THE PRESIDENCY: Rainbows for Happiness

THE PRESIDENCY

Rainbows for Happiness

Two beautiful rainbows, double omens of a happy visit, hung over Kailua one morning last week as the U. S. S. Houston, with President Roosevelt aboard, glided up to the west coast of the island of Hawaii. Governor Poindexter bustled out from shore to pay his respects. Then the President was free to go fishing for the great a’u. All day he fished and fished but at night returned a’uless to the Houston.

Next morning the cruiser, with the New Orleans tagging dutifully along, appeared at Hilo on the opposite side of the island for the ceremony of setting the first presidential foot on Hawaiian soil. Under leis the smiling President debarked, was met by a great brown & yellow crowd which knew little of the U. S. custom of cheering a great man. A drive through Hawaii National Park brought Visitor Roosevelt to the crater of Kilauea. There he tossed in a bunch of ohelo berries to appease Pele,goddess of volcanoes.

Lei-bedecked and smiling he was formally welcomed as he descended from the Houston at Honolulu on the Island of Oahu the following morning. Through flagwaving crowds he drove from the city, visited fishing villages, pineapple and sugar plantations, out to Schofield Barracks to lunch with Major-General Briant H. Wells, review 15,000 troops. That evening he dined at Iolani Palace with Governor Poindexter. At a great luau (native feast) he received the great men of the islands, was robed in a leather cape which made him a member of the island nobility, did not get away until midnight to his bed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

On the fourth day he honored the Navy as he had honored the Army the day before, touring Pearl Harbor Naval Base, lunching with Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell. Afterward he took time off for his one private engagement, tea with Mr. and Mrs. Walter F. Dillingham. Good Harvard man is Mr. Dillingham. whose Brother Harold is a classmate of Franklin Roosevelt’s (1904). But in Hawaii the Dillinghams are better known as the island’s railroad tycoons. That night the President took dinner quietly in his hotel with a few guests, including Will Rogers. At 9 p.m., still smiling, he appeared once more at Iolani Palace to witness a lantern parade of Korean, Japanese and Chinese-Americans.

The President, still smiling strongly, made his last appearance next morning on the upper balcony of Iolani Palace where, to a crowd below and all Hawaii by radio. he delivered a seven minute address. Shrewdly he titillated Hawaiians by espousing their favorite claim: “Your Administration in Washington will not forget that you are in very truth an integral part of the nation.” But nothing did he say of increasing the islands’ sugar quota or continuing the historical policy of appointing Governors only from residents of the islands—the two chief reasons for Hawaii’s claim of “integrality.” An expected part of the President’s address, a declaration of good intentions towards Japan, did not materialize. He simply said: “The Army and Navy forces . . . constitute an integral part of our national defense and I stress that word defense. These forces must ever be considered an instrument of continuing peace, for our nation’s policy seeks peace and does not look to imperialistic aims.”

A few minutes later he was back on the Houston, throwing his leis into the sea. Then the two cruisers streaked away eastward, Portland-bound.