Differing on Development — Remembering Walter Kupau
Nanea Kalani/Civil Beat
In the verbal skirmishing between those-for and those-against development, the most memorable salvo I’ve heard was uttered by Walter Kupau.
In the early seventies, I was part of a group of young locals that started an alternative newspaper. To get the lay of the land, we met with people who knew more about Hawaii than we did. We visited Herman Doi, Hawaii’s first ombudsman (and the first state ombudsman in the U.S.); Clinton Tanimura, the state’s first auditor; and Herbert Cornuelle, the president of the Dillingham Corporation. We continued our education by going to Kalihi to meet a colorful union leader.
Walter Kupau was a member of the Hawaii Carpenters Union, Local 745. Eventually, he became the head of the union: its financial secretary, business representative, and chief negotiator. In time, he became the highest paid union leader in the state and, for six months, a resident of Lompoc Federal Prison, in California. When we met Kupau, he was president of the Hawaii State Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, but still only an assistant to Stanley Yanagi, the head of the union.
