Maui Attractions Newsletter
February 2008

There are about twelve species of Allamanda. Some are woody climbers and other are more shrub-like in habit. The  Golden  Trumpet  is  called  lani-ali'i, "heavenly chief," by the Hawaiians and is one of the most widely used plants in Hawaii for landscaping. One expert says the Hawaiian name  may  have  been given to the allamanda because it was recognized as a flower "fit for a king." (In ancient times, yellow and gold were considered royal colors.)

Natives of Brazil, they are usually vigorous, sprawling green vines. They are often used as ground cover in dry, sunny places or to add softness to  walls and terraces, especially in sandy seaside gardens where they do particularly well. They are grown in parks, lowland resorts, gardens  and  yards  for  the fragrant, large, velvety golden-yellow flowers, from three to five inches in diameter. The flowers cover the vines almost every day of the year. The vines rarely bear fruit in Hawaii.

Each flower is a tube that spreads into five thick lobes. The flowers grow in terminal clusters with two or three buds opening at a  time.  The  buds  are pointed, brownish in color and can look as if they have been varnished.

The leaves are smooth, thick and a pointed oval, growing in fours and forming a cross or whorl where they join the stem. They are a light green. In  India some people consider a tea made from the allamanda bark to be a good laxative. In Columbia and in Cuba the sap or a tea made from the leaves was also used in medicine. However, be aware that all parts of the plant including its milky sap are considered to be mildly toxic and is likely to cause  vomiting  and diarrhea. Still, allamanda is not a common cause of illness or skin rash in Hawaii. Usually  the  symptoms  produced  by  this  plant  (nausea,  vomiting, diarrhea and/or rash) disappear without treatment.

Other Allamanda varieties include A. oenotheraefolia, a native of Brazil which is more of a shrub, and A. violacea, another native of  Brazil,  which  has reddish-purple flowers rather than the customary yellow ones. There is also a form with silvery-gray leaves.

When the sugar plantations were in the development stages, the companies provided  medical  services  as  well  as  housing,  transportation  and  other community services for the large numbers of immigrant workers that they imported to work in the fields. The rivalry during the late 1800's  between  the two top sugar producers in East Maui - HC&S (Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar, a California corporation owned at the time by California sugar magnate Claus Spreckels) and the various permutations of the Alexander and Baldwin conglomerate of smaller, independently owned plantations,  started  an  interesting hospital "dance"

One of the first hospitals to be opened for these workers and other Maui residents  of  the  area  was  built  by  HC&S  in  1885.  It  was  located  at Spreckelsville.

In 1898 (around the time Alexander and Baldwin became the principal shareholders of HC&S and Spreckels left the islands for good) a small  hospital  was established in Lower Paia by their Paia Plantation. Dr. Aiken was the resident physician, succeeded by Dr. McConkey. (In later years the  buildings  for that hospital were used for the Paia Club House and for the East Maui Community Association headquarters).

Then in 1903, the Paia Plantation formed a partnership with the Haiku Sugar Company to allow for joint operation of a sugar mill and  other  facilities. This partnership was called Maui Agricultural Company, Ltd. (Eventually, the original  companies  merged  with  five  other  small  companies  -  Kailua Plantation, Kalialinui Plantation, Kula Plantation, Makawao Plantation and Pulehu Plantation so they could pool their resources.)

That same year, a wing was added to the Spreckelsville Hospital and an X-ray machine was added.

In 1909, the new Paia Hospital in Upper Paia, one of the largest, most up-to-date hospitals in the Territory of Hawaii, replaced  the  old  hospital  in Lower Paia. Built by the Maui Agricultural Company, it stood on Baldwin Avenue below Makawao Union church. (The site is marked now by a  small  monument set on the roadside next to waving sugarcane.) The hospital was built just as the plantations were expanding their  work  forces  with  immigrants  from Russia, Portugal and the Philippines. In 1910, an epidemic of smallpox broke out among the Filipino worker population, and they were cared  for  by  the medical staffs of both the Paia and the Spreckelsville hospitals.

Then, in January, 1912, a Maui News article announced that the Paia hospital had obtained a "fine new ambulance," and said it  was  "the  first  one  to arrive on Maui. The vehicle had been ordered from the factory of the White Automobile Company.

In 1913 a new HC&S hospital was built at Puunene in central Maui and the old Spreckelsville Hospital was closed. Six years later, in 1919, there  was  a major influenza epidemic. A "total of 4,000 cases of influenza with perhaps 50 deaths,"  were  reported  between  January  25  and  February  21,  1919, according to the Maui News. Half of the cases were in East Maui and seven deaths there were attributed to the epidemic.

By 1930, HC&S, the largest sugar plantation on Maui, had as many as 26 camps housing more than 7,000 people.  Within  the  plantation  there  were  four public schools, three Japanese language schools, 10 churches, 12 day nurseries, three theaters, one  gymnasium,  a  public  swimming  facility  and  the hospital. Government policies enacted in the late 1940's and in the 1950's,  as  well  as  a  more  articulate,  independent  workforce  that  organized themselves into unions, and an exodus of the workers' children from the camps as more opportunities for other kinds of work opened up would lead to  the eventual breaking down of the old plantation camps and villages and to the birth of new towns and communities.

By 1948, the Territorial Senate had appropriated funds for the construction of the Central Maui Memorial Hospital. By the late 1940's the Paia  Hospital was getting old. It was closed, and then reopened as the Maui Children's Home in 1949. (The orphanage closed in 1965.)

The new Maui Memorial Hospital was dedicated on August 17, 1952. World War II  veteran  Masao  Aizawa  spoke  for  the  County's  ex-servicemen  at  the celebration. He said, "This is indeed a fitting memorial to those who gave their all...."

On September 17, 1952, at 7:33 a.m. Gerald Lau Hee was the first baby born in the new hospital. His father, Thomas Lau Hee, was a World War II  veteran. His mother was the former Alma Komatsu of Wailuku. He was delivered by Dr. Katuyuki Izumi.

Puunene Hospital was closed four years later, in 1956, and its services consolidated with those of Maui Memorial Hospital.

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