Pearl Allen, first Miss Waikiki, dead at 79
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Pearl Lani Stone Allen, the first Miss Waikiki, who became a World War II pinup girl to American G.I.s, died Tuesday. She was 79.
Allen was a legal secretary who later worked in a laboratory at Tripler Army Medical Center until age 70, but she often talked about her experience as Miss Waikiki in 1944.
Pearl Allen's photos were favorites with U.S. soldiers in 1944.
She was Pearl Lani Stone then, a 21-year-old stenographer for the American Red Cross' Honolulu chapter. And she didn't hesitate when asked to enter the first Miss Waikiki contest, sponsored by the Honolulu Junior Chamber of Commerce as part of the Kamehameha Day Celebration.
"She had no inclinations or aspirations for anything like that," said Patricia Allen, the oldest of Allen's four children. "She was approached and said, 'Why not?' At the time she was very young and very beautiful and had her hair coifed daily and had her clothes tailored."
Standing over 6 feet 3 in stiletto heels, Allen wore a two-piece gold bathing suit and towered over the 17 other contestants who wore the one-piece suits of the era.
A small, blonde contestant was the favorite, Allen told a reporter in 1965. "I'm sure the reason I won was because of my height and rather proud way of walking," she said.
Allen was half Hawaiian and half Caucasian and was featured in a November 1944 Life magazine story about Hawai'i's ethnic melting pot, and later in a book about women of the Pacific. Her photos became favorites with U.S. soldiers.
Her fame generated several marriage proposals, including one from an Australian who offered to send her a ticket to Africa where he was working.
Allen instead went to Japan to work as a clerk-stenographer for the U.S. Air Force for four years. It wasn't until she was 31 that she agreed to marry Harry Harold Allen. They later divorced.
She worked for 15 years as a legal secretary in Honolulu and for 25 years at Tripler. But it was Allen's earlier days that fill two scrapbooks that her daughter Patricia Allen has put together.
Last week Patricia Allen even found two of her mother's 1944 photographs hanging on the walls of the Big Island Steak House restaurant at Aloha Tower. She recently flipped through pages of newspaper clippings and photographs in the scrapbooks and came upon the threadbare "Miss Waikiki" sash her mother wore in 1944.
Allen is thinking about placing it across her mother's wreath.
Pearl Allen is survived by her children, Patricia, Michael, Mark Allen and Kathryn Noguchi; three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be from noon Saturday at O'ahu Cemetery Chapel on Nu'uanu Avenue. Services will be held at 2 p.m. Cremation to follow. Lei welcomed. Aloha attire.
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
Correction: Visitation for Pearl Lani Stone Allen will be from noon Saturday; service 2 p.m.
