Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

[lurkah]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

Nope. Strictly personal memories of the place (it really is neat!), along with a lil' bit of Googlin' to get some facts straight.

Being a military/government facility, I don't think the Omega Station is mentioned in Bob's book. Most (or all) of the companies in The Companies We Keep are privately owned.

Oh, good. So still get chance my answer might be right, then.

I've actually been to the Omega station many years ago when I used to haul forklifts and the crew of Magnum PI needed a forklift to help in setting up one of their film shoots in which they included the Stairway to Heaven in one of their episodes. Yup, it's really beautiful back there up against the very base of the windward side of the Ko'olau mountains.

[Creative-1]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

You guys are on a roll!

12. Restaurateur Andy Wong referred to himself as a "fishmonger." Fishmonger's Wife was named for his wife, Marian.

His first restaurant in Kailua, in 1955 was Leon's.


15. The Naval Radio Station at Haiku Valley, built in 1942
is the Windward location I was referring to. It's not in my book, so no advantage in looking there.

Lurkah pointed out that the Kunia Regional SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) Operations Center was also built in 1942 (but not completed until 1944, I believe) and it DID serve as a communications center, although it had many other purposes.

The Naval Radio Station was later called the Omega Station.
It was not well known until Hawaii Five-0 filmed a scene there in 1981. The public now refers to it as the “Stairway to Heaven”


I believe you've gotten all but these two:

13. What occupies the former site of the Lords of Lanikai restaurant?

Hint: the founder was a fomer Canlis Maitre D.

18. A food buyer at this company with two windward stores invented the tea bag and popularized the baked potato in the U.S.

Hint: Started in New York.



Someone thought my book is limited to profit-making companies, but it's not. I have 3 dozen schools in it, churches, several products (like SPAM and Primo Beer), organizations, places (like Moanalua Gardens, and Tamarind Park), clubs, media, golf courses, military (like Tripler, Pearl Harbor, Schofield Barracks), ranches, artists, and entertainers.

I went back and forth about using the word "companies" in the title, since it is a little misleading. But I couldn't come up with a better word, so I "stretched" its definition to fit.

Bob Sigall
(Creative-1, by the way, is the name of my business.)

[kimo55]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

The Naval Radio Station was later called the Omega Station.
It was not well known until Hawaii Five-0 filmed a scene there in 1981. The public now refers to it as the “Stairway to Heaven”

Dude. ya gotta fire yer date checker. Or fact Pogo. Right now. What else is off? quick! replace him or her.
cuz Wikipedia, Tim Ryan and the whole universe knows Hawaii Five-O aired from September 1968 to April 1980.
So, again...
If they filmed a scene a year AFTER the run of the show, it would require some real time-space continuum finagling.
OK, WHO has this dag blasted time machine, anyway?!



I will submit this, though.
The Haiku stairs as they are oft referred to by locals, was seen by millions of TV viewers on April 9, 1981, when an episode of "Magnum P.I." showed them in an ep called "J. "Digger" Doyle". That is still not to say they filmed that scene at that date.

[alohacandy]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

You guys are on a roll!

I believe you've gotten all but these two:

13. What occupies the former site of the Lords of Lanikai restaurant?

Hint: the founder was a fomer Canlis Maitre D.



18. A food buyer at this company with two windward stores invented the tea bag and popularized the baked potato in the U.S.

Hint: Started in New York.

13 - Only restaurant that I know of in Lanikai is Buzz's.....close?

18 - Macy's?

Sorry I got in so late in the 2nd quiz. Hope you have more for us!

[Paul Ogata]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

What's interesting is when you're near the Omega Station radio facility, you can clearly hear the RF (radio frequency) signals being generated. The station has signs posted that warn visitors to always wear rubber-soled footwear, or risk electrocution. One officer there told us if you were to touch the steel flag pole barefooted, you'd get a pretty bad jolt - possibly death. We weren't about to test that.

I remember reading a story in the newspaper a long time ago that there was so much microwave radiation or something in the air that you could bring a fluorescent light bulb tube up there, hold it in your hand, and it would glow. Spooky!

Never got to hike that spot but someday.... (when I get a lead-lined Chernobyl suit with rubber soled boots)

[zztype]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

In case you guys didn't know, they shut down the Haiku Valley Omega Station several years ago, just before H3 opened.

They had planned to put a steel mesh cage over the H3 where it passed nearest to the antenna system. They had actually purchased, constructed the cage and had the materials on the H3 itself, awaiting installation, when the decision was made to close it. They never installed the netting.

You might be able to see some of the steel supports lying on the ground next to the median in this Quicktime VR I shot up there during the one and only public event that allowed you to walk on the H3 and in the tunnels.

http://starbulletin.com/97/05/09/news/story1.html

(Scroll down the story a ways for the VR.)

Blaine

[Creative-1]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

AlohaCandy is correct:

13 - Before Buzz's, the Lords of Lanikai restaurant was there.

18 - Food buyers at Macy's in NY invented the tea bag and popularized serving potatoes baked as we do now.


Kimo55 pointed out that a Hawaii Five-0 episode was aired in 1981, but filmed earlier. He suggests I fire my fact checker. I’m the fact checker. Fact checking is much more complicated than I ever wanted to know about.

I have over 5,000 facts in my book and getting each one right, I concluded, was impossible.

For instance, if a company tells me they were founded on a particular date, is that good enough? Many companies don’t know their own history. Some no longer exist.

Many sources say the Alexander Young Hotel opened in 1902. Others say 1903. Young Laundry, which began there, wasn’t sure either. They asked me to research it.

I'll let you poke around the net or other sources. Which date is accurate?

Consolidated Amusement says it began in 1917. The founder, Joel Cohen was operating in the same business as early as 1899. The Consolidated name did begin in 1917, but the roots of the business go back another 18 years. Which is the correct date?

If it appeared in the newspapers, is that sufficient for fact checking?

Newspapers get it wrong at least 1-2% of the time (my estimate). They often say that Mililani was Hawaii's first planned community, but that honor actually goes to Pearl City, built by Dillingham in 1890.

A Star-Bulletin article says a B-26 Maruader plane crashed onto Waipahu High School's campus and that’s how they got the nickname Marauders.

Nobody at the school can confirm or deny it. How do you check that? In many cases such as this, I had to report differing sources and opinions.

I used one of Hawaii’s top historians for checking facts. She found over 100 errors before publication. Saved my okole. But she was wrong on about a dozen things that I was aware of.

What I learned in this process is that I cannot necessarily trust newspapers and books, the people or companies involved, or even experts to be accurate 100% of the time.

Fact checking is problematic. So much so that I felt compelled to put a disclaimer in the introduction (page 17) to that effect - the problem of sources, conflicting facts, etc.

Wikipedia, which you suggest as a source, also has a disclaimer that it “cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here.”

In the second and third printing, I fixed typos, updated facts (i.e., Yum Yum Tree, KC Drive In and Wisteria closing) and corrected errors.

Doug Carlson pointed out that Aku died in 1983, not 1981, as I had said.

He also said that before Iolani Palace was illuminated with light bulbs on King Kalakaua's birthday in November 1886, a smaller experiment with three small light bulbs took place four months earlier, in July.

The daughter of Coco Palms former owner, Grace Guslander, told me her mom did not start the hotel, but had bought it soon after it opened.

There are many other examples, but that's the best I've been able to come up with. I'm certainly open to better ideas if you have any.

Bob Sigall

[kimo55]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

Kimo55 pointed out that a Hawaii Five-0 episode was aired in 1981, but filmed earlier.

Nooo!
I said Haw 5-0 ended in 1980. Magnum aired and ep with the Haiku stairs in 1981.

Wikipedia, which you suggest as a source,

Nooo! I never "suggest it as a source"!
It was an allusion to the wiki/Ryan debacle... aaahhh, ferget it!

[Pomai]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

I can relate. Recently I had a discussion with Sonny Chillingworth's two sisters about his history. And each of them have a couple of conflicting facts about him which they debate each other over.

The only other angle would be to interview other musicians and folks in the industry about what's being debated, take the common denominator, and go from there.

Not only that, when you're going that far back in time, unless it was all documented on paper, the person themself may have memories of their own history that has faded. Aging can do that.

What I learned in this process is that I cannot necessarily trust newspapers and books, the people or companies involved, or even experts to be accurate 100% of the time.

Bob Sigall

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Quiz: How Well do you know Windward Oahu? Pt. 2

"Rashomon"