Gwen Hamabata

3/18/01 Gwendolyn Sue Hamabata past owner of property 3865 Hanapepe Rd.PH 335-5435 res; 335-5422 Green Garden Restaurant–Box K, Hanapepe HI 96716.

(notes written from interviews with Gwen Hamabata mostly in the order she gave them to researcher, Carol Bain)

Gwen Hamabata was born two buildings over in Betsui Hospital in 1944. It was common to have small Japanese hospitals in the rural areas back then.

As long as she remembers (from 1950’s), this building was always a pool hall. As a young girl, she remembers it was dark inside when she passed it on her way to school and had been told it was a “no-no” place. The building had two doors in front and was dark inside. There were two shoe-shine chairs out front that kids would climb up on. She never recalls actually seeing anyone get their shoes shined there. There was a Taxi stand on one side in front the store. The K.C.Kai store (torn down 1992 after Hurricane ‘Iniki) was built so close to the pool hall you could almost touch both if you stood in between the buildings. One wall of the pool hall was damaged during demolition of store in the rear/middle of the building. The building survived two hurricanes and several floods. Gwen said the old school had to be moved up the hill after one flood in the 1940’s. She was pretty young then but remembers about it. There were floods over the years.

Hanapepe was an “open” town like Hanalei, in that it was not a plantation-owned town. Businesses were independent owned and an important alternative for people to buy food and clothes. Senator Matsunaga (now passed on) grew up in Hanapepe. The population followed immigrant pattern and looks “western” because Chinese built it. Similar to the town Lock, California, that was built by Chinese at turn of century.

Gwen remembers coming back from college in 1968 and realizing how much she missed the rural look of Kaua’i. She drove around the entire island and always came back to Hanapepe with great feelings for the old town. She knew it had something special. She thought it must have been the old-time buildings she saw, particularly in older parts of downtown. The first effort toward historical significance came with Hanapepe Merchants Association effort. Old past president, Tom Okura got it started… and his wife has old photos so give her a call.

Eduardo Malapit’s older sister, Connie, and her husband Victor ran the pool hall up until 1970’s. “After the 1970’s, the economics couldn’t support it.” Then Gwen remembers it having a radio repair inside instead of pool hall. Then some arts and crafts she thinks. The last property manager was a Portuguese man named Mr. Liko. He became an absentee landlord and there was “documented usage” of 40 people living there. Building was in use until the late 1980’s and became “infamous” as the Social Service agencies were called out there a lot. There were 5 families living there and repeated spouse abuse going on. When Gwen bought it from Mrs. Edith Hiu Chang in 1988 a large group of 40 people were renting space there. A few were paying rent to a non-resident manager (Mr. Liko) who was hard to find and had left the island. It took a couple of years to straighten out the situation as there were five families living there with only one working bathroom. The people were asked to leave, as the building was not in good shape then. By 1991 all of the renters had left. The building sat vacant and closed up until sold in 2000 to Joanna Carolan. The next door space, which had been cleared, was also bought at the same time by Barbara Fontana and would make a good parking area next to the swinging bridge.

Gwen did not have the resources or time to develop the property. She bought it from Mrs. Chang in order to attempt to preserve it. In the 1980’s she worked on the effort to revitalize Hanapepe town and she worked with the efforts to retain the historical buildings in town. In 1993, the property was placed into a trust. Gwen offered to research the deed.

Mr. Tom Okura was really the businessman in Hanapepe who worked first to get the revitalization and preservation of the old town buildings started. He was president of the Hanapepe Merchants Association then. He came into the Green Garden Restaurant one day and talked Gwen into working on historic and revitalization vision. Gwen liked the idea a lot and worked with him and others. Mr. Okura has passed away but Mr. Robert (lefty) Ozaki was also very active. Mr. Ozaki also knows the original owners, the Changs and Gwen thinks the large Dang family may have been involved with the early days of the property. These were independent minded businessmen who did not like working for the plantation.

The County of Kaua’i economic development efforts to study Hanapepe occurred in the late 1980s and during the early 1990s. Because of the Hanapepe Mainstreet work some good planning was able to occur. Several buildings were able to get onto the historic registry during these efforts. The Hanapepe Economic Alliance is the new name for the business group and is now doing good work to revitalize main street.

A historic preservationist expert came to Hanapepe and walked through old town with Gwen and others to analyze the historic buildings. Gwen remembered this expert woman had spotted several buildings that “were significant” and recommended for the list for national and state registry. The old pool hall building literally “stood out” because if its visual prominence so it got on the list. The covered front-landing protruded visually into the street and caught the eye of anyone walking in either direction. Almost everyone remembers the old pool hall building who lived here or spent time visiting Hanapepe. If the building was gone it would change the whole look of this downtown area. That was one reason why she left it standing even though boarded up for many years.

Gwen remembers walking by that building since she was a little girl. There were parades down Hanapepe Road that went right by the building. This area of downtown was fun place to go as there were candy stores, shave ice, (limeade was the best), fishcake, sweet shops, and the Jardine Hanapepe Theater was right across the street. A movie was 20 cents to go every Saturday. Next to the pool hall was Uno store that sold retail and food.

She did not actually go into the old pool hall building herself until 1971 as a young adult when she went to play pool with some friends. She remembers there were spittoons. the interior having many (8 or so) pool tables and she remembers the abacus score keeping wires above the tables. She knew there was some gambling machines there ran by the Malapit family. There were pin-ball kind machines at one time, but not big gambling.

NOTE: Gwen provided names of several good contacts for history and stories of the old Pool Hall building.

Transcript Notes from Interview by Carol Bain with Gwen Hamabata