By KLAUS MEHNERT the Beautiful Hawaiian Word "'Aloha

.. By KLAUS MEHNERT Va mall. k6 fla 0 ka aina i ka pono. (The life of the la~ is preserved by righteousness.) Motto of Hawaii. The beautiful Hawaiian word like this. If, for instance, a person "'Aloha" cannot be translated. It says, "1 am now leaving Germany," means love, friendship, sympathy, it really does not mean very much. He farewell, and much more. The follow is perhaps looking at a railway station ing lines are an Aloha in two ways. on the Belgian border, or at the banks They are a friendly farewell to the hos of the lower Elbe, or possibly at the pitable islands on which I lived for mountains of the Brenner Pass, and four years, and they are also a good each time he sees only an infinitesimal bye to old Hawaii, which toward the fragment of Germany. Germany itself dosure of my sta:Jh-,was undergoing a is much more, ( ...;k nOPQdy has ever rapid transformation. and which, if seen i~ a whole. But here the entire this development shou.ld continue, will island 11e; before me. From the light disappear. never to return. house on Barber's Point to the crater Hawaii's transformation from a of Koko Head I can see every ridge of south sea paradise to a naval and the two parallel volcanic mountain military fortress of first magnitude ranges and the broad valley lying be 'seems inevitable. The time may soon tween them, filled with sugar cane and come. when people, who no'tl':rassociate pineapple fields. In the fiery sunset the name of Hawaii with rt·1Jt~·girls the mountains and valleys are indescrib and palm trees in the moonlignt, will ably green and seem very near as the link the islands with nothing but coast deep shadows accentuate every line. artillery, bombers, and naval battles, as White and pearl-grey clOUds float over if Hawaii were another Gibraltar or the ranges; a pale rainbow stands over SingapOl·e. This is sad. There are Manoa valley, and above evet;Jthing is many-too many-Gibraltars. But the clear blue vault of the skY. there was only one Hawaii. This I I have hiked in Gemnany more wide feel more strongly than ever in this ly than the majority of my country bour of my departure from Honolulu men, in the Black Forest>- and in the -as the Japanese liner slowly makes its Heide, on the Rhine and in Upper way through the reef. Bavaria, in the Harz Mountains, along the Baltic coast and the river Main, DEPARTURES yet I have only seen part of Germany. ~ny departures have I had in my But on this island I know almost every life of wandering, but never was one square foot. There is no village where 2 THE XXth CENTURY I do not have some friends, no peak or The farther east they are, the vale that I have not seen from a car, younger are the islands geologically. on foot or from a plane, no beach where Old Kauai has been eroded by wind I have not played with the surf. and rain to such an extent that craters can no longer be found on it. It is When you leave Stuttgart the train slowly disappearing. But at the other takes you through a tunnel, and by the end of the chain, Hawaii still has ac time you come out of it you find your tive volcanoes and continues to grow. self in Cannstatt. When you depart Its two volcanoes, thirteen and fourteen from Chicago you travel between high thousand feet high, are proof of our walls obstructing the view and past earth's tremendous strength, which has drab and impersonal railway stations. raised their snowy summits 35,000 But here there is nothing between the feet above the bottom of the sea, and radiant and many-colored island and goes on thrusting them ev,er higher. myself-nothing but the slowly wide ning blue ribbon of ocean. In another nine days it will be more than three CANYONS AND HARBORS thousand miles wide. The differences in geological age ex plain the great variety among the six Since the beginning of the war more islands. It is as if you had to deal with Europeans have passed through Hawaii six people whose ages vary between than ever before. The closing of the ten and seventy.five years. Kauai, Atlantic through blockade and counter for instance, can prove its great age blockade has made the route across the by its possession of a canyon of huge Pacific the only reliable one between proportions, which in its beauty rivals the Old and New Worlds. Hundreds the Grand Canyons of the Colorado or of European refugees look at the Yellowstone. The next island, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands from every eastbound is old enough to have two good ports, ship, and from westbound ships re Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. Yet any turning citizens of the Axis Powers one who sees the volcanic forms of gaze upon them. But if, in transit, Diamond Head, Punch Bowl, Koko you spend a few hours in Honolulu, if Head, and other craters, will recognize you have a swim in Waikiki and then from afar that Oahu is younger than do some sightseeing, you have seen Kauai. about as much of Hawaii as someone who has visited Shanghai has seen of Before the coming of the white man China. Hawaii is more than Honolulu, and his ships, Hawaii had been the and more than Oahu, the island on main island, but. being geologically too which Honolulu is situated. Hawaii is a young to have good harbors, Hawaii complete world in itself. lost its supremacy to Oahu with its convenient port of Honolulu. Like wise. the first-rate naval port of Pearl PARADISE ON A FAULT Harbor accounts for the presence of While Eden was lost due to the sin tens of thousands of sailors, soldiers, of our ancestors. the Hawaiian paradise and airmen on Oahu to-day. only exists because of a fault. From a The island of Molokai is famous for fault in the ocean's bed the chain of its leper home, Kalaupapa, where volcanoes that forms the Hawaiian several hundred lepers spend their last archipelago has worked itself up in years on a spot so lovely that it has millions of years. Omitting the smaller few rivals in the world. Kalaupapa and more distant islands such as Niihau seems to have been fashioned by nature or Midway. the Hawaiian archipelago for its tragic purpose. It is a penin consists. from west to east, of six main sula situated a few feet above sea level islands: Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, and can be reached only by a narrow Maui, Hawaii. trail, which leads from the high plateau ALOHA 3 of Molokai almost perpendicularly village children. In a Hawaiian canoe down more than two thousand feet of we sailed to Kealakekua Bay, once a· cliff. At first sight the settlement large settlement. There, a hundred hardly differs from any other: the and sixty years ago, the angry Hawai patients live in single or group houses, ians killed their discoverer, Captain they have their cinema, post office, and Cook. when they began to suspect that school, and some even bring their Fords he was not their god 1.ono for whom along to amuse themselves by driving they had taken him. For many days the jaUopies over the few square miles we hiked over the tremendous lava of the peninsula. flow. and through forests of fifteen For a long time Lanai was hardly or twenty foot tree-ferns; in a plane inhabited, until one of the big compa we flew over the crater of erupting nies of Honolulu decided to plant pine Maunaloa; and we pitched our tent. apple on it. Today Lanai is an ex under the palm trees of the City of ample of planned economy. The town, Refuge. Here on the most roma.ntic Lanai City, is built according to a spot on Hawaiian soil, on a tongue of clear plan; on every side extend the lava reaching into the ocean, stands blue-green fields of pineapples; in a the sacred Heiau (temple) which in small cliff·bound port large barges olden days offered refuge and shelter wait to carry their fragrant freight to anyone who was persecuted. to the Honolulu canneries, and from a primitive airport planes fly daily to .-"fOUNT.4INS AND BEACHES the other islands. As a German I love to hike. Shortly LIFE AND DEATH after my arrival in Honolulu I joined Maui boasts of the largest dormant a hiking club, and oft-en on Sundays crater in the world, Haleakala. Never I took to the mountains. Off the have I seen life and death closer to broad and excellent motor roads, built gether than when I stood on its 10,000 partly for the sake of the army's quick foot rim: behind me lay the ever movements, lies the real Hawaii. You moving blue ocean, its distant surf can set foot with confidence into every encircling the deep-green west-ern part jungle, you need not fear snakes or of Maui with a collar of fine. white poisonous insects. The trails lead lace; and farther west the chain of through tropical valleys with banana the other islands, all green and all with trees and heavily fragrant guava trees, white, shaggy clouds on their moun and the slopes, even where perpendi tain peaks-a picture alive with charm cular, a~e overgrown with green.

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