Tanya Harrison — a granddaughter, daughter and sister of U.S. service members — wants the city to rededicate Hawaii’s biggest, forgotten war memorial.
The memorial has long been used for ballets, graduations and concerts; takes up an entire city block; and today is called the Neal Blaisdell Center.
But its original purpose has long been lost, Harrison said.
As Memorial Day approaches — and with the city moving ahead with unspecified plans to overhaul the 51-year-old Blaisdell Center — Harrison wants city officials to make sure the center’s original intent to honor all Hawaii service members is restored.
"I grew up not knowing that place was a war memorial, and that bothers me," Harrison said. "I believe we should never forget our veterans."
Harrison found a 1964 letter from then-Mayor Neal Blaisdell to the City Council in which Blaisdell refers to the then-$14.4 million "Honolulu International Center" as "our new War Memorial Auditorium and Theater-Concert Hall Complex."
"Our Grand Opening and Dedication of the International Center as a living memorial to Hawaii’s war heroes should serve the two-fold purpose of acquainting our own people with the Center and of bringing to it the national and international recognition that it deserves," Blaisdell wrote six months before the center was dedicated.
Harrison also found newspaper accounts and city documents refering to a plaque, which long ago disappeared, that read, "Honolulu International Center: Dedicated to All the Sons and Daughters of Hawaii Who Served Their Country in Time of War and in Special Tribute to Those Who Gave Their Lives in Order That Freedom and Justice Might Prevail Throughout the World."
Harrison could not find any references to where the plaque was installed, but believes it may have been at the site of the current box office, or perhaps near the statue commemorating Elvis Presley’s 1973 "Aloha From Hawaii" concert.
In March the City Council adopted a resolution asking the administration to erect three memorial stone plaques "in prominent locations" around the Blaisdell dedicating the site "to Hawaii’s war dead and war veterans."
"When I was a child I saw it as the Ward Estate, and then it became the International Center and then it became the Neal Blaisdell Center," said Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who signed the resolution and whose district includes the Blaisdell Center. "All this time I didn’t realize it was started as a war memorial, which I think is great. We have so many veterans here from so many wars. So we want to continue that remembrance."
Harrison did not start out championing the restoration of the Blaisdell’s intent to honor veterans.
She’s a 42-year-old Oregon wildlife biologist for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation who wanted to learn more about her family’s genealogy in Kakaako and then became fascinated by Oahu’s fishponds, including the original ones on the site of what’s now the Blaisdell.
"As a wildlife biologist I was curious," she said.
Then Harrison became fixated on how an entertainment center’s dedication to Hawaii veterans became forgotten.
"Nerd that I am, I looked up the articles from 1964 and realized it was dedicated as a war memorial," she said. "I then spent two or three years looking for that plaque. I had no intention of researching the Blaisdell. This is a hobby that’s gotten out of hand."
As the city considers a range of options for what to do with the Blaisdell — including potential demolition — some people have told Harrison, "‘You want to turn it into a war memorial to save it,’" she said.
Harrison’s response: "It’s already a war memorial that’s been serving society for 51 years. It’s just that no one knows it."
City spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke wrote in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, "The Department of Enterprise Services is looking into the possibility of displaying a replica of the original plaque at an appropriate location on the Blaisdell campus but nothing is finalized at the moment. This would not impact the long term Blaisdell master plan."
A lot of groups and people are passionate about what happens next with the Blaisdell.
The Historic Hawai‘i Foundation, for instance, considers the Blaisdell’s concert hall and arena significant representations of "postwar, midcentury architecture," said the group’s executive director, Kiersten Faulkner. "That period of architectural design was characterized by clean and simple lines. It was a response to earlier periods, which tended to be ornamented and exuberant. The midcentury movement was about simple forms, very geometric, very much using concrete and air conditioning and plastics and experimenting with what it meant to be new and modern."
Faulkner is impressed with Harrison’s research about the Blaisdell’s war memorial origins, but the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation has taken no stance on whether the city’s master plan for the Blaisdell should include a war memorial component.
"We would be looking for the preservation of the existing structures, in whatever form makes sense," Faulkner said. "That’s independent of whether it’s designated as a war memorial. But the memorial aspect is interesting and tells a lot about the development of Hawaii after World War II and during the Vietnam era."
Harrison believes the tumultuous 1960s may have played a part in why the Blaisdell’s war memorial origins quietly disappeared.
Anti-war protestors regularly occupied the grounds of the Blaisdell during a period when Blaisdell administrators were frequently turning over.
At some point, Harrison said, both the plaque — and the Blaisdell’s original intent to honor Hawaii’s war veterans — simply vanished without any fanfare.
"There’s no evidence that anyone purposely didn’t care or did something wrong to forget that it was originally intended as a war memorial," Harrison said. "It just faded away."
