Mauna Kea Oral History Appendix - Office of Mauna Kea Management

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And where that ahu was, you know the little stone mound up there
Uh-hmm.
The family all gathered together and one of the cowboys that went with them, a couple of
them was Tommy Lindsey and Toshi Imoto. Toshi’s son Roger works for Forestry now, I
don’t know if you know Roger Imoto A group of people went up there, were you still on
the mountain at that time In ‘54, this was in January.
In ‘54 [thinking], yeah.
You didn’t happen to go up with them did you
No. Yutaka Kimura, that was the guy.
He’s still going.
He was an interesting man.
Yutaka is a couple years older. His brother Hisao, who we were just with, married a
Lindsey girl, Elizabeth, yeah.
Is that Kimura, is that same with
Larry
Yes, Kauanoe.
Yes, that’s his mama and papa.
Oh.
Uh-hmm, Yutaka is the brother. I used to like to…the cowboys all work early. And at the
Waiki‘i Station, they had about half a dozen cowboys ride the range all the time.
Checking the cattle, checking the water troughs, checking the fence. And they would
work their way to the stable at Waiki‘i, in the evenings. Alex Bell was the boss, and often
times the Humu‘ula gang, Willie Kaniho at Humu‘ula. And you talk to the big boss, he
would quite often give these orders to meet Alex Bell and Kaniho, and one more, one guy
was a big shot, was a foreman… [thinking] They would report and give the orders. It was
interesting to hear them talking. Talk about the old days.
Yes, yes.
Because they’d straggle in between two-thirty or four o’clock, they didn’t break up till the
last guy was in. Every day Parker Ranch did that, no more. Parker Ranch chopped up
Waiki‘i, and they made rich houses.
House lots now, yeah. Waiki‘i, when you were there the corn and things was pau already
or were they still growing
Oh no, the corn was still there.
Still growing corn, that’s right, still growing corn.
They rotated the corn field.
Yes.
We used to catch pheasants at Parker Ranch, we had a fabulous deal. Parker Ranch
allowed us to catch pheasants and we would send ‘em to Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, Maui. During the
hunting season during Thursday, Friday nights, and we had Boy Scouts helping us and
other hunters groups. We used a jeep with a spotlight, and jacklight pheasants in the
pastures. Fabulous numbers of pheasants, particularly at Field 11, it was a six thousand
acre paddock with no water.
Field 11 is this the Waiki‘i side, Makahälau or
Mauna Kea– “Ka Piko Kaulana o ka ‘Äina”
Kumu Pono Associates LLC
A Collection of Oral History Interviews (HiMK67-050606) A:358