California Tiki: A History of Polynesian Idols, Pineapple Cocktails and Coconut Palm Trees

By Jason Henderson, Otto von Stroheim and Otto von Stroheim - Tiki Oasis

After World War II, suburbs proliferated around California cities as returning soldiers traded in their uniforms for business suits. After-hours leisure activities took on an island-themed sensuality that bloomed from a new fascination with Polynesia and Hawaii. Movies and television shows filmed in Malibu and Burbank urged viewers to escape everyday life with the likes of Gidget and Hawaiian Eye. Restaurants like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic's sprang up to answer the demand for wild cocktails and even wilder décor. The culture--a strange hodgepodge of idols, torches, lush greenery and colorful drinks--beckoned men and women to lose themselves in exotic music and surf tunes. Authors Jason Henderson and Adam Foshko explore the state's midcentury fascination with all things Tiki.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781439664735

Jason Henderson

Jason Henderson is the author of Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising, which was named Best of 2010 by VOYA, and Alex Van Helsing: Voice Of The Undead. He has written for games and comic books, including the Activision game Wolfenstein, the vampire action comic series Sword of Dracula, and the manga series Psy-Comm.

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Aloha!

Introduction

Lighting the Volcano

By Adam Foshko

It would be easy to start a book on California Tiki and its influences with an ancient tribal saying or the kind of wisdom that one might find on a cocktail napkin in a dimly lit Tiki bar in North Hollywood, El Segundo or San Diego. Those kinds of sayings are great and so are those kinds of bars and restaurants—not always exclusively for their lavish drinks and playful culinary contributions but for what they represent: an escape from the increasingly technological complexities of modern day living. The harder we work—and the less organic the world around us seems to be—the more the need to escape creeps into our bones until finally we break out, taking refuge in the belly of adventure, to enjoy the captivating world that the island life promises and then share that unique experience with others still mired in the mundane.

Like so many Americans, I read Kon-Tiki. And though I was just a kid and it was many years after it had originally been published in 1947, I had been caught up in the enormous groundswell of its rediscovery in the mid-seventies, as well as the documentary that was released way back in 1950. As I sat there, reading the book by the pool in our home in Encino, California, I was captivated by a life far away from the one I had in Southern California—far away from the responsibilities of school, homework, chores and other social obligations—and catapulted out beyond the horizon, over the crashing waves and onto the balsawood boat that Heyerdahl constructed for his journey. I had been transported—escaping to the sweet leisure of the sea and what must have been the equivalent of island life—to a time of great excitement, grand discovery and bold adventure. The adventure of a lifetime.

Thor Heyerdahl captivated the world with Kon-Tiki, his account of his five-thousand-mile sea voyage from South America to the Tuamotu Islands in a hand-built raft. Wikimedia.

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl’s account of the journey was meant to demonstrate the possibility of the migration of ancient seagoing peoples of Polynesia. However, his description was so gripping and thrilling that it did more than contribute to the annals of ethnography or cultural anthropology, it was culturally incendiary—igniting the fires of an entire generation. And that’s what was so interesting: it wasn’t Heyerdahl’s actual theories of oceanic Polynesian migration that captivated Americans, it was the artfulness of the tale he told—describing his three-month journey and subsequent landing on an island near Tahiti. It was his story that did it. And we were ready to hear it.

American forces at the Battle of Luzon, 1945, one of many battles of the Pacific war between the Allies and the Empire of Japan. Wikimedia.

Up until this time, America was still recovering from World War II. And though the Allies succeeded in stopping both the Nazis under Hitler and Japan under Hirohito, they had seen a significant amount of hardship, enduring some of the most brutal conditions and fighting in the islands of the Pacific theater. However, many of the servicemen engaged in the fight against Japan had also been stationed in Bora Bora and Hawaii and sampled firsthand the Polynesian lifestyle and culture. This was particularly true for the navy. For many soldiers, especially those from middle America, this was their first exposure to a world so different from their own. Yet despite the region’s differences to Kansas or Oklahoma or the Dakotas, it was incredibly inviting—the calm of the waters, the ease of the lifestyle, the allure of the women. As brutal as the fighting had been, this comingling of these two cultures somehow had made the intense fighting, the horrors of war and the rigors of duty more tolerable. More than that, though, the culture became a touchstone for many of them—something that they all shared, something they would want to take with them. They had all been part of a great adventure, an experience that changed them, possibly the greatest of their lives. At least that’s the way James A. Michener put it when he wrote Tales of the South Pacific in 1947: I didn’t care what the guys said now, but in a few years they were going to look back and realize that this was the greatest adventure of their lives.

Michener’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel—a collection of nineteen episodes that depicted the human side of World War II—drew heavily from his time in the navy and stationing on Espiritu Santo Island in the New Hebrides. But unlike other wartime reads, Michener’s book painted an incredibly vivid picture that—very much like Heyerdahl’s story—superseded the reality or even the memory of things, places and events and immortalized them in a tableau of artfully crafted fiction. The result was something greater than itself, something that concentrated and magnified the experiences of the people who went to war—and the Polynesian influences they encountered—and made them readily available to be experienced over and over. Again, it was the story.

In addition to this, Michener also went a step further, introducing the island (and the idea) of Bali Ha’i: a distant, tranquil place of happiness that could be seen on the horizon but never visited—a close but unattainable vision of paradise. Bali Ha’i wasn’t only central to his book; speaking directly to the many sailors who had served in the Pacific theater and who had found the islands so inviting, it was reminiscent of the universal idea of a paradise lost and the loss of innocence. It also spoke to the lost innocence of America in the face of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the enormous, terrible undertaking and human costs of World War II. If there was a paradise out there, more than just the servicemen, America itself was ready to find it. And like so many things uniquely American, it began with a