Speaker is from Honolulu, HI; he is a 60-year-old Asian man with an eighth-grade education. The interview took place in 1967 by DARE’s founder and former chief editor, Frederic G. Cassidy.
CASSIDY: Uh, I hear that there’s a Hawaiian custom of something called a hukilau.
INFORMANT: Hukilau, hukilau is, uh, they have a rope, end of the rope they have a net there.
CASSIDY: Mm-hmm.
INFORMANT: They surround it, a certain place, and they drag the net.
CASSIDY: They surround it. You mean they carry the net out?
INFORMANT: Carry it, yeah, uh, huh.
CASSIDY: Uh, how do they, i-, is there something to keep the net floating?
INFORMANT: Yeah, sometimes those, uh, floaters, uh, floating. Some leave a [leader] in the bottom and they drag it, the netting.
CASSIDY: What do the floats, what are the floats made of?
INFORMANT: The float made of those, uh, some coco- coconut, uh, dried coconut, I guess.
CASSIDY: Oh, dried coconut. {[That’s a good one, circle that.]
SECOND INFORMANT: Oh yes,} mm-hmm.
CASSIDY: Uh, and that floats the top of the net?
INFORMANT: Top of the net.
CASSIDY: Now the word lau means “leaf” doesn’t it?
INFORMANT: Hukilau, lau’s yah, yah lau’s “leaf.”
CASSIDY: Alright, well now the, the, where did the “leaf” come in in this hukilau?
INFORMANT: Hukilau—the leaves, you know, these on at the top, top of your rope, so the, there, when they pull, the fish are gonna not jump over the rope.
CASSIDY: The ropes, the, the, uh, the leaves keep the fish from jumping over? Do they scare them {or what?
INFORMANT: Scare them, they scare them away. So they want to go on in the water, see. When [xx] go on in the water there. They would go to the net. They have a pocket on the net.
CASSIDY: They have a pocket on the net. And the bottom of the net then—
INFORMANT: Bottom of the net they have a pocket.
CASSIDY: Mm-hmm. It, a lot of them must have some kind of sinks to make it sink.
INFORMANT: Sinks, uh, lead, they have a lead.
CASSIDY: Oh, they have lead on it, I see. Then, uh, uh, somebody goes out and puts the net [out] around.
INFORMANT: Yeah, there’re two of them, the boat—
CASSIDY: With the boat.
INFORMANT: —and the two boats that goes out, [xx] all around.
CASSIDY: And then, uh, who pulls it in?
INFORMANT: Well, they have a lot of guy—uh, on the shores about forty, fifty guys there pull that rope up.
CASSIDY: Ah, and, uh, they must have a pretty big school of fish there.
INFORMANT: Yeah, once in a while they have a nice school, school, right.
CASSIDY: And then, uh, they pull them all in, and the fish don’t, are scared to jump out so they {get caught.
INFORMANT: No, they all end up, uh, on the net. They, they get caught in the net.
CASSIDY: I suppose the top of the net comes in sooner than the bottom so they, if they do try to go out they’re in that pocket.
INFORMANT: Yeah, they have a big one, uh, you know about six or seven guys swimming on it, around the net to, to watching how the fish going.
CASSIDY: Oh, I see.
INFORMANT: Then, uh, cha-, chasing at the hole.
CASSIDY: Uh huh, well, about how much fish do they get out of a good haul of those?
INFORMANT: Once I saw a [xx]—they caught about, about a ton I guess of those, uh, akule. Oh, they were nice [xx].
CASSIDY: What’s akule?
INFORMANT: Mmm, akule—some kinda, you know, the [Polynese] call akule akule. [Japanese] call it [hajiji?]