Posted at 1:18 a.m. PST Wednesday, April 2, 1997
Healing stones placed in Waikiki


HONOLULU (AP) -- The healing stones of Waikiki again are getting
the sacred treatment they deserve.

Crews worked for hours Tuesday with a 25-ton crane to place the four
large stones, which weigh several tons each, as part of an effort
to use the stones as the centerpiece of a shrine being built next
to the Waikiki police substation.

The basalt boulders were placed on a platform buttressed by lava
rock. On April 9, a completed shrine dressed in plants, pebbles and
framed by a fancy wrought-iron fence will house the revered rocks,
also known as wizard stones.

The sanctuary is the idea of George Kanahele, author of the book
``Restoring Hawaiianness to Waikiki,'' which contains 143 ideas
for restoring a Hawaiian sense of place to Waikiki.

Of all the ideas, Kanahele considers the shrine for Waikiki's healing
stones one of the most significant.

``We're trying to restore some of Waikiki's historical, cultural
integrity,'' he said.

Hawaiian legend says four Tahitian healers from the Society Islands
lived in Waikiki sometime before the 15th century, spreading wellness
and relieving pain for chiefs and commoners, said Richard Paglinawan,
a special assistant to the Queen Emma Foundation, which is paying
the shrine's $75,000 cost.

Before returning home, the healers asked the Hawaiian people to erect
four monuments made from bell stone, a basalt rock that was in a Kaimuki
rock quarry and produced a bell-like ringing when struck.

The mystery is how the boulders were transported about 500 years
ago from the Kaimuki marshland to near Kuhio Beach.

Some historians consider the rocks Oahu's version of the Egyptian pyramids.

``Waikiki's significance is as a place of history, not destination,''
Kanahele said. ``We have our own pyramid equivalent right here.''

The boulders -- called wizard or healing stones, for the four Tahitian
healers they memorialize -- have enormous cultural significance, Kanahele
said.

During a month-long ceremony, the healers are said to have transferred
their names -- Kapaemahu, Kahaloa, Kapuni and Kinohi -- and or spiritual
power, to the stones.

In the centuries since, the boulders have been chipped, broken and
buried beneath a Waikiki bowling alley, during World War II, Paglinawan
said. When the bowling alley was razed in the 1960s, they were recovered
and placed near Kuhio Beach.

Visitors failed to realize the significance of the stones, often
offending Hawaiian sensibilities by draping towels over them or using
them as places to put their food.

``Lack of understanding has been part of the problem,'' Paglinawan
said. People see the stones and they just don't realize they are something
sacred.''



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