Peter Martin
Kalihi: Place of Transition
This project features life history interviews with present and former longtime residents of Kalihi, a multi-ethnic working-class district located west of downtown Honolulu, which has a long history as a home of island immigrants.
Peter Martin, Portuguese-Hawaiian, was born in Kalihi on June 29, 1905. His family owned a taro patch in the area behind the present Kalihi Union Church. As a youth, Peter was active in neighborhood sports and was a member of the Kalihi Thundering Herd barefoot football team in the 1920s. He attended K~lfhi-Waena School and completed the tenth grade at McKinley High School. Peter then began working as a sailor on an inter-island lighthouse boat, transporting gas tanks to different lighthouses. In 1932, Peter secured a job as a streetcar and trolley conductor for Honolulu Rapid Transit. In 1941, he began painting and repairing ships at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Peter retired in 1966. He lives in Waipahu with his wife.
Scope and Content Note
Kalihi resident recalls sports, working conditions and life in Honolulu. He describes his work on the streetcars and trolleys of the 1930s and 1940s.
Keywords: Ships, Sports, Taro, Transportation, Working Conditions, World War II
Program Note:
This interview is part of the Center for Oral History's project Kalihi: Place of Transition. Interviews from this project are available in the Center's ScholarSpace open access repository.
The Center for Oral History (COH), in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, collects, documents, preserves and highlights the recollections of Native Hawaiians and the multi-ethnic people of Hawaiʻi. It produces oral histories and interpretive historical materials about lifeways, key historic events, social movements and Hawaiʻi’s role in the globalizing world, for the widest possible use.
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