To mark King David Kalākaua's birthday this weekend, ʻIolani Palace is decked out with colorful bunting and several banners in celebration.
On his birthday Saturday, there will be free visits for kamaʻāina, with entertainment by the Royal Hawaiian Band and a review by the King’s Color Guard. There is also a 150th jubilee auction online underway: a fundraiser for the historic property that ends on Sunday.
In a nod to the king, HPR talked with historian Ron Williams Jr., who recently published an article about the king’s last visit to Southern California, specifically his trip to San Diego in late December 1890.
His research is based on documents from the Hawaiʻi State Archives, where he works. Williams said one of the Hawaiian Kingdom consulates was founded in 1890 in San Diego.
"This was representation of the Hawaiian Kingdom in San Diego to protect Hawaiian Kingdom subjects when they came there, but also to push trade and things like that," Williams said.
Now the San Diego site is a "fancy credit union," he said. Some time ago, Williams and his friend wanted to reclaim the area, so they used sidewalk chalk to draw a flag and write "Hawaiian Kingdom Consulate" on the building wall.
"The guard came out and chased us around San Diego for about 15 minutes," Williams said. "This past year on Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, a Native Hawaiian who's living in San Diego, I guess had seen my posts about that from a few years back. He went with a Hawaiian Kingdom flag, Hae Hawaiʻi, and sang Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī at that site for three or four hours telling people this is the consulate."
Williams said he had known that the king died in San Francisco but had no idea the king had visited San Diego and stayed at the historic Hotel del Coronado.
"The most important resource that I was able to access to tell this story were those consulate letters. There's dozens and dozens of letters from the Hawaiian Kingdom Consulate in San Diego to Queen Liliʻuokalani and others back here in Hawaiʻi, including one that talks about his death and so forth and offers their condolences and so forth," he said.
However, during his trip to San Diego, Kalākaua was supposed to be on rest — since he was quite sick, Williams said. Instead, the king stuck to a rigorous schedule that included dinners, various discussions about trade and shipping, and more.
"His gregariousness in San Diego is talked about constantly, but he was using that to build relationships, right, to remind people, especially at this time when the sovereignty of the kingdom was being threatened. He was weakened under the Bayonet Constitution, and he's looking to move forward across the world and build those relationships so that if something does happen, maybe they'll back him up, maybe they'll be there for him," Williams said.
Williams said that there are many stories, including this one, being told now with the help of primary sourced material, often in the Hawaiian language, that has not been accessed before.
"There's this whole revolution going on in Hawaiian history of listening to Native Hawaiians — imagine that. And so a million pages of Hawaiian language newspaper, tens of thousands of documents in the archives in Hawaiian, now we're being able to not just accept those stories about these Hawaiians, but actually listen to Hawaiians about Hawaiians," Williams said.
Kalākaua died on Jan. 20, 1891, in San Francisco at the age of 54.
For more information on the ʻIolani Palace events celebrating King Kalākaua's Nov. 16 birthday, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Nov. 14, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
