Photos solve mystery of Waialua bandstand

By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer

They are old, brittle, faded, fuzzy and only slightly larger than wallet size — but three photographs that were unearthed this week prove beyond a doubt that a bandstand once existed in Waialua.

The bandstand issue surfaced after a group of residents decided to reinvigorate the sense of identity lost after the Waialua Sugar Mill closed in 1997. They want to bring back the old bandstand, once the focal point of community gatherings in Waialua Park.

After four years of planning, the group came up with plans for a new bandstand based on the old one. The $400,000 design was included in Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris' vision process, and the hexagonal structure is expected to be completed by summer.

The only hitch: Bandstand planners had not been able to locate a photo or drawing of the old bandstand. While many old-timers spoke of it wistfully — describing it as round, square, rectangular, triangular or octagonal —

others insisted they had no memory of any bandstand between two banyan trees in the park across from the library.

After a story about the bandstand ran in Monday's Advertiser, Hale'iwa resident Roger A. Borges sorted through photos taken by his late father, Roger J. Borges Jr., and found what the Bishop Museum and other Hawai'i photo archivists had not.

And since the elder Borges, who grew up across from the park, took shots from three different angles (one from atop the mill, another showing the mill's familiar smokestack), there's no doubt of the exact location of the old bandstand.

"I remember it," said his son. "But I can't remember whether it was called a stage, a stand or a bandstand. My father took the photos with a box camera back in the early 1930s."

The photos show a simple rectangular structure made of wood, with four corner posts, a roof and a floor about three feet off the ground. Five steps led to the stage. There were rows of benches in front, and bleachers to the rear and sides. Light bulbs strung around the roof lit the stage after dark.

Borges theorizes that some folks don't recall the structure because it was almost never used after the war. Still unsolved is the mystery of when it was built and razed.

Lifelong Waialua resident George Tanabe, 87, who was born and raised across from the park, said the bandstand was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Before that, a boxing ring stood nearby.

"I was born right there on Feb. 16, 1914," said Tanabe, peering through a magnifying glass and pointing to the corner of one of Borges' photos. "There were all kinds of activities there in the 1930s. Not much during the war. But that bandstand didn't last too long. I think it came down sometime in the 1940s."

Borges, however, is positive the bandstand was still there in the mid-1950s. Others, such as Patsy Gibson, agree with him. But Fred Gross, a civil engineer who built homes in Waialua in the '40s and '50s, insists there was no a bandstand when he arrived in 1946.

Brad Ulep, 52, born and raised in Waialua, doesn't doubt it. "If Mr. Gross says it wasn't there, then it wasn't there," he said.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.