What does Hawaiʻi mean to you? Diamond Head and Waikiki, hula girls and palm trees, surfers and sunsets … Here is a nostalgic album of the words and pictures that created this familiar fantasy-image and convinced millions of people that the Hawaiian Islands were the most romantic spot on earth. Assembled in this book are hundreds of entertaining and historic examples of the promotion of Hawaiʻi from 1910 up through the 1950’s: the richly illustrated travel brochures, the fanciful Hollywood films, and even the garishly-tinted postcards and colorful fabric designs that have all been unseed for decades. Yes, this is Hawaiʻi as you dreamed of it… this is Hawaiʻi Recalls.

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Author DeSoto Brown was born in the Territory of Hawaiʻi in 1954, a fourth-generation islander of part-Hawaiian ancestry. He began collecting a very wide range of 20th century Hawaiiana—from license plates to aloha shirts—at the age of thirteen, and at one time had his own radio show, “Melodies of Paradise”, which utilized his old Hawaiian 78rpm discs. DeSoto’s strong interest in popular culture eventually led him into the research and writing of Hawaii Recalls.

Graphic Designer Anne Ellett is a Honolulu-based graphic designer born in Japan who has lived in Hawaii for the past two decades. While working as an art director at a Honolulu advertising agency she developed a fondness for Hawaiʻi’s. colorful graphic arts past through involvement in present-day advertising campaigns.

Photographer Gary Giemza was born in Philadelphia in 1951 and knew very little about the islands until he saw a copy of a comic book called “Dennis the Menace in Hawaiʻi” in 1960. After graduating from the Tyler School of Fine Art, he moved to Hawaii in 1973 and became an enthusiastic local resident. An artist by trade, Gary photographed most of the objects pictured in this book over a four year period.

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paperback   |   134 pages   |   9" x 8"   |   color