This oral history interview is a project of the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The legal rights of this material remain with the Outrigger Canoe Club. Anyone wishing to reproduce it or quote at length from it should contact the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The reader should be aware that an oral history document portrays information as recalled by the interviewee. Because of the spontaneous nature of this kind of document, it may contain statements and impressions that are not factual.
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An Interview by Kenneth J. Pratt
May 6, 1980
BIOGRAPHY
William J. Mullahey was born in San Francisco in 1909. He graduated from St. Louis College (high school in Honolulu) in 1928 and from Columbia University in 1933. He organized the Waikiki Beach Patrol in 1934 and operated it for several months. He was with Pan American World Airways from 1935 to 1974. From 1946-70 he was director in control of the Central and South Pacific Region for Pan American, with headquarters in Hawaii. He has been a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club since 1921 and was on the Board of Directors for many years. He married Margaret D. White in January, 1956. He has a son William Michael and stepsons Evan D. and Calvin S. White. He has been active in many community activities: Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii Visitors Bureau, Pacific Area Travel Association, Lahaina Whalermen’s Association and the Explorers Club.
This is an interview with William J. Mullahey (WJM), better known as Bill, who organized the Waikiki Beach Patrol in 1934 and later was with Pan American World Airways for many years. He has been a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club since 1921. This interview is being conducted on May 6, 1980, at the home of Ken Pratt, 4817 Aukai Avenue. The interviewer is Ken Pratt (KJP) representing the Outrigger Canoe Club Oral History Committee.
KJP: Bill, before we start talking about the Outrigger Canoe Club could you tell us something about yourself.
WJM: Ken, I was brought to Honolulu as a baby. I was born in San Francisco in 1909, and my father worked for the Commercial Pacific Cable Company. And he was transferred to Honolulu in 1910 – and then – The cable came ashore at where I later grew up and learned swimming at Sans Souci which is next to the – to the present-day Outrigger location. As a boarder at St. Louis I went swimming quite a number of times during the week in Honolulu Harbor. I joined the Healani Boat Club and at that time the Healani Boat Club was next to the Myrtle Boat Club down at Pier 5 or 6. And I rowed with Healani on the Kid Crew for a couple of years. Then I rowed for Healani on the Intermediate Crew for another couple of years. That was more or less the reason that I – later in 1928 – when I graduated from St. Louis and moved to New York to stay with my uncles in New York on Long Island and I rowed for Columbia for four years.
KJP: Yeah – that’s interesting. So you got your training down in the Honolulu Harbor.
WJM: Right.
KJP: Great.
WJM: Rowing at Columbia was interesting because we rowed in an eight-oared shell instead of the six-oar barges that were then the vogue in Honolulu. And it was. We rowed up at Poughkeepsie which was up river from New York. Columbia’s crews trained at Baker Field which is just at the northern end of Manhattan Island.
KJP: Oh yes. Do you recall any local guys that you competed against? Say at Yale or Harvard or –
WJM: No. although we rowed – We rowed against the Navy down on the Severn and rowed against Yale and Harvard up on the Housatonic and against Princeton in – in their area near Philadelphia, but I don’t remember any specific Hawaiian people that were on those crews.
KJP: Now I understand you operated a beach patrol of some sort at Jones Beach. How did you get involved in this?
WJM: Well, about 1928 the state parks system – Long Island State Parks System – started a life guard service at Valley Stream State Park. They brought in a – an ex sea captain, an old German sea captain, named William Johns – Captain Johns – he was told to organize a life guard group, which he did – and I was one of the early recruits because of my Hawaiian background and Honolulu swimming. And there were twelve of us initially in Jones Beach when we transferred from the beach patrol at Valley Stream. Jones Beach opened to the public in 1929. But before the public opening they brought in a life guard group to try and keep the employees who were building Jones Beach from drowning and we had about three miles of beach to patrol – and there were twelve of us. And it was very interesting because there were only the construction employees that were involved – The public didn’t come in to Jones Beach until the next year.
KJP: Did you have any facilities for entertaining them – like canoes or – nothing like Waikiki Beach? This was more life-saving, wasn’t it?
WJM: Yes, the life-guarding. The Jones Beach patrol was strictly life guarding and we had guard towers every three hundred yards along the ocean front – out towards Fire Island on Jones Beach. And in between towers, we usually arranged four guards to the life guard tower – and two sat on the tower all the time and two patrolled – one on either side of the tower. And when there was somebody in trouble then we blew the whistle and usually two tower – or eight guards went to the rescue. And we had quarter-inch manila line reels of about 400 feet long. And we used balsa wood floats. They were torpedo shaped and one man would swim out with the balsa wood float to the victim, hand the balsa wood float to him so that he could have something to hold on to. And then another guard would swim out with the line, which took a little longer because the line dragged in the water. And then the rest of the guards on shore would pull the entire group in – the victim, the man with the float and the man with the line until he got in to shallow enough water so that he could be lifted on to the beach.
KJP: That’s very interesting. Bill, what type of transportation did you first use when you graduated from St. Louis and went to the mainland?
WJM: Ken, I worked on the Matson line – which was the usual mode of transportation between Hawaii and the West Coast. And then the American President Line also operated from New York City through Hawaii to the Far East. And I remember my first trip away from Honolulu was on the old Matsonia, which was then the pride of the Matson fleet. It took six days from Honolulu to San Francisco. Then I usually rode in the bus across country – or hitched – or on one or two occasions I rode the rails on the trains – on the Southern Pacific. And it was a kind of “catch as catch can hitch” and I thumbed my way across the country to go to and from school in New York.
KJP: That’s terrific. Now on the Matsonia – did you have a ball?
WJM: Well, usually I worked my way so that I was pretty busy. Later on I got an AB ticket – I also got a life-boat ticket. I believe it was the 1929 or ’30 – the SS Morrow Castle went aground off Atlantic City and there was considerable amount of loss of life because the crew on the ship didn’t know how to man the life-boats. So the shipping people laid great stress on having a life-boat ticket and as I had a life-boat ticket, work was easy to get. I went down to the Coast Guard office in New York harbor and with my familiarity with canoes and boats it wasn’t a great deal of difficulty to get a life-boat ticket. And the life-boat ticket then was kind of a passport back to Honolulu because I went through the Panama Canal twice on President boats. It was easy to get a job from Jersey City to Honolulu because I had a life-boat ticket. The crews were required by maritime law – 60 percent of the crew were to have a life-boat ticket and as the bulk of the usual passenger ships were commissary people they didn’t normally have a high percentage of life-boat tickets. So it was like a free passport back home.
KJP: Yeah – that’s great. Do you recall what it would have cost to go back on the Matsonia if you had to pay?
WJM: Yes, I think that the price was around about $125 bucks one way, between Honolulu and San Francisco.
KJP: Yeah – And what would one of the early Pan American trips cost you – say in the early ‘30s if you happened to go?
WJM: I think that the first fares were $280 one way from San Francisco to Honolulu.
KJP: Yes. Now it has switched around considerably.
WJM: Yes. It’s been going up and down. It’s been down as low as $120. I guess now it may be two-fifty.
KJP: Right. Now your training at Jones Beach and running the operation there probably put you in good stead for your first job in Honolulu after coming back from college, didn’t it?
WJM: Yes. I was five years – or five summers at Jones Beach. I would go to school during the winter and then summers work at Jones Beach. I became captain of the guards at Jones Beach after three years. And Captain Johns took a – took a year’s seminar and went to Tahiti. And I became captain of the guards and at that time we had about 125 life catchers and besides the three miles of beach we patrolled there was about two and a half miles of bay frontage that had to be patrolled in Zach’s Bay, which was sort of a lagoon inboard of Ocean Beach.
KJP: Oh, yeah. So when did your opportunity come to get in to the Waikiki Beach Patrol operation?
WJM: Well, when I returned from college in 1934, I came home and went back to the Outrigger and it was like coming home. I used to walk up to a group of Club members and they were still talking about the same thing that they had been talking about in 1928 before I went away so there was nothing really changed. While I was – When I came. . . .
WJM: Lorrin Thurston, who had been president of the Outrigger Club for a few years and then was on the Board of Directors, asked me if I would come downtown and talk to some influential people and the community about establishing a beach patrol similar to the one that I operated at Jones Beach. The reason being that the Massie case — which was very much in the news — and there were all sorts of rumors about natives jumping out of the bushes – attacking school teachers – and a lot of rumors that were probably untrue but still were – a concern to the beach. So Lorrin suggested that we establish one place – to clear all beach activities and buy up all of the equipment that was then being used by a number of individual entrepreneurs on the beach who had canoes, surfboards, umbrellas, chairs – and did lomi-lomi and gave swimming instructions and gave surfboard lessons and then took out canoe rides and so on. And in order to consolidate the entire beach front into one organized unit that would be responsible and that could allay any fears that there were about beach boys – attacks on visitors. The Outrigger was very interested in consolidating all of the beach activities in one office.
So Lorrin arranged for several of the Board of Directors at that time – Les Hicks and Sam Fuller and a man named Timberlake who was president at the time – and we went down and had a meeting with people from Davies and Castle and Cooke and Brewer, Bank of Hawaii, and what was then called the Big Five – and they were all interested in the same community concerns as the Outrigger was interested in.
I spoke for about 20 minutes and told them about my background in Jones Beach and how the Jones Beach life guard patrol was organized and gave them a little background on the Australian method of life guarding which we had adapted in Jones Beach and, as a result, they decided to appropriate about $5,000 to fund the purchase of all of the individual equipment on the beach all the way down to the Halekulani – and to the other side to Kuhio Beach and we bought up all of the canoes, umbrellas, surfboards and other equipment that was used. And then we got most of the beach boys into – into the new Waikiki Beach Patrol. And I spoke to the Jantzen people, who made swim suits at the time, and they gave the Waikiki Beach Patrol – the Outrigger – a group of about sixty sets of suits – trunks and shirts – and we designed an insignia that is very nearly the same as the Jones Beach Patrol insignia. It says Waikiki Beach Patrol around and there’s a surfboard and cross paddles like the oars that were on the Jones Beach insignia.
WJP: Yea – that’s interesting.
WJM: The way that this one was organized we had one office and a telephone number and I developed a booklet that described all of Waikiki Beach, the beach services and the booklet described swimming instructions and surfboard lessons, canoe rides and sailing canoes, and a number of other activities – lomi lomi and massage of all kinds. And the procedure was that the residents of the four principal hotels didn’t pay any cash for any of these services. They would come down to the office on the beach where the old Hau Terrace used to be – in front of what later became the Uluniu Club – and the hotel guests would sign a charge slip for the service that was printed by each of the hotels – the Royal, the Moana, the Halekulani, the Blaisdell and so on – and then in the afternoon I would go around and collect the money from each of the hotels and pay the boys their share of the day’s activities.
KJP: Yeah.
WJM: That way the business stayed all in one place and we had control over the entire operation.
KJP: Say Bill, do you recall some of the operations that you consolidated? Was “Dudie” Miller still operating then?
WJM: Yes, “Dudie” Miller was one – “Beans” (Theodore) Waters was prominently another one and – oh, there were two or three others –
KJP: How about “Splash” Daniels? I recall him – mainly as coming from the –
WJM: You mean “Splash” Lyons? “Chick” Daniels?
KJP: “Splash” Lyons I mean –
WJM: No, “Splash” didn’t have any equipment – but he went to work for the Patrol, along with “Chick” Daniels. He went to work for the Beach Patrol immediately. “Turkey” Love and “Hawkshaw” Howell and – oh, quite a number of other early beach boys joined the Patrol. And we had no problem because the Police Department deputized each of the Beach Patrol members as reserve officers. And we were able to exercise some legal control on the beach. We didn’t have any trouble. I don’t recall one incident that required the exercise of the legal controls.
KJP: Yeah – That’s very interesting. So it was a successful operation right from the start, then.
WJM: Right! And that continued then. I left in April, 1935. I joined the Pan Am expedition that came through here – through Honolulu – in April, 1935. The management team of the Pan Am expedition came down to visit with my father because their first stop was Midway which was the first stop on the cable route to China. And they came down and spoke to my dad about arrangements they could make at Midway in those days. The supply ship – the Florence Ward was an old sailing ship. She was just going out of business and the M. J. Dickenson came in as a supply ship from Honolulu to Midway – which is about twelve hundred and fifty miles west – northwest of here. And then after speaking with my dad for a couple of hours they said they would like to go swimming at Waikiki. And, dad, I imagine with some hesitation said “Well, I have a son out there that is managing the Beach Patrol.” So he gave me a call and said that five people from Pan Am would come out and would I arrange for them to get suits and take them out canoeing – which I did. And during the canoe trip they proposed that I join the expedition and go with them to Midway and Wake and Guam. And when I came home that night I said to my mother and father that I had been offered this job with the Pan American expedition to construct bases across the Central Pacific. And then the parental noise began and they said “Well, you can’t be a beach boy all your life. You’ve got to go to work at something.” And so I reluctantly said “Oh, all right I’ll go down and talk to ‘em.” It was a couple of days later and they took me on and – I remember very clearly Elmer Lee, who was a good friend of mine and worked for the Beach Patrol in those days, took me down to the ship S. S. North Haven and I had my surfboard and my spears and my goggles and an old Bell and Howell 16 mm camera that I put in to an upper air balloon and with a piece of glass I was able to operate the camera under water. And that’s how I started out with Pan American’s first expedition to Midway, Wake and Guam and Manila.
KJP: Gee, that’s terrific. That’s very interesting. Incidentally did Elmer Lee take over your job of running the Patrol – or did someone else?
WJM: No. I had an assistant in those days who was a very capable guy – “Sally” Hale he was called. And “Sally” agreed to take over the running of the Beach Patrol, and that was on April 7, 1935.
KJP: That’s interesting. I didn’t realize that “Sally” got into the act that early. That’s great.
WJM: Yes. He then continued until World War II and the beach was closed up pretty well during the war years – And then “Sally” went back to work for the Beach Patrol after the war in 1945-46. The end of ’45.
KJP: Yeah – He remained with them for many, many years.
WJM: He did. He really was the main operator of the Jones Beach Patrol – I mean of the Waikiki Beach Patrol.
KJP: Right. Now, Bill, in the early ‘30s the Pan American Airways introduced flight service in the Pacific. Could you tell us something about it.
WJM: Well, Pan Am laid a route across the Central Pacific to the Philippines, and on to Hong Kong and Macao in – in late 1935. The plan was to connect up with the China National Aviation operations that Pan Am had a 45 percent interest in in China. And the first expedition to construct seaplane bases arrived in Honolulu in early April, 1935 – Oh, at the time, a man named J. Parker VanZant was the Pan Am manager and constructed direction-finding equipment and built a communications station at Kokokahi over on the windward side of the island of Oahu and the base for the Clippers to come ashore was constructed in Pearl Harbor just outside of Pearl City and it was used then for about – five years until the U.S. entered the war in ’41 – December, ’41 – and then Pan Am contracted to operate the Naval Air Transport Service under Admiral Nimitz.
WJM: To put some continuity in this – in 1941, in December, I was in Auckland, New Zealand. I had been down there a couple of years and a – one of Pan Am’s Clippers arrived in Auckland on December 5 and we (the U.S.) got into the war December 7 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We had to plan how to return the Clipper to San Francisco. Well, the Navy, at that time, was a little “kanalua” (undecided) about letting the plane come back through Pearl Harbor so, with the captain, we went down to a high school and got a geography book and laid out a course back to New York by way of New Caledonia (to pick up our personnel in New Caledonia and take them to Australia) and then fly across the northern part of Australia to Darwin – which was quite a long hike for a seaplane. And then we landed the plane in Surabaja, in Indonesia, in what is today Djakarta – and then it flew across the Northern Indian Ocean to Mauritius, which is an island off the east coast of Africa. And then from Mauritius to Lake Victoria, in the middle of Africa, and from Lake Victoria to Fisherman’s Lake on the west coast of Africa – and Fisherman’s Lake to Bermuda, where we were back on our Atlantic Clipper routes – from Bermuda to New York. Then a week later Captain Ford flew the plane across the United States back to San Francisco.
And, after making sure that our PAA personnel on Canton Island and Fiji had transportation, I boarded a ship called the Dominion Monarch – in the end of – no, I guess it was the middle of January, 1942, and we went out of Auckland – which is down around 45 degrees south latitude – went out of Auckland and went down to the 60th parallel – went eastward along the 60th parallel – then up the west coast of South America to Panama where we were back on the Clipper routes again. And from Panama, part of the group was ordered to Miami and part was ordered back to San Francisco. And I went back to San Francisco and was based in San Francisco until they concluded negotiations for a contract with either the Army or the Navy.
In mid-February, 1942, I flew to Honolulu on a Clipper along with Eddie Rickenbacker and Col. Adamson who were en route to the South Pacific – and they were very secretive about their mission. I told them that I was going down to the South Pacific to see what facilities remained for our contract purposes with the Navy – and/or the Army – and they said “No” – that they had their arrangements all made. And I said “Well” – I knew that VR-13, which was a Navy flying boat operation, operated from Honolulu to New Caledonia – and they said “No” – they had arranged for a B-17, so they went over to Hickam Field when we landed in Honolulu and got aboard a B-17 and started out for Canton Island which was to be their first stop. Meanwhile, I reported to Admiral (Chester W.) Nimitz who sent me over to Kaneohe to report to Admiral Kendall who was in charge of the PBY operations out of Kaneohe. And I explained that I wanted to make some surveys of facilities at Palmyra, Canton, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand and Australia. So he said “Well” he was sending a group of eighteen PBYs down and he could arrange to send them in echelons of three PBYs at a time. And I could go on the first echelon and go as far as Palmyra and get off and then three days later a second echelon would come by and pick me up and take me to the next stop, Canton, – and similarly on down till we got to Auckland. And I said “Fine” – and so we started out and the day that we landed in Palmyra we got news that Rickenbacker and his group had been lost at sea. Their B-17 went out of communications and splash-landed somewhere between Canton Island and the group of Gilbert and Ellice Island that are sort of northwest of Fiji – Funafuti being the prominent one and the – so our echelon of three PBYs were diverted – was diverted from Palmyra to hunt for Rickenbacker. And we searched around in the vicinity south and west of Palmyra for two days and then our echelon continued on to Canton Island. I went along with it. And the next echelon of PBYs took up the search in the Palmyra area while our echelon of PBYs took up the search south and west of Canton Island down to the Gilbert and Ellice Island group which is the group of islands that are north of Fiji. And after a couple of days there, searching for Rickenbacker – pretty tiresome work looking at open sea and nothing to focus your eyes on. Occasionally they would drop an aluminum flare so that it would make a puddle on the ocean – to focus your eye from a thousand feet. It is very difficult to see objects floating on the water. Anyway, our echelon was ordered on to Fiji and I went with them. And when we landed in Fiji – This was after about six or eight days. No word of Rickenbacker. We continued on from Fiji to New Caledonia and – I think it was, oh, ten or twelve days later we received word that Rickenbacker and the copilot and one other – the steward, had been picked up but the other people in the B-17 crew were never found. Rickenbacker was taken to a hospital in what was then the rear echelon in Western Samoa. There was a Marine base there and he recuperated in the hospital there in Western Samoa. Later on I talked with Eddie when he – oh, about a year later and he said that they had a very rough time in their life boat. Three life boats got away from the B-17 and it seems that what happened was that the first B-17 that they got into at Hickam Field developed engine troubles. So they decided to change to another B-17. And of course Rickenbacker, having Secretary of War credentials, was a very important person and they quickly whipped out another B-17 and they all got aboard the second B-17 and it wasn’t till they were about three hours airborne that the navigator discovered that he didn’t have all of his navigation equipment aboard the second B-17. And then they didn’t wake Rickenbacker, who was sleeping, until they were about eight or nine hours and they should have been making a landfall on Canton Island.
KJP: Hmmm.
WJM: And so when Rickenbacker was alerted to the situation he took some sights and more or less located himself as being south and west of Canton Island. By this time they ran out of fuel, had to make a splash-landing, and three of the lifeboats got off, Rickenbacker being in one with the co-pilot and another crewman. And they drifted for about ten or twelve or fourteen days, I don’t know how many, until they were picked up – or first sighted by a twin-engine seaplane that was operating between Funafuti and Fortuna, an island below the Ellice group. They sent a boat out to pick them up and took – took he and the other two men into Western Samoa. And Rickenbacker had a very interesting reaction. He became very religious after that. In fact, he became a “born again Bible thumper” and was quite – quite religious after that experience.
WJP: He came so close to death, I guess. He really – it gave him religion.
WJM: Yes. Well, that’s a little side line, but we then contracted with the United States Navy for operating NATS, the Naval Air Transport Service, based in Alameda and in Honolulu and I was assigned as the contract supervisor, reporting to Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Towers, who was then AIRPAC on Ford Island. We operated twenty-five PBY-2Y3s which were four-engine seaplanes, and ten PBMs which were twin-engined Martin aircraft. During the war we operated about six or eight schedules a day south and west of Hawaii and during that time Pan Am was the central operating squadron, and we built seventeen air bases in the South Pacific – all the way down to New Guinea and the Solomons. They were still fighting in the northern Solomons and in southern – northern New Guinea in those days. We (PAA) went in to the war operating seaplanes and we came out of the war on wheels – on land planes. And that was the beginning of present day land operations – the land plane operation of Pan American was post World War II.
KJP: Bill, were you in Navy uniform – or were you? Actually you were with Pan Am?
WJM: No. We were working for Pan Am and we were contract employees – civilians.
KJP: I see.
WJM: And because of my liaison position I was rated as a squadron leader or captain of Navy rank. Usually I was afforded accommodations at the naval bases that were usually reserved for captains and better.
KJP: Very good.
WJM: And I had a very interesting time. One thing that struck me during the war was that Honolulu was really blacked out. They were crawling around after dark with little slits on headlights and so on – And then as you got to Palmyra there was some relaxation – got to Canton, there was some relaxation – and by the time you got down to Fiji and New Caledonia it was wide open. Lights were on, glaring all day and all night. It didn’t make any difference. The closer you got to the war, the less precautions were observed.
LJP: (Laughter) Isn’t that interesting. Say, Bill, just to back up. Could you tell us just a little about the early planes.
WJM: Well –
LJP: That flew in the Pacific area.
WJM: The first planes that Pan Am used for survey purposes – were S-42s. If you remember, Captain Edwin Musick was the first Pan Am pilot in the Pacific.
KJP: Yes, I recall.
WJM: He flew in a four-engine Sikorsky, an S-42 four-engine Sikorsky that Igor Sikorsky had developed with Pan Am’s advice and help for over ocean flying. It was the first airplane that was able to fly the 2,500 miles from the U.S. West Coast to Hawaii. And the American Clipper, the S-42 pioneered the routes after bases were built – Midway, Wake, Guam, Manila. And then later on he pioneered – he made one trip from Honolulu to Kingman Reef to Samoa, Samoa to Auckland. And on his third trip south he sustained an oil leak over American Samoa and shut the engine – Pago Pago Harbor and he was pretty heavily loaded with gasoline and rather than come back and land on three engines, with a heavy load of gasoline he elected to burn some of it off and then, after an hour or so of patrolling back and forth across the mouth of Pago Harbor at 10,000 feet he decided to dump fuel. Which he did. And unfortunately the hot oil from the bad engine ignited the cloud of gasoline that he had dumped and the whole business went up in a big explosion.
KJP: That was a shame.
WJM: That was in ’37 or ’38. No, it must have been earlier than that. It must have been in ’36 that the explosion occurred in Pago. Then –
KJP: Oh, yes, did he have passengers at that time?
WJM: No, he was –
KJP: Just pioneering?
WJM: This was just a survey flight. Just flight crew.
KJP: I see.
WJM: And then Pan Am had ordered three planes from the Martin people in the East and they were the N-130. They were the next airplanes to come on the Pacific route. We had three M-130s – and they were called the Hawaii Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the China Clipper.
KJP: And they were the –
WJM: They were passenger carrying. They were able to fly about twenty-seven or twenty-eight hours on their fuel load. They carried between twelve and thirty passengers on the U.S. West Coast to Taiwan run.
KJP: And they would land in Pearl City area?
WJM: Pearl City Peninsula was Pan Am’s base fronting on Pearl Harbor.
KJP: I guess the Sikorsky also would take off from Pearl City.
WJM: Yes. Pearl City.
KJP: How would they get them from where they landed in the ocean, there? Would they go right up to a pier? Or did they have to go by boat from – the Clipper?
WJM: No. They taxied to a pier at the end of Pearl City Peninsula.
KJP: Ah yes.
WJM: And later on during the war we built a nose hangar and a ramp to haul the planes out of the water at Pearl City.
KJP: Oh yes.
WJM: And we had – hmm – we had about sixty houses right around the entire Peninsula. We had six hundred to eight hundred employees that we housed around the Pearl City Peninsula.
KJP: So I guess you – about that time you took over some of the old established homes there. George Fuller, for instance, had a beautiful home there. I remember him very clearly.
WJM: Yes, I made that my office.
KJP: Is that right?
WJM: That was my office – yes. And the Clipper landing – the shore connection was on the old Atkinson property. I don’t know if you remember the Atkinsons from Hilo.
KJP: Yes, vaguely I do. About them – I do – right.
WJM: And the nose hanger and the ramp to haul out of the water was just next to the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club.
KJP: Oh yes.
WJM: And a few years later I accompanied the Department of Interior man who wanted to locate exactly where the various facilities were during the war. I think there are two bronze plaques down in Pearl City now that identify the location.
KJP: Ah – very interesting. (Pause) Now, Bill, that brings us up to just about the end of the war – Right?
WJM: Umm-Hmm. Forty-six.
KJP: About ’46. What was the tourist business like about this time?
WJM: Well, Ken, you remember the Hawaii Tourist Bureau – was a Chamber of Commerce – a Honolulu Chamber of Commerce committee. And it was run pre-war by – a man who – I forget his name exactly right now, but I’ll recall it. And the four years of the war, World War II, Waikiki was kind of in suspended animation and there was barbed wire and there was some restrictions on swimming at night, after sundown and so on and when the war ended in September ’45 I was back in Honolulu then – I was running the Naval Air Transport Service contract. I went out to Wake Island to attend the ceremonies of surrender at Wake Island and they had brought a General Sanderson, a Marine general, in from somewhere in the East to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces on Wake Island. Because the Marine defenders were the last Americans on Wake. And the ceremonies of surrender were very interesting. There were 2,400 Japanese and they brought in 45 U.S. Marines during the surrender ceremony and almost immediately after Admiral Sakai Barra, the Japanese Commander of Wake Island, surrendered to General Sanderson about, I mean 1,200 of them were loaded on a Japanese transport and taken back to Japan, leaving 1,200. And then later on when the transport took away six hundred, leaving six hundred Japanese, the Marine contingent was out in half to twenty-two. And then by early ’46 all of the Japanese defenders on Wake had been re-patriated to Japan and I was fortunate enough to make a trip to Japan and – in early 1946. This was right after the surrender ceremonies on the USS Missouri – and then I came back to Honolulu and I was based in Honolulu with Pan Am and we then began to operate land planes – DC-4s and DC-6s and we resumed our routes to the Philippines and China and then down south to New Zealand and then on to Australia. We operated DC-4s. You remember the old sleeperette seats? They were probably the most comfortable airplane seats that have come down the pike in a long time –
KJP: Yes, I’ve heard about those, right.
WJM: And this was, of course, four or five or six years before United Airlines began service to Hawaii.
KJP: Yeah – I think their percentage has gone up considerably. When would Pan Am have started their first around-the-world set-up?
WJM: After the war –
KJP: That would have been in ’46 or ’47 or somewhere along there –
WJM: And the Pacific-Alaska division which we were in — which had the area from the west coast of the United States to New Delhi – and there was the Atlantic division based in New York that met the Pacific division around the far side of the globe. So that split up the around-the-world service between the Pacific-Alaska division and the Atlantic division.
KJP: Now about this same time – to get back to the Outrigger Canoe Club. You were quite involved there, too, weren’t you on the –
WJM: Yes, I was on the Board post-war and it was a very interesting time because we were reviving the tourist business and the pre-war tourist trade was about 25,000 people a year. Post-war in ’46, it started out with about 15,000 visitors and the Chamber of Commerce tourist committee – was reorganized and a man named Mark Egan was employed to re-establish the Tourist Bureau – and he changed the name to the Hawaii Visitors Bureau and after about two years it became obvious that the Hawaii Visitors Bureau was – had outgrown the Chamber of Commerce committee status and that’s when it became independent of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce and set up offices in Waikiki. The Visitors Bureau was chaired, at that time, by Lorrin Thurston who had a fairly large Bureau committee. He was chairman for some five or six years and he later developed a board of directors of up to 125 people from all the islands and it was the first really all-island committee to consider tourism in all of its aspects in all of the principal islands in the –
KJP: Bill, the Outrigger’s had its ups and downs and I believe about this time you were on the Building and Grounds Committee. Were you chairman?
WJM: Yes.
KJP: Could you give us some of the problems that they had at that time.
WJM: Well – the – When our committee took over, the annual food and beverage take was running about twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars a month. We were losing on the food some 15 or 20 percent. The first task that the new Buildings and Grounds Committee was confronted with was the problem of trying to turn around the annual losses. So we analyzed the amount of food that we sold and the amount of drink – which was about $6,000. In other words, two-thirds of it was food and a third liquor – drinks. And on the drinks we made about 40 percent but we lost about 20 percent on the food. So it was a “mugs” game and I told the Board one time that we would be better if we interviewed the members as they came in the front door and said to them “How much do you intend to spend on lunch or dinner?” If they said “Ten dollars” I said the best thing to do would be to give them two bucks and tell them to go somewhere else.
KJP: (Laughter)
WJM: And that kind of rocked the board and brought in to sharp focus the fact that we were not looking at the right service to Club members. Our proposal was that we block off a third of the dining room and make it into a cocktail lounge. Which we did. And the next year we broke even. Then we got the idea of building a stairway down on the ewa end of the old Club to connect it with the Hau Terrace which was not being used for anything – and we began to double our food and beverage gross; we were taking in forty – fifty thousand dollars a month then. About half of it was in liquor. We rigged the food prices to break even – and accepted about a 40 percent profit on the liquor service. That persisted until – that proportion persisted until we moved to the new location. I remember there was one manager named Magill (not visible) who was a very able manager in food and beverage.
KJP: Yes.
WJM: He did a lot to change the profit and loss picture on the Club’s food and beverage.
KJP: Yeah. I guess in the early days the directors more or less ran the Club. They didn’t have any managers per se.
WJM: No – We had a manager – we originally had a manager named George Cherry, who went over to Kona and ran the Kona Inn and then there were a number of managers – and a man named Henry DeGorog who then was manager for a number of years. And then Henry – I believe during the war went to San Francisco and worked over in Sausalito. Then there was a whole chain of managers – beginning with Gay Harris who was a noted swimmer – of his time – and then there were a number of other managers and they all added something to the Club’s operation and well being and so on. I think that everybody is able to contribute something that he specializes in.
KJP: Now, as I recall, somewhere in the ‘50s or so – Duke Kahanamoku was given the job of captain of sports – or boss of sports. Do you remember anything about that? Of course, he was even involved in volleyball back in those days.
WJM: Yes, Duke was still playing volleyball. He got quite a kick out of the Club and – he was sheriff for a number of years and was the official greeter for the City of Honolulu and the Club – post war – we gave Duke some concessions – a percentage off on food and beverage, which was a necessary thing, and it was a very far-sighted thing. And then Duke got interested in Club sports again and, not only volleyball, but he was interested in canoeing and canoe sailing and – and he used to – I remember when he and “Dad” (George D.) Center used to sail the old koa canoe – that big koa canoe – I don’t know the name of it, Ken.
KJP: Bill, I was going to ask you about that. Was that the huge canoe that “Pop” (Alexander H.) Ford found over in Puuloa and brought– Or was that another canoe?
WJM: I think it was another canoe. I don’t think it was the same one. I remember “Pop” Ford. He was in and around the Club in my early days there. But the canoe that Duke and Dad sailed in mostly – Later on Dad had a sailing canoe of his own that Edric Cook mostly managed and sailed.
KJP: Oh, yeah.
WJM: But the big canoe which was about 43 feet long and had quite a “stick” in it and Duke used to love to sail it – He was a great sailor and later on he got a little bit more professional and sailed in yachts out of the Yacht Club.
KJP: Waikiki Yacht Club I think he belonged to. Right?
WJM: Yes.
KJP: Now, they sailed those canoes backwards, didn’t they?
WJM: Yes. That’s right. The ama was on the – on the right hand side. Normally, surfing it’s on the left hand side. But for sailing purposes they usually sailed it with the blunt end forward.
KJP: Now, to get back to that huge canoe that apparently “Pop” Ford brought to the Club. I understand “Yama” – Do you remember “Yama”?
WJM: Yes.
KJP: The carpenter –
WJM: Yes.
KJP: Did a beautiful job in fixing it up.
WJM: Yes.
KJP: Do you remember any details on that at all?
WJM: No – other than – he was always repairing canoes. They frequently got the gunwales torn off or the ‘iako busted or the ama busted from surfing, but, other than his marine carpentry skill I don’t remember anything. He always used the Japanese plane which was interesting to me because it’s a plane that you pull toward you rather than push – like the haole plane. We used to go up to Nuuanu and get hao branches for ‘iako.
KJP: Oh, yes.
WJM: And about – about 1934 – I guess it was before the war, I introduced the balsa wood into the surfing situation in Hawaii. I made the first balsa wood surfboard for Lorrin Thurston and – and I forget the name of the –
KJP: Not Poepoe?
WJM: Yes, Sam Poepoe.
KJP: I remember Sam.
WJM: They were the first ones to use balsa wood boards. And I imported the balsa woods – balsa wood from a firm in New York because I had had the contact during my Jones Beach experience with the balsa wood rescue floats. So, I imported the balsa wood. In fact, I made 50 balsa wood surfboards for Rose’s Aquacade at Jones Beach in – this was about 1932.
KJP: Back in New York.
WJM: Back in New York and Billy Rose was the entrepreneur and he ordered 50 surfboards. And I made 10 foot boards out of balsa wood and he had all of the bathing beauty gals paddling the boards in various geometric figures in the water at Zach’s Bay.
KJP: Was “Buster” (Clarence) Crabbe involved in that one?
WJM: Not in the surfboards.
KJP: I mean in the Aquacade.
WJM: But he was in the Aquacade.
KJP: As I recall.
WJM: Yes. At that time. “Stubby” (Harold) Kruger and oh – Georgia Coleman, an Olympic swimmer and a great number of other – Marquette, and a fellow named Young and – “Stubby” was the star performer in the comedy diving and “Buster” did straight diving. He and – what was the Argentina man’s name? there was an Argentine fellow who was in the ‘20s – Also Alberto Zorilla, a man who came to the 1927 Honolulu try-outs for the Los Angeles Olympics – he was in the Jones Beach Aquacade. Quite a number of prominent – in fact, all of the leading swimmers and divers, both male and female, were booked into the Jones Beach Aquacade.
KJP: Now those boards were solid balsa, weren’t they?
WJM: Yes. Solid balsa. Covered with a plastic varnish.
KJP: Oh, yes. Now there is one thing that’s always been puzzling to the old timers – is when the skeg was introduced. Do you recall that, or were you out on one of your –
WJM: Yes. I can tell you what the evolution of it was. Uh – Tom Blake came to the Islands in – umm – I guess 1930, maybe, from California and wrote a book which later went out of print – called “The Hawaiian Surfboard”. But, he then in 1928, went back East to the Old Towne canoe people and built a hollow mahogany surfboard – the first hollow surfboard which was 13-1/2 feet long and came to a point at the trailing edge.
KJP: I remember that one.
WJM: And that was used – as you got on it your body weight sunk the rear down so that it formed a keel. And after the hollow board period – went along for five or six or eight years, then the balsa wood board came into prominence and preference. And it must have been some time in the – in the – oh, ’38 or ’39 that somebody – I don’t know who, put a skeg on – a rudder – on the surfboard.
KJP: This would have been on a balsa wood board.
WJM: I think so.
KJP: Because of the fact it was so light – it probably couldn’t be controlled.
WJM: That’s right. Yes. I remember Tommy Kiakona who was quite a prominent surfer and paddler. He experimented with steering the board with a rudder that he operated with his feet.
KJP: I’ll be darned.
WJM: And uh – It didn’t catch on because you couldn’t maneuver it surfing and it was only good for paddling races –
KJP: Oh yes.
WJM: Of which there were a number at that time. I might go back and say that during the period of early 1935 we organized the sailing races – sailing canoe races. And we had as many as 16 canoes rigged with sails. And it was a practice to get some prominent person living at the Royal to sponsor a crew and then there would be three or four beach boys who would be on the crew – and they would be paid so much a practice session and for the races – sort of semi-professional, I guess. But the sailing canoes were very popular and then Duke Kahanamoku introduced surfboard polo which was an interesting activity – aquatic activity. And the balsa wood boards were very much preferred for the water polo activity because they were easily maneuvered and you could swing around and change directions with a light board.
KJP: Say, Bill, do you remember Sam Kahanamoku –
WJM: Yes, quite well!
KJP: Put a point on both ends of his board so he would just switch his body around rather than switching the board around.
WJM: Right. That was never very successful either.
KJP: We used to have our own uniforms. Do you recall? We got shorts – white trunks with a red stripe down with an emblem on the side –
WJM: Right – an emblem – the Outrigger emblem –
KJP: Yes –
WJM: Right –
KJP: And we used to hold our polo matches right smack in front of the Royal Hawaiian wall.
WJM: That’s right. Yeah. Between the wall and the Uluniu Club boundary.
KJP: Right.
WJM: Have we covered everything that you wanted?
KJP: Well, there was something that I was going to ask you about. Bill, there’s an old-timer by the name of Sasaki – who was very much involved with the Club in the early days. Could you tell us a little about him.
WJM: Well, Sasaki was really the Club’s major activity coordinator at the Club. This was in the early ‘20s and ‘30s. He was there when I joined the Club and he was more or less the manager. And he took care of the locker rooms and maintained a little order and he supervised the dining room, and later on, I believe, he set up a separate snack bar where you could get double-deckers and ice cream sodas and so on, and he was very prominent in the Club over a number of years. And he was a very valuable and rather unobtrusive man who was always there and who knew everything there was to know about the Club and the people in it and I remember when he retired at – I guess he was 65 or 68 when he retired. He lived for a couple of years more. And he lived in Moiliili at the time, as I recall. And he was quite a – quite a factor in the Club. He was – in later years he was on the front desk when you checked in and signed in and Sasaki knew everything. He knew how to get everything – and what to do and knew everything about the Club.
KJP: Yeah – he was a great guy; I remember Sasaki. Now, one other backtrack here. Did you ever take any of those trips to Kona for the canoe races or was that when you were back on the mainland?
WJM: No, I didn’t take any – I went over to see a race in Kona one time, but I didn’t paddle. It was many years after I – I was working with Pan American. I remember rowing in Hilo Harbor for Healani, but that was in the ‘20s.
KJP: Oh, yes.
WJM: At that time the Hilo crews were pretty strong and they took all the honors in Hilo Bay. They also came down to Honolulu Harbor. The Navy fielded a couple of very good crews, also. These were six-oared barge crews.
KJP: Oh, yeah. Right. Well, Bill, I think that covers the history quite well.
WJM: One thing more, Ken.
KJP: Oh, all right.
WJM: I think that some mention should be made of the evolution of the Hawaii Visitors Bureau – and then in 1949 the formation of the Pacific Area Travel Association of which Lorrin Thurston became the first president. I was the organizing chairman. The reason I bring it up is because in 1975 we had a 25-year reunion of the Pacific Area Travel Association here in the Royal Hawaiian and it was quite a – quite a good undertaking because Lorrin had started the post-war Visitors Bureau – and had developed it to a very – a very good concern with Mark Egan and then with Stew Fern as the publicist – and Stew was able to win many honors for his publicity and promotion programs. And then Lorrin became the first president of the Pacific Area Travel Association, which, at that time, had about thirty – thirty-four countries that belonged to PATA and forty or fifty sea and air transportation companies and around about five or six hundred travel agents and that sort of activity.
KJP: That’s interesting.
WJM: Today PATA has grown – has thirty-eight different countries that belong and about fifty air and sea transportation companies and some 1,700 travel agents, so it is quite a large organization, based in San Francisco. In 1939 – no 19 – yes ’39 – No, it was after the war. Sam Mercer moved the PATA headquarters from Kalakaua Avenue to San Francisco. The headquarters has been in San Francisco ever since.
WJP: But that was the original organization started here in – in Honolulu?
WJM: Yes. In 1949. Yes.
KJP: Very interesting. Now last year you received the Splintered Paddle award. Could you tell us something about this.
WJM: Well, one day Paul Kendall from Pan Am called me in Carmel and said “Come on over for lunch. The Chamber is having its annual luncheon.” And I said “Oh, just a minute.” And I asked Bobbie if she wanted to go to Honolulu for lunch. And she said “Why not?” So we said “Okay.” We came over and Ernie Albright met us at the airport around midnight and brought us to the hotel and then picked us up the next day to take us to the Chamber luncheon and the occasion was the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian Airlines. I was very pleased to be included in the 50th because I knew Stan Kennedy very well. The Inter-Island people were our – Pan Am’s original agents and – so when Mr. (Jack) Magoon was given the award for 50 years of aviation – that was a very, very nice occasion for me and I saw a number of people that I knew and so on. And then the award of the day – the Mayor – Fasi began to – to talk about the award of the Splintered Paddle and I was interested. I looked around to see who probably would be given the award and then Frank Fasi went on to say that “he was brought here at age one and that his father worked for the Cable Company” and then my ears began to get red when I realized they were talking about me. And then Joan – Joyce Fasi came down and we went up to the dais and the rather impressive plaque was handed to me and Frank congratulated me and so on – and I recalled that I had been chairman of the tourist industry committee in the Honolulu Chamber when the award of the Splintered Paddle was discussed and at that time Duke Kahanamoku was quite prominently involved in the evolution of the award. The award is a result, as you know, of the attack that was made on King Kamehameha I as a young man and he was fishing and – he was sleeping by the side of the Mamalahoa – which is the pathway that goes around the island of Hawaii and there’s a curious parallel between Mamalahoa which is the name of the highway and Mamalahoi – which means Splintered Paddle. And the Law of the Splintered Paddle evolved when he was attacked by these three fishermen, and when he became King later on in life his first law – first order, was that every person in his realm could lay down beside the road and not be harmed – on pain of death. And it was quite a severe law which was called the Mamalahoi Kanawai, “the Law of the Splintered Paddle.”
KJP: Very interesting – That’s very interesting. Well, Bill, you’ve covered a tremendous amount of history in a comparatively short time and the Outrigger Canoe Club thanks you for your time and history that many of us have forgotten about. Many, many thanks!
WJM: Thank you!
Honolulu Advertiser
Friday, October 19, 1979 A-3
Mullahey receives chamber award
The Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii yesterday honored William J. Mullahey, called the “Mr. Pacific” of his era, with its Order of the Splintered paddle yesterday. The award is presented to persons making major contributions to the state of Hawaii. In introducing Mullahey at the award program, Mayor Frank Fasi noted that “he is one of those who helped put Hawaii on the map during the formative years of trans-Pacific air transportation.”
Mullahey grew up in Hawaii and attended St. Louis High School. After graduation from Columbia University, he joined Pan American World Airways. He helped Pan Am establish its bases in the Pacific. After World War II, he became Pan Am’s director for Hawaii and the central and south Pacific regions. It was during this period that he began to play a major role of leadership in the development of tourism in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific,” Fasi said, “It was a role he continued to play effectively until his retirement in 1972.” He helped revitalize the Hawaii Visitors Bureau after the war…and went on to spearhead the organization and development of the Pacific Area Travel Association. “He was active in the postwar policies of the chamber – serving as chairman of its tourist industry committee.”
Mullahey spent 37 years with Pan American, spanning the days from the Clippers to jumbo jets. The first winner of the Order of the Splintered Paddle was Dwight D. Eishenhower in 1956. Other winner included Duke P. Kahanamoku, Henry J. Kaiser, Dan Liu. Alice Spalding Bowen and, last July, E. E. Black. There have been 28 persons honored with the award.