Posted on: Sunday, October 31, 2004

OUR HONOLULU

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

The obituary of AnnaLisa Knaack Tatibouet, who died last week, didn't tell her love story so I'm going to. It's a love story from an era of heroic adventure and grave injustice that produced a few people like Annalie, her nickname.

She was born in 1913 to Heinrich L. Knaack and his wife, Anna. An architect and builder, Heinrich constructed the kind of old-style Hawaiian homes you still see in Manoa, Kaimuki and Waikiki. Henry Berger, director of the Royal Hawaiian Band, and his wife were good friends with Heinrich and Anna Knaack.

Their families went on grand picnics together to places like Makee Island in Kapi'olani Park. Then World War I came along and the Knaacks, alien Germans, were interned on the South Kona coast of the Big Island in an 'ohi'a forest. Knaack saw potential in the lumber. He built a crude pulley system to haul logs to the shore.

Then, with hand tools, he built a small sailing ship to haul the lumber to Honolulu. On arrival, the U.S. government confiscated the vessel because the owner was German. So Knaack gave up on Hawai'i. In 1919 he took his family to Germany.

When he died, his wife came back to Honolulu and fell in love with Dr. George Huddy, a dentist and member of the Territorial House of Representatives. It must have been quite a romance because their marriage in 1926 was the only one ever performed in the throne room of 'Iolani Palace.

Daughter Annalie adored her stepfather. While she attended Sacred Hearts Academy, he took her along in the old steamer Likelike to the settlement for leprosy patients at Kalaupapa where he gave free dental service.

Later, Annalie attended universities in Europe. She spoke English, German, French and Spanish.

On graduation, she returned to Hawai'i and worked at the Honolulu YWCA. Her love story started in 1935 when newspaper headlines announced the shipwreck at Kalaupapa of two French adventurers, Joseph Tatibouet and Eric de Bisschop, who were on an expedition for the French Geographic Society.

Their Chinese junk, FooPo, smashed to pieces on the reef but the Frenchmen survived and came to Honolulu, where Annalie became their interpreter. Tatibouet and De Bisschop set to work in a kiawe thicket where the 'Ilikai Hotel is now to build another boat, a double-hulled canoe, while Annalie and Tatibouet fell in love.

He and de Bisschop named the canoe Kaimiloa and sailed off around Cape Horn to France and fame. "Tati" immediately cabled Annalie to come to France and marry him. Off she went to tie the knot at Cannes.

Eventually they returned to Hawai'i. By this time, her mother had built a cottage-style hotel in Manoa. Annalie managed it. Her ability to speak French, German and Spanish as well as English attracted foreign guests. Then she built her own hotel in Waikiki and became one of the founders of the Hawai'i Hotel Association.