May 27—1/3
Swipe or click to see more
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Halau Lilia Makanoe, under the direction of kumu hula Shelsea Ai, performed Sunday at the annual memorial at the Natatorium, shown in the background. The Natatorium was built as a “living” World War I memorial.
2/3
Swipe or click to see more
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Marines from Kaneohe Marine Corps Base gave a rifle honors volley Sunday during the annual memorial at the Natatorium in Waikiki.
3/3
Swipe or click to see more
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Those attending Sunday’s annual memorial ceremony placed an offering at the Roll of Honor plaque near the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium in Waikiki.
RELATED PHOTO GALLERY
Select an option below to continue reading this premium story.
Already a Honolulu Star-Advertiser subscriber? to continue reading.
Get unlimited access
From as low as $12.95 /mo.
Naomi Weight, 90, teared up as she watched her 6-year-old great-granddaughter Jacelyn-Marie Munoz place a lei at the foot of the Roll of Honor plaque near the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium in Waikiki.
Weight’s niece Nikki DeCaires took Munoz to the Roll of Honor during a presentation that was part of Sunday’s early Memorial Day ceremony, “Bridges Across Time: Linking Past and Present.”
Weight, whose dad was Natatorium Superintendent Walter Napoleon, said her mother, Katherine “Kay” Napoleon, started the annual ceremony in 1989. She said her family is waiting for the day that the event can be held for the first time inside the Natatorium.
“I got teary-eyed watching (Jacelyn-Marie). I love the Natatorium. When I’m gone, I’ve told my family to take my ashes and throw them out here,” she said.
The Natatorium’s memorial arches, 100-meter saltwater pool and stadium bleachers opened in 1927 as a “living war memorial” to honor Hawaii’s 10,000 World War I veterans. The Roll of Honor plaque was added later to honor Hawaii’s 101 military men who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Great War.
Sunday’s afternoon ceremony was about honoring the war heroes of the past and reliving memories of the Natatorium while honoring the future by keeping it as a “living memorial” — a place to appreciate the freedoms that we now have because of the sacrifices that were made.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, who gave the event’s keynote, said, “Just as Waikiki’s Natatorium stands as a beacon of remembrance, so to do our memories, our stories — they serve as bridges across time linking us to the brave men and women who sacrificed their last measure of devotion in defense of our freedoms. But our duty on this Memorial Day extends beyond mere remembrance; it’s also a call to action: a challenge to honor the legacy of those who served and sacrificed by striving to build a better world and to be better people.”
Sarah Fairchild, executive director of the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation, told those gathered that when the Natatorium opened to the public, its story intertwined with the great Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku, who grew up in Waikiki and went on to win three gold and two Olympic silver medals.
When the Natatorium opened on Kahanamoku’s 37th birthday, Fairchild said, “he was probably the most famous person from Hawaii,” and a crowd of 6,000 gathered to watch him take the first swim across its pool.
“This moment exemplified Hawaii’s prominence in the sport of swimming led by the man who symbolized Hawaii to the rest of the world,” she said. “Over the years, the Natatorium became a center of ocean safety and swim
instruction.”
Fairchild, who is a member of the Hawaii Water Safety Coalition, said nearly 9,000 fifth graders from 44 schools learned to swim at the Natatorium in 1961, when the population of Oahu was only about a third of what it is now.
The Natatorium was shuttered in 1979 due to disrepair, and Fairchild said swim lessons in Oahu’s schools are no longer mandatory. She said drowning is now the leading cause of death for children ages 1-17 in Hawaii, which also ranks second in the nation for rate of drowning among residents.
“When we as an island community don’t take care of places like this, when we don’t invest in the infrastructure to teach everyone in the next generation foundational lifesaving swim skills or to house the offices of our Ocean Safety lifeguards, what does this say about our island society’s values?” Fairchild said. “And when we let a living memorial decay into a quiet ruin, what are we actually teaching our keiki about honoring sacrifice?”
The Natatorium’s future is still unclear despite a nearly four-decade battle to preserve it. The nonprofit preservationist group Friends of the Natatorium began advocating for the historic structure’s restoration in 1986 and had seemed to gain traction in 1995 when the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed it as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The designation led to a partial $4 million restoration by then-Mayor Jeremy Harris.
In 2013, Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Mayor Kirk Caldwell proposed demolishing the pool and bleachers to develop a beach at the site. While that plan
was supported by the Kaimana Beach Coalition, it proved unpopular with
preservationists.
A year later preservationists helped get the Natatorium added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of “national treasures” — a move that has harnessed the support of thousands of preservationists from coast to coast. By 2018, Caldwell’s administration had pivoted and had released a draft environmental statement proposing what at the time was a $25.6 million rebuild that would keep the historic structure and pool mostly intact.
That plan, which was floated as an alternative to the 2013 plan, proposed demolishing some of the less visible submerged structures at the Natatorium, including the pool’s makai and Ewa seawalls. A pool deck would be reconstructed on support piles and surround the pool at approximately
4 feet above the water’s surface at low tide and 3 feet at high tide.
Andy Sugg, Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s chief of staff, who attended Sunday’s event, said, “The mayor and our administration is very committed to getting the
Natatorium rehabilitated, so we have been having conversations with the Friends of the Natatorium with our (Department of Design and Construction) folks and it’s our sincere hope that we can get this project that has been, as we all know, sort of dormant for decades moving in the right direction again. On a day like today, it sort of brings much more clearly into focus why it’s such an important memorial for the people not just of the city, but of the state.”
Sugg said officials are vetting a couple of rehabilitation options that would at least leave the memorial’s facade standing.
“If it’s a full rehab on the back end of it, it’s a pretty expensive project,” he said. “Our vision is a public-private partnership. The city has committed moneys for a feasibility study and design, but we are working with the Friends of the
Natatorium.”
Sugg said the preliminary design process has begun, and while he doesn’t have a firm timeline for the project’s completion, “it won’t be 10 years down the road. We are hoping it’s much sooner than that.”
The day cannot come soon enough for Weight, who still wears a sterling silver bracelet around her wrist that she calls her
“Natatorium bracelet.” She says it has dulled with age, but it shines like her eyes as she remembers the occasion when she received it and what it still means to her today.
“I was 6, and my dad picked me up and put me on his desk at the Natatorium and put the bracelet on my wrist,” she said. “When I was little, it always fell off my wrist. I can’t take it off now, but I don’t want to take it off. It reminds me of such happy times.”
Weight said the “living war memorial” delivered on its purpose.
“People always said how wonderful it was to come here. It was a place where you could feel the love,” she said. “It makes me sad to see it in such a mess.”
Signup bonus from
