Interviews with 25 Hawaii leaders reveal early concerns that the islands could become overrun with COVID-19 while others hoped the Pacific Ocean would provide a natural “border” to keep the virus out, according to a new book by former Mayor Kirk Caldwell and his longtime deputy managing director.
“Our Beaches Were Empty, Our Hospitals Full” — written by Caldwell and Georgette Takushi Deemer and published by Legacy Isle Publishing — provides first-hand, behind-the-scenes accounts of how Hawaii responded — or took its time responding, in some cases — to the global pandemic. Eventually, it would all but shut down Hawaii’s tourist-based economy, leading to lines of vehicles with people seeking handouts of food.
Caldwell was in his final year as Honolulu mayor when COVID- 19 reached Oahu through an infected tourist arriving in 2020.
He and Deemer began their interviews in 2021 after Caldwell left office after eight years. They continued just after then-Gov. David Ige urged tourists to stay away following a spike in cases throughout the summer of 2021.
The book represents a snapshot in time during a second surge in COVID-19 cases as the economy continued to struggle and no one could forecast when it would all end.
“As we worked on the book, Hawai‘i continued to wrestle with record case counts due to new variants while we witnessed a society split between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, businesses that were unable to hold on, and, overall, a weary community,” Deemer and Caldwell wrote. “Yet, the spirit of Hawai‘i is resilient.”
“Our Beaches Were Empty, Our Hospitals Full” is intended as a historical account of how Hawaii leaders addressed a pandemic unprecedented in modern times — along with recommendations by Caldwell and Deemer on how Hawaii should prepare for a future one, such as planning to partner the state Department of Health with county agencies, nonprofit groups, private organizations and Hawaii’s health care system.
All proceeds of the book go to the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine to help Hawaii’s medical community shore up community health efforts.
“Forgotten communities need to be reached out to and community health is where that happens,” Caldwell told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Before COVID-19 became a daily part of island life, Ron Mizutani — then-president of the Hawaii Foodbank — in February 2020 was already expediting purchases of food “that we had not budgeted for in anticipation of food shortfalls and especially food not being donated to the Hawaii Foodbank,” he told Caldwell and Deemer.
Mizutani’s family is from Kauai, which was devastated by hurricanes Iwa and Iniki, and Mizutani urged Hawaii residents not to hoard food, which resulted in immediate blowback. “How dare you tell us what to do!” he recalled being told. “We’re going to take care of our families if we need to.”
“The hoarding started immediately,” he said.
In the early days of 2020, then-President Donald Trump was downplaying COVID-19, calling it no more serious than the flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was sending contradictory messaging, followed by an initial batch of faulty COVID-19 tests across the country, followed by a subsequent round of faulty tests.
In the islands, the book details the sleepless nights, uncertainty and risks that some leaders took as they tried to urge more aggressive preparations for what quickly became a global pandemic — including a disagreement between Caldwell and Ige to “lock down” the entire state to try to contain the virus.
Deemer and Caldwell said they appreciated the candor of the people they interviewed.
“I was really surprised at some of the things they revealed to us — the failures, the frustration,” Deemer told the Star-Advertiser.
Even though she was in the thick of responding to the pandemic as a key Caldwell aide, Deemer said, “I didn’t have a clue what they were personally going through.”
Hawaii’s leading banks dropped all pretense of competition and worked together to get badly needed capital to businesses.
Peter Ho, chairman, president and CEO of Bank of Hawaii; Micah Kane, CEO and president of the Hawaii Community Foundation; and Ray Vara, president and CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health, formed an unlikely alliance and went to the state Capitol on March 15, 2020, a Sunday, in T-shirts and shorts to lobby Ige to “lock down” the state.
Their message to Ige was: “(I)t was time to start shutting things down,” Vara recounted in the book. “Close the schools, limit gatherings, close restaurants, close bars. … The quicker we act, the better this will be.”
Instead, Ige decided only to extend public school spring break by four days.
Ho, Kane and Vara then turned to Caldwell, who told Ige on March 21 that he had prepared a “lockdown order” based on San Francisco’s, ordering Oahu residents to work from home and stay at home — and wanted Ige to do the same for the rest of the state.
When Ige resisted, Caldwell writes in the book: “I told the governor, ‘You know we came over here not to ask for your permission, because we don’t have to. But I was hoping that you would join us and make this a statewide order, an order for everyone, and that we would go together.’”
In interviewing Ige and writing “Our Beaches Were Empty, Our Hospitals Full,” Caldwell and Deemer told the Star-Advertiser that they eventually understood Ige’s reluctance to shut down the entire state.
With each of the four county mayors dealing with their own COVID-19-related pressures in their own ways, Deemer said that during their interview with Ige, “I thought that the governor presented a very understandable reason why he wasn’t able to make a decision that day. He’s governor of the entire state and the other mayors were not on the same page. I think that he was right to take into consideration the entire state.”
Caldwell said, “I didn’t realize it until we interviewed him. The mayors had very different perspectives. I was very frustrated with him until we wrote the book.”
There is plenty of reflection in the book and Caldwell acknowledged to the Star-Advertiser that he made his share of mistakes.
“There are regrets, real regrets,” he said. “Opening up was way too quick. If we’re going to write an honest history, there’s no leader that did everything properly.”
Looking back, Caldwell also acknowledged not appreciating the economic and housing struggles of many Pacific Islanders, whose funerals were derided for helping spread COVID-19.
But it also was nearly impossible for many families to isolate someone with a positive diagnosis because of overcrowded living conditions.
“I neglected them,” Caldwell told the Star-Advertiser. “They were invisible to me. … I really regret that.”
The COVID-19 era also amplified the mistrust of government that many Native Hawaiians continue to have — including resistance to wearing masks and eventually getting vaccinated when vaccines became available.
“There’s a long history of mistrust,” Caldwell said. “‘You haven’t paid attention to us all these years and all of a sudden you’re telling us what to do.’”
Asked how he will respond to cynics that “Our Beaches Were Empty, Our Hospitals Full” is intended to lay the groundwork for another gubernatorial run, Caldwell said: “I would say they’re incorrect. The book was written to record the history and to ensure that next time we do a much better job.”
Caldwell is helping to raise $3 million for the Pu‘uhonua ‘O Waianae tiny home, or kauhale, community for formerly homeless people in Waianae; teaching a leadership seminar for the Hawaii State Bar Association; and hoping to teach university-level classes in history and public policy.
