Honolulu

Honolulu << `HON` uh LOO loo or `HOH` noh LOO loo >> is the capital, largest city, and chief port of Hawaii. The city’s official name is the City and County of Honolulu. Technically, Honolulu covers the entire island of Oahu. But only the large urban area on Oahu’s southeastern coast is commonly called Honolulu. Other communities on Oahu are known by their own names.

Honolulu is often called the Crossroads of the Pacific. It is about 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers) from San Francisco and 3,800 miles (6,120 kilometers) from Tokyo.

In 1794, Captain William Brown of England sailed into what is now Honolulu Harbor. The harbor provided shelter, and other ships began to stop there. Honolulu soon became an important trading center. Honolulu is a Hawaiian word meaning sheltered bay.

During the early 1900’s, the United States built several military bases on Oahu. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base on the island. The United States entered World War II the next day. In the 1960’s, jet air travel and lower plane fares helped Honolulu become a popular tourist spot. Tourism continues to be a major industry in Honolulu.

The city.

The City and County of Honolulu consists of Oahu and several offshore islands. The City and County of Honolulu and the Honolulu metropolitan area have the same boundaries.

The main urban area of Honolulu includes downtown Honolulu and extends about 20 miles (32 kilometers) along the shore from Pearl Harbor on the west to Koko Head, an extinct volcano, on the east.

Diamond Head, Honolulu’s most famous extinct volcano, is west of Koko Head. The Koolau Mountains rise north of the main urban area of Honolulu, and the Waianae Mountains are west of this area.

Downtown Honolulu, which lies next to Honolulu Harbor, has many office and apartment buildings. Government buildings in the downtown area include City Hall and the Hawaii State Capitol. Iolani Palace, the former capitol and once the royal palace of Hawaiian monarchs, stands across a walkway from the new capitol. Nearby is Washington Place, the home of Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch, from 1862 until her death in 1917. It then served as the official home of Hawaii’s governors until 2002.

Factories occupy districts west of downtown Honolulu. The Ala Moana Center, a large shopping area, and Waikiki, a famous coastal resort section, lie east of the downtown district.

Residential communities have grown up throughout Honolulu. The largest communities include Aiea, Kailua, Kaneohe, Pearl City, and Waipahu.

The people.

More than half of Honolulu’s people are of Asian descent, and about a fifth have Japanese ancestry. About a fifth of the people are of European descent. About 15 percent of the people in Honolulu are Hawaiian or part Hawaiian. Other groups include those of African, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Puerto Rican, or Samoan descent. Many of Honolulu’s people have mixed ancestry. American military personnel and their families make up much of Honolulu’s population.

Economy.

Tourism is Honolulu’s largest source of income. Millions of tourists visit the city annually. Most of them stay in the Waikiki Beach area. Visitors enjoy the beautiful scenery, recreation areas, and mild climate. The city’s temperature varies little, averaging 72 °F (22 °C) in February, the coldest month, and 78 °F (26 °C) in August and September, the warmest months. For the monthly weather in Honolulu, see Hawaii (Climate).

Honolulu’s economy also depends on military activities. The city is the center of United States military operations in the Pacific region. The Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy have bases on Oahu. The second largest source of income in Honolulu is the money spent by the U.S. government in salaries for military personnel and civilian workers.

Honolulu is the headquarters for several small high-technology firms. The city also has hundreds of manufacturing companies. Honolulu’s products include cement, clothing, furniture, glass products, lumber, oil products, and plastics.

The Daniel K. Inouye International Airport handles millions of passengers each year. The English-language newspaper The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has the largest daily readership in Honolulu. The city also has daily newspapers printed in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Education.

Honolulu’s public schools form part of the state school system controlled by the Hawaii State Board of Education. Also, thousands of students attend private schools.

The University of Hawaii, also spelled University of Hawai‘i, at Manoa is in Honolulu. Its Hamilton Library is the largest library in Hawaii. The East-West Center, also on the Manoa campus, is a meeting place for people of Eastern and Western nations to get together and exchange ideas. Chaminade University of Honolulu and the main campus of Hawaii Pacific University are also in Honolulu.

Cultural life.

The Diamond Head Theatre and the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Kennedy Theatre present plays and other stage productions. Leading ballet and opera companies appear at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center, which includes an arena, an auditorium, and an exhibition hall.

The Bishop Museum, which opened in 1889, is the oldest museum in Hawaii. It has exhibits of natural history and Pacific Island culture. The Honolulu Museum of Art displays Western and Asian art. The Polynesian Cultural Center includes six villages representing the people of Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand, the Samoa Islands, Tahiti, and Tonga. Many tourists visit Queen Emma Summer Palace, a home of the wife of King Kamehameha IV. The Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum is on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. Its exhibits occupy three historic hangars that survived the 1941 Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War II.

Honolulu has many beautiful parks. Ala Moana and Kapiolani parks offer a variety of recreational facilities. Trained dolphins and other marine animals perform at Sea Life Park. The Foster Botanical Garden features rare flowers and trees.

Government.

The City and County of Honolulu has a mayor-council form of government. The voters elect the mayor and the nine members of the council to four-year terms. Property taxes are the leading source of Honolulu’s revenue.

History.

Honolulu was a small Polynesian village when an English seaman, Captain William Brown, sailed into its harbor in 1794. Other ships started to use the harbor, and Honolulu became an important port.

During the 1800’s, Honolulu flourished first as a center for the sandalwood trade and later as the major Pacific whaling base. In 1820, Protestant missionaries from New England came to Honolulu. They built schools and churches and converted many Hawaiians to Christianity. During the late 1800’s, farmers began to raise large crops of pineapples and sugar cane. The processing of these products became the city’s most important manufacturing activity. Thousands of laborers from China, Japan, and other countries came to work in the pineapple and sugar fields and the food-processing factories. By 1896, Honolulu had about 30,000 people.

King Kamehameha I, the first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii, lived in Honolulu from 1803 to 1811. The city became the permanent capital of Hawaii in 1845, and it remained the capital when Hawaii became a territory of the United States in 1900. The City and County of Honolulu, established in 1907, remained the capital when Hawaii became a state in 1959.

The United States built a naval base at Pearl Harbor in the early 1900’s and established several Army camps on Oahu. The increased military activity helped raise Honolulu’s population to about 95,000 in 1920 and 137,000 in 1930. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, forced the United States into World War II. Honolulu became a chief base for the Allied campaign against the Japanese.

The late 1940’s and 1950’s brought important social and economic changes to Honolulu. People from China, Japan, and other Asian countries had long been kept out of politics and big business in the city. But after World War II ended in 1945, many Americans of Asian descent became leaders in Honolulu’s government and industry.

During the 1960’s, the tourism industry boomed in Honolulu and high-rise apartment buildings and hotels went up in the city’s main urban area. The start of jet air travel reduced the flying time between cities on the mainland of the United States and Honolulu. Airlines lowered their fares and scheduled more and more flights between many cities and Honolulu.

During the 1970’s and the 1980’s, Honolulu continued to be a popular place for tourists, and Honolulu’s economy grew rapidly. But the rapid growth created several problems. For example, it caused a housing shortage, accompanied by high building costs and limited space. To help ease the shortage, the government gave financial aid to many home builders. Many residents feared that the hotel construction boom threatens Honolulu’s scenic beauty. To help solve this problem, Honolulu’s government has limited hotel construction in certain areas.

In the early 1990’s, many Asian nations began to suffer severe economic problems. Honolulu’s economy was affected because the number of Asian tourists declined greatly. Also, the Waikiki area began to face competition from vacation areas on other Hawaiian islands and on the mainland of the United States. Many businesses were forced to close or reduce staff. Many residents moved to the mainland of the United States to find jobs.

In 1996, the city government relaxed its earlier restrictions on hotel construction so that Honolulu would be in a position to attract more tourists. In 1999, to encourage development, the city council approved a bill offering property tax exemptions for new nonresidential construction, repairs, and renovations.

The first stage of a long-awaited light rail project opened in the summer of 2023. The initial phase of the project stretches about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from East Kapolei, which lies west of Pearl Harbor, to Halawa, northwest of downtown Honolulu. Construction of the light rail system had started in 2011 and was expected to continue through the 2020’s.