On the Big Island of Hawaii at mile marker 15 north of Hilo, you must make a choice: left to Wailea or right to Hakalau. Hakalau is the postal address, but Wailea is a true ghost town. Both represent the kind of Old Hawaii you advise people to visit right away because it’s likely to undergo major changes in the next decade.
Both entered the modern era as sugar towns. Wailea popped up in 1919 when Japanese businessman Tatsuji Kawachi visited, felt he could make money milling sugar cane from independent growers, and started Wailea Milling Co. That lasted 24 years. Both the railroad line and the offshore loading facilities were next door, at Hakalau, favoring C. Brewer’s mill and company-owned fields there.
Hakalau fell on hard times in the past, but now a Richie Rich subdivision has sprung up under the name Hakalau Plantation Village. There’s a post office and the old plantation manager’s house, and some foundation material where a sugar mill sat on the shoreline.
In 1944, Kawachi called it quits, sold most of his equipment to Brewer and went home to Hiroshima. The mill’s long gone. It had once processed more than 5,500 tons of sugar a year. The decline of Wailea Village began and continued until the late 1980s.
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