I wrote a few weeks ago about KCCN’s 50th anniversary. Jim Howard, one of my readers, remembered Aku broadcasting from the treehouse at the International Market Place.
“I have this vague memory of going into Waikiki on a Saturday morning with my mom, and standing on Kalakaua Avenue in front of the marketplace and peering up at the tree, knowing that Aku was up there,” Howard says.
Was it true, he asked?
Disc jockey Harry Soria Jr. found a photo in the Territorial Airwaves archives that is labeled “Aku in the Treehouse Studio at the International Market Place.”
I went digging into our newspaper archives. A clipping I found, written by Aku himself, says, as of Jan. 18, 1960, “the International Market Place will be the latest scene of Aku’s crusades, campaigns, controversies, assaults on human dignity and other bric-a-brac.”
Why from a tree? “Because as so many of you have said for so many years, this program is for the birds.”
He closed by inviting listeners to “drop up and see me sometime.”
Back in 1960, KHVH broadcast from the treehouse at the International Market Place.
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Hal Lewis, or, more formally, J. Akuhead Pupule, or simply Aku to most of us, was Hawaii’s top disc jockey on KGMB/KSSK before Perry & Price.
It was said that he was the top-paid deejay in the world, earning about $150,000 a month (in today’s dollars) at the time of his death in 1983.
Lewis was born in Brooklyn and took up the violin at the age of 9. Beginning at 11, he won several Northern California violin contests, posing as a boy from each particular community.
The violin brought him to Hawaii in 1946. Lewis was hired by Matson to play violin on its sailings to Hawaii.
He left that and worked for many radio stations over 36 years — KGMB, KPOA, KHON, KGU, KHVH and KORL — before being hired by KGMB/KSSK again.
Twenty percent of morning radio listeners tuned in to him each weekday for his jokes, news and banter … NOT, I suspect, for the big-band 1940s music he played.
Lewis was highly critical of rock ’n’ roll, calling it “frenetic and negative,” in Honolulu magazine. “It’s all sung by people with whiny voices who really can’t sing.”
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What was his daily routine, listeners frequently asked? “Four o’clock in the morning, the alarm goes off,” Aku replied. Up out of bed and into a brisk, cold shower; a quick glass of orange juice; and some conditioning exercises.
“These are all done by my son, Lance, who then comes and wakes me at a quarter to five.”
Actually, he said, he rose early, read the paper at Coco’s (at Kalakaua and Kapiolani), and circled the various stories that he would discuss on the air later.
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Many of you might not know about one of Aku’s most patriotic acts. I just found out about it last week.
In a debate in the U.S. Senate on Hawaii statehood in March 1952, Sen. Tom Connally disparaged our ethnically diverse population. Tom Connally was a cousin of Gov. John Connally.
“I think I am a better American than a great many people who live in Hawaii,” Connally said. “I have been to Hawaii. The majority of the people there are not of American ancestry or descent.”
On the air the next day, Aku told listeners that Connally had insulted all the people of Hawaii. He suggested Hawaii should send a couple of war veterans to Washington to protest the remarks.
The response was overwhelming. In the next few days, $7,000 was sent to Aku from all over the state. Businessmen took to the streets with kettles. Hawaiian Airlines flew in donations from neighbor islands.
School kids gave up their lunch money. Even inmates at Oahu Prison sent in $300 saying, “We are in prison, but we think we still are as good Americans as Senator Connally.”
A week later four combat veterans of the 442nd Regiment and 100th Battalion were on their way to the mainland. The “Connally Caravan” picked up another vet in Texas.
For 10 days national news outlets covered the story from Hawaii to Texas to Washington in newsreels, wire photos, newspapers and a new medium called television.
The veterans met with Sen. Connally and reminded him that the 442nd and 100th teams had rescued Texas’ 36th Division in Italy during World War II.
“My remarks were misinterpreted,” the senator told the group. After they left, he characterized the Connally Caravan as “a propaganda effort to secure votes for the Hawaiian statehood bill.”
Connally did not seek re-election and retired from public life.
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My readers probably remember Lippy Espinda, who had a service station and used-car lot on Kalakaua and Kapiolani (across from Coco’s). Lippy gave Hawaii’s finger and thumb salute the name “shaka.”
“Lippy stands squarely behind each used car he sells,” Aku told his listeners one day, “so he can push it out onto the street!”
Lippy himself used to joke that all his used cars came with a guarantee. He’d wave goodbye to buyers when they drove the cars off his lot. When they could no longer see him waving, “no mo’ the guarantee.”
Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.
