The 1946 tsunami tragedy at Laupahoehoe made me interested in understanding more about Laupahoehoe and what influenced the utter devastation.  The oral history, "April Fools,'" collection starts off with a Hawaiian myth of how Laupahoehoe was formed which I liked.  Using an version by Westervelt, it unfolds as follows:

Poliahu, the beautiful snow goddess of Mauna Kea, (some say the most beautiful of the four snow goddesses), loved holua sled riding and was engaged in this sport when appeared a strange woman of unsurpassed beauty.  Poliahu invited the woman to participate giving her a sled as the woman had none of her own.  In their first race, Poliahu won easily, so the woman exchanged her sled for Poliahu's, and they raced again with the same result.  After a third race which Poliahu again won, the angered woman threw off her disguise and revealed herself as Pele.

She called for the forces of fire to burst open the doors of the subterranean caverns of Mauna Kea.  Up the mountain Pele brought forth fountains of fire.  Poliahu fled to the summit, but her snow mantle was seized by fire and began to burn.  With all her might, she grasped mantle and dragged it away, carrying with her.  When she regained her strength, she cast her mantle over the mountain.

The island shook and trembled with earthquake after earthquake as the clash between fire and snow raged through and over the mountains.  Poliahu called clouds to gather at the summit, each one gray with ice, and they cast snow fast and deep on the mountain.  Further and further down the snow mantle unfolded until it dropped on the fountains of fire choking them.  The lava hardened into stone, and the lava streams were beaten back ino the depths of Mauna Loa and Kilauea.

The fire rivers narrowed and were driven downward so quickly that they leaped out from the land and became the prey of the ocean, one of them forming a peninsula resembling a leaf after which Laupahoehoe is named.  To this day, Pele remains in Kilauea and Mauna Loa, but Poliahu controls Mauna Kea. 

The shorter geological explanation is that Laupahoehoe Point was formed as a result of a late lava flow erupting from a vent far up the slopes of Mauna Kea about 65,000 years ago.  It poured down Laupahoehoe Gulch and spread to create the flat land of the peninsula.  Nearly all of the sea cliffs along the Hamakua Coast are part of the much older Hamakua volcanic formation made of mostly alkalic basalt.

Laupahoehoe ("leaf of lava" in Hawaiian) is the only place on the Hamakua Coast accessible to the ocean for miles.  I was interested in understanding the terrain better, so I sketched the topography of the coastline using Google Maps and a government topographical map.  The drawing is somewhat distorted since Mauna Kea has gentler slopes, but it's easy to see how Laupahoehoe Point breaks the line of inaccessible sea cliffs and how it became a natural place to build upon.

Being a little more sheltered than the northern side of the peninsula, the south side has a small cove-like area that served as a landing for boats.  According to oral history accounts, the tsunami waves first hit from the south before enveloping the point and inundating it creating the "boiling" impression many spoke of.

Laupahoehoe started long ago as a Hawaiian fishing village, and in 1946, was still a fishing community specializing in sea turtles with taro farmers working terraced fields up to the cliffs.  The Hamakua Coast was dominated by the sugar cane industry, and like other communities in the area, Laupahoehoe became a sugar plantation town.  The landing on Laupahoehoe Point had long been used for shipping, but this decreased after the railroad was built to haul goods directly to Hilo.

Because the railroad passed through the area at a higher elevation, there were many businesses and residents were located near the train station.  However, at the time of the 1946 tsunami, there was still a thriving community on Laupahoehoe Point that included a post office, theatre, homes, and a number of churches including a Buddhist temple.  A school serving all grades had its main building on slightly higher ground with other structures near the field and four cottages for resident teachers just meters away from the ocean.  First to bear the brunt of the fatal tsunami wave, these cottages were immediately destroyed or swept off their foundations.

On April 1, 1946, April Fool's Day, multiple tsunami waves generated by a massive magnitude 8.6 earthquake at 2 a.m. in the Aleutian Islands came unannounced five hours later in Hawaii.  In Alaska, the entire lighthouse crew of five were killed when a tsunami swept over the coastal cliff at a height of 42 meters (135 ft.).  Apparently, the destruction in the Aleutians prevented transmission of a warning message, so no one in Hawaii was aware of the approaching danger.  A total of six people died in Alaska, but 159 perished in Hawaii.

 (All sources noted at the end of Part 3.)

©  Lawrence Taguma   All rights reserved.