Save Hawaiʻi's
"Stairway to Heaven"
In August 2021, the Honolulu City Council voted to demolish the iconic Haʻikū Stairs. The vote came despite an overwhelming public outcry to save the Stairs. In the preceding two years, over 5,000 public comments were submitted with more than 90% favoring preservation. A professional public opinion poll in April 2022 confirmed that a clear majority of O‘ahu residents want to save the Stairs not destroy them. The Stairs are a historic World War II monument eligible for the National Historic Register. They offer a unique, world-class hiking experience, treasured for generations. It would be tragic to lose them.
The Friends of Haʻikū Stairs are spearheading the fight to save the Stairs. We filed a lawsuit against the City & County of Honolulu in August 2023 and are pushing to block the demolition on multiple fronts. With your help we will convince City leaders to heed the public will.
Please donate to support our efforts.
ʻIli of Haʻikū, Ahupuaʻa of Heʻeia
Early History
Haʻikū is the ancient name of an ʻili, or named place, one of approximately 45 that together make up the ahupuaʻa of Heʻeia on Oʻahu's windward shore. An ahupuaʻa is an innovative resource-sharing enterprise characterized by land divided into large wedges from the mountains to the ocean, wedges large enough so that the people of each ahupuaʻa have all that they need to thrive. In Heʻeia of ancient times, plants gathered in the forests and farmed in the carefully irrigated mauka or upland areas like the ʻili of Haʻikū were shared with people of the kula kai or coastal areas, people who would fish in the many loko iʻa or fishponds as well as gather plants and animals from marine fisheries extending far out to the tip of Mōkapu.
Other resources of old Heʻeia included basalt quarries from which the kānaka maoli or native people crafted stone adzes, as well as permanently flowing streams that they diverted into ‘auwai or canals into over 300 acres of loʻi, the terraced field systems in which they grew their dietary staple kalo. The kānaka extended these irrigation systems into the kula or dryland fields where they grew ʻuala or sweet potato as well as crops like banana and breadfruit, and then diverted the paths of water back into the stream. Ancestral memory tells us that among the 45 ‘ili or small districts identified by kūpuna in the ahupuaʻa of Heʻeia, many relate to the extensive agricultural lands and carefully tended fisheries that used to exist in the area and that are now slowly rebounding thanks to cooperative community efforts.
Tragically, although the cultural and ecological conditions of the valley had remained fairly stable throughout the centuries under the stewardship of kānaka maoli, when the Navy built the radio communications facility it was accompanied by a series of devastations. Many Hawaiian families were relocated away from their ancestral lands and sacred sites were razed to the ground. Almost all the endemic and native plant life that made the valley ʻāina momona, or plentiful land, was destroyed as the military build roads and buildings as part of the war effort. This can be seen most visibly in the US Geological Survey aerial photo of Haʻikū Valley taken in 1950 that you can scroll down to below. Today, volunteers from the Koʻolau Foundation work to restore the land and to establish a cultural preserve in this area. Most recently, work has been focused on replanting native trees and establishing the beginnings of a mala (garden) with plants for lei making and lāʻau lapaʻau (healing). If you are interested in volunteering, please indicate so on our volunteer form and we will help connect you.
Haʻikū Stairs Military-era History
Background
The Haiku Ladder (as it was first called) was built in Haʻikū beginning in 1942 as part of a pioneering top secret US Naval Radio Station. The US Navy had begun its WWII preparations in Hawaiʻi in 1939. Prior to that time, there were no separate Atlantic and Pacific fleets and Pearl Harbor was a small unit with little significance. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, however, President Roosevelt declared a state of National Emergency, and the Navy began to send part of its fleet to Pearl Harbor for the purpose of deterring Japanese movement in the Dutch East Indies (Allen, 1950:227).
Map showing Pearl Harbor, O'ahu, circa 1941. This map was found in a captured midget submarine launched to attack ships during the attack on the US Pearl Harbor in 7 Dec 1941. Image courtesy of US Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation
The positioning of Naval forces to Hawai'i began as a temporary movement but by the summer of 1940 the chief of Naval Operations determined the fleet would remain indefinitely. And then on the 7th December, 1941, the Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor fell under a surprise aerial attack.
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Sunday, Dec 7th 1941
Overnight, the islands of Hawai'i were transformed. The people were fearful of future attacks as the military struggled to repair the damage from Pearl Harbor bomb raid, and rapidly began to prepare itself as the base center of America’s World War II Pacific military efforts. The construction was rapid and widespread on the island of O'ahu. By the time the Japanese government surrendered to the allied forces in 1945, the affiliated Naval bases in Hawai'i comprised the most extensive defense installation in the world.
Planning the Impossible
Early in 1942, the proposal was put forward to build a pioneering radio communications system in Hawai'i. The proposal was headed by Commander Hord, Radio Materials Officer at CINCPAC; BuDocks (Bureau of Yards and Docks) engineers, Lt. Commander R.M. Belt, Lt. Butzine, and Lt. Thatcher, engineers of the Radio Corporation of America, including Mr. McKesson; and the New York designing firm of Gibbs and Hill (Woodbury, 1946:349). The project was a result of extensive combined efforts.
Plans were made for the construction and design of the facility. On May 14, 1942, a summary of cost was written by the five members of CPNAB for an estimate of a radio transmitting station. The estimate contained a detailed listing for the transmitter building which included the cost for clearing the site, 850 cubic yards of concrete and 136,550 pounds of reinforced steel to construct the bomb-proof structure. It also included the cost of installing a 10 ton crane (CPNAB, Estimate, 1942). This crane currently remains in place at the transmitter building at the Omega Station in Haʻikū Valley.
The estimate for the design and construction of the antenna’s anchors included costs for cableways to the ridges, lateral transport along the ridges, hoists and hoist houses, rigging gear, special tools, excavation and rock trimming, and a large sum for contingencies. This initial estimate attempted to prepare for the ability to make full use of the radio station as soon as possible. It allowed for not only the construction of the transmitter building and cableways but also telephone installation, roads, a fence, topographic survey, and quarters for 35 men. The equipment would be shipped on the mainland by railroad freight to California, by ocean freight to Hawai'i, by truck from Honolulu to the site, placed in storage at the site, and it was planned that guards would be hired to protect the materials. The total estimate for the transmitter building was $598,300 and included 10.24% for accident insurance and taxes, 20% for the job overhead, 5% for the operating base office in Alameda, and a 5% fee for the contractors (CPNAB, Estimate,1942).
Construction of the Bomb Proof Transmitter Building
from US Coast Guard Omega Station Records, 22nd Jan 1943
Method of raising the antennae in Ha'ikū Valley. Illustration in Woodbury Builders for Battle, 1946
Drawings were prepared by the District Public Works Design Section, and by the contractors’ design department. Mountain-top anchorage, method of raising and lowering the aerial systems, and layout of roads and trails were designed by the contractors. The aerial system, the antenna ground system, the transmission lines for carrying radio-frequency power from transmitter to antenna and ground system, and the transmitter layout (including suggestions for main and auxiliary building layouts) were designed by R.C.A. communications, Inc., in connection with their order to furnish radio-installation material and field-engineer supervision on installation. R.M. Towill, of Honolulu, was employed to make preliminary site surveys (U.S. Dept. Navy, 1944: A-816).
The Amphitheater Valley
Ha'ikū Valley was chosen for the top-secret radio station because of its topography. A site was needed that had two mountain walls rising as vertically as possible, both a similar height over 2,000 feet, and with flat land in between. By studying a Coast and Geodetic map it was determined that the walls of Ha'ikū Valley eroded into a series of cliffs like in an amphitheater open towards the ocean, would be ideal.
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Ha'ikū Valley circa 1950
Image from the US Geological Survey
On May 25, 1942, the valley was sketched out by Lt. Butzine. The sketch showed the land area that the Navy hoped to lease for the station in order to ‘stretch aerial wires’. After some study, on June 11, 1942, BuDocks authorized acquisition of the land instead of leasing the area, with a decision that the land would be leased temporarily in order that construction on the radio station could begin as soon as possible (PACDIV:9). It was not uncommon for months to go by before legal acquisitions were made during the time of the outbreak of the war.
Lt. Butzine also noted on his 1942 rendering of Ha'ikū Valley and its proposed aerials: "There has been no decision to date of the final locations of Aerials. BuDocks has recommended an overall spread of 1700 feet but the Officer in Charge has recommended that the maximum spread not exceed 1200 feet to simplify construction. It is essential to construct small helix houses under the aerials as well as installing certain ground and telephone poles" (Butzine, 1942).
Butzine's early sketch indicated both options of placements of aerials on the ridges, 1200 and 1700 feet apart. It also placed four helix houses near the center of the valley, one for each of the cables, a transmitter building at the east of the helix houses near the entrance to the valley, and a building that would serve as quarters for 35 men, also near the entrance and the transmitter (Butzine, 1942).
Over the next months the Contractors, PNAB regularly corresponded with the R.C.A. engineers in New York. Due to the fact that the project was experimental all aspects of the construction were up for revision as the combined efforts of the workers resulted in innovative solutions to handle each new problem as it arose. On June 23, 1942, the Plant Design Superintendent, J.L. Finch from R.C.A. Communications, Inc. wrote to the CPNAB regarding further specifics of the anchor and aerial placement. At this point R.C.A. was basing its information on photographs and maps they had been sent on May 19, 1942, and a field representative they had in Hawai'i.
Ha'ikū Valley facing towards Kahalu'u
Sketch of possible layout by Lt. Buztine, 25 May 1942. From National Archives and Records, San Bruno, CA
The wooden ladder known as the Haiku Ladder was staked into place in 1942. The metal stairway was installed 11 years later
The Stairs lead to a cable house that sits close the peak of Pu'u Keahiakahoe in Ha'ikū Valley