baker and other neighbors were embroiled in a dispute with Helen over her claimed ownership of Dudoit Lane, an unpaved alley next to her house that allowed the others access to the backs of their residences, including their garages.

At times she took a hammer and smashed headlights of unauthorized cars that paused on her side of the lane.