Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
A caution against over-exuberant estimates of Hawaii’s future growth was sounded last night by Dr. Thomas K. Hitch, vice-president and director of economic research for the First National Bank.
Addressing the closing dinner of the Hawaii Education Association at the Hawaiian Village Long House, Hitch ranged himself with those planners who think Hawaii’s 1970 population will be closer to 750,000 than 1,000,000.
Since the 1960 census figure was 632,000, he thus is estimating a growth of about 12,000 a year against more than 30,000 estimated by some.
Hitch made these points:
A 120,000 gain in the next 10 years presents approximately the normal increase from more births than deaths.
Anything higher than this would have to come from two principal groups: people coming here to retire, and people coming here to work.
Figures show that fewer than 100 people a year have come to Hawaii to retire in the last decade and there is no indication that the flow is increasing.
Persons will come to work only if there are jobs.
It will take 50,000 new jobs just to employ the youngsters coming of working age, whereas in the last decade only 28,000 new jobs were created.
The only boom industry in the State is tourism and it accounts for only 10,000 jobs directly and 20,000 indirectly.
Hitch urged "realistic optimism" about the future but cautioned against false assumptions and speculative fever.
As an example of the latter, Hitch cited the case of Waikiki land.
Every owner, he said, is sure his property will soon be a hotel site, yet there is enough land zoned for hotels to build 30,000 to 100,000 hotel rooms compared to the 6,500 rooms in Waikiki today.
Earlier, the H.E.A. elected Laurence J. Capellas of Hilo High School as its 1961-62 president.
It also adopted numerous resolutions, among them a measure urging steady enactment of Congressional legislation to provide funds for public school construction and teachers’ salaries.
