► Goo Shin Seeks a Fortune in Hawaii

Hawaii Star Bulletin
June 29, 1953
Clarice B. Taylor's Tales About Hawaii

GOO SHIN SEEKS A FORTUNE IN HAWAII

No. 13, Hidden Alii

     Goo Shin was a boy of Canton in the 1830s when American trading vessels came into the crowded harbor with loads of fragrant sandalwood from the "Sandwhich Islands," which we call the Hawaiian Islands.

     Goo Shin learned that the sandalwood made fabulous fortunes for the foreign devils who ran the ships for the merchants who resold the sandalwood. He dreamed of being a sandalwood merchant and growing wealthy.

     When the boy was 10 or 12, he shipped (spelled exactly to article) aboard one of the foreign devil's ships and sailed for Hawaii. He thought he, too, would learn how the foreign devil found the sandalwood and that he too would buy it to resell to China.

     When he got to Hawaii about 1840, Goo Shin found that the sandalwood trade no longer existed. Hawaii's mountains had been denuded of sandalwood in the middle of 1830s and there was none to be had by a poor Chinese boy.

NAME IS CHANGED

     Since he could not be a sandalwood merchant, Goo Shin turned his hand to doing anything he could find. It was easy to make a living in Hawaii for the harbors teemed with whaling ships and the villages were busy catering to the thousands of whalers on shore leave.

     Goo Shin had a terrible time with his Chinese name . he couldn't get the Hawaiians or the haole sailors to pronounce it correctly. The Hawaiians called him Akuna and the haoles followed the Hawaiians. Akuna was much easier to say than Goo Shin, so he gave up trying to go with his real name and became Akuna.

     Sometimes the name was spelled Akona and sometimes Akuna. It didn't make much difference to Goo Shin.

AKUNA MARRIES

     In the early 1860s, Akuna became acquainted with the Hawaiian family of Piianaia and his wife Kina who had two daughters, Kalilioku and Ulaloha. The Piianaia were high born alii but they were kind to the lonely Chinese.

     Eventually Akuna got up the courage to ask Piianaia for his daughter, Kalilioku. He brought presents to the girl and her parents and he promised to take good care of her.

     Akuna said he planned to become a farmer on the Island of Lanai where he heard there where only a few Hawaiians living and there was plenty of room for a resourceful Chinese.

     And so it happened that Kalilioku Piianaia became Mrs. Akuna and moved to Lanai about 1865 and it was there that a second child, a boy, was born to them in 1868. He was named Abraham Piianaia (article spelling "Pianaia") Akuna.

Next: King Intervenes

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Source:https://familysearch.org/patron/v2/TH-300-43958-0-84/dist.pdf?ctx=ArtCtxPublic