Detective Chang Apana - Hawaii's First Action Hero

Detective Chang Apana was really Hawaii's first action hero.  He once arrested forty suspects all by himself in Chinatown, with no backup at all.   That is an accomplishment that has never been equaled in the historical records of the Honolulu Police Department.  Here are some of Chang Apana's exploits as described in my forthcoming book "Charlie Chan's Hawaii":

"Fred Kramer, retired Captain of the Guards at Oahu Prison and Halawa Jail, had some interesting reminiscences about Detective Chang Apana.  Kramer actually saw Apana in action leaping from roof to roof in Chinatown, like a human fly. In appearance, Kramer recalls, 'Apana looked so frail that one slap could break him apart.' "

"Apana, though fragile in appearance, was in reality a very tough man.  Once while attempting to raid a gambling game, he was hurled from a second story window, but like the proverbial cat, he landed miraculously, on his feet unhurt.  Another time when arresting a dangerous Filipino suspect, he was slashed across the stomach with a knife. Again he emerged unscathed as the knife landed on a broad belt that he was wearing."

"Apana had another close brush with death during the arrest of a prison escapee. He was assigned with Chief of Detectives Arthur McDuffie, and Assistant Chief John Kellett to capture a Korean, who had broken out of jail, and who was known to be a desperate character when cornered.

They finally located their quarry, hiding under a house. When he was ordered to come out the suspect replied with a fusillade of shots, one of the shots boring the palm of Kellett's hand.  More shots followed that narrowly missed hitting McDuffie and Apana.  In a lull between the shots being exchanged between the escaped felon and the officers, Apana sneaked around the end of the house, while the other two officers held the fugitive at bay.  In the twinkling of an eye, Apana pounced on the escaped prisoner.  He was in the midst of life and death struggle when the other two officers came to his rescue.  At the end of this ordeal, Apana was in such bad shape, that he had to be taken to the hospital for a week to recuperate."

Please click on video widget below to watch "The Legend Of Chang Apana" that was produced by Jon Brekke, for Oceanic Creative Services. It is the pilot for a projected TV series that hopefully will be in production soon.  Unfortunately, though,  they got Detective Chang Apana's badge number wrong.  It's supposed to be badge number 100, not badge number 352.  When the series finally gets going they should have technical advisers on hand to catch mistakes of this kind.  The creators of "The Legend Of Chang Apana", have put together incredible graphics, along with a script that has a smooth contemporary feel to it, to tell the exciting story of Detective Chang Apana.  It stars Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as Chang Apana.  This movie is hip, slick, intelligent, and very now!  My congratulations go out to the makers of "The Legend Of Chang Apana", for doing such an outstanding job!

The Complete Interview With Detective Joe Lum

 

 HPD Officers Slain In The Line Of Duty, Abraham E. Mahiko (left) and Andrew R. Morales (right)

Detective Joe Lum Escorting Alfred Tai Into Court In 1963

On April 21, 1982, I interviewed retired Detective Joe Lum, at his beautiful home located on Wilhelmina Rise, above Kaimuki, on the island of Oahu. He was a terrific interview! Besides being well spoken, detective Lum was a very, very, warm person. He was born in Kohala, located on the Big Island of Hawaii, and joined the Honolulu Police Department in 1936.

Detective Lum was the lead investigator on the case of the two murdered Honolulu police officers, Abraham E. Mahiko, and Andrew R. Morales, who were massacred in Kakaako, on December 16, 1963. This was a very tragic case, and Detective Lum spoke at length about it and presented meticulous details about the subsequent investigation, and apprehension of the culprits who committed these heinous crimes. This case bothered him, and I knew that he felt compelled to speak out about it. During that part of the interview, I shut up and let him speak freely. Even though I recorded all of this over 36 years ago, my recent revisiting of the audio tape has haunted me, and some how, I knew that I must eventually share the complete interview with everyone.  This information can not be lost, as it's an important historical document. The deaths of those two police officers, marked a dark day for the Honolulu Police Department. Retired Detective Joe Lum passed away on May 13, 1984.   As fate would have it, within hours of my posting of an excerpt from the Detective Joe Lum interview, I received an email from one of the daughters of the slain Honolulu police officers (Abraham E. Mahiko and Andrew R. Morales) .  She was doing a Google search on her father's name.  That is something that she does from time-to-time, and bingo, my blog post about her father popped up.  Even after all those years, she still had unanswered questions about her father's untimely death while serving in the line of duty.  Her mother was pregnant with her when her father was slain, and because of this, throughout the years, his death has haunted her. She requested a copy of the complete interview.  I was reluctant to give it to her, as it was very, very graphic in its detail.  I told her about my concerns, but she insisted, despite my apprehensions and misgivings, that she needed to have a copy.  The wives of both officers, incidentally, were pregnant at the time of the murders.  Well, I know that I am an old fool, but I wept when I was editing the interview.  I wept for the slain officers and their families.  This recording has important life lessons for all of us.  In the photo above, Detective Lum is shown escorting Alfred Tai, one of the murderers of the slain officers, to court in 1963.  Tai was paroled in 2014 at the age of 72, after serving 51 years in prison.  Kenneth Lono, the other shooter, died while incarcerated in 2003.  Please click on the video widget below to listen to the complete Detective Joe Lum interview.  Safe journeys to all the fans of Charlie Chan's Hawaii, wherever you may be.

A Visit To Detective Chang Apana's Grave

Manoa Chinese Cemetery

Detective Chang Apana's Grave Site

A View Of Waikiki From The Cemetery

It is very difficult to find Detective Chang Apana's grave site in the Manoa Chinese Cemetery, so I prepared a video that literally walks you to his grave.  The area in which Chang Apana is buried is well maintained, but this was not the case in 1982 when, with great difficulty, I first located the site.  Read this post: Yours Truly At Detective Chang Apana's Grave In 1982  If you are a visitor who is staying in Waikiki, it is very easy to get to the Manoa Chinese Cemetery by bus.  Go to Kuhio avenue, and take the number 13 bus going east.  Get off at the University of Hawaii, then transfer to the number 6.  That will take you up to the cemetery.  Safe journeys to all the fans of Charlie Chan's Hawaii, wherever you may be.

Charlie Chan's Hawaii

The photo featured above is a facsimile from the first page of a two page article about my Detective Chang Apana / Charlie Chan research.  It was published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 22, 1982.  The article was written by Susan Yim.  The truth about Chang Apana, was finally revealed to the people of Hawaii, and the world for the first time.  Needless to say, this article created a sensation in Hawaii, the reverberations of which, are still being felt today.

Below you will find two short excerpts from my forthcoming book "Charlie Chan's Hawaii".  Here is a portion of the actual Prologue, and the first paragraph from Chapter One from my book.

 Prologue:

It was in the spring of 1981 that I first became enchanted with Charlie Chan.  At that time a New York TV station was presenting a “Charlie Chan Festival” for two weeks.  I watched it every night, and was thrilled by the expert performances of Warner Oland, and Sydney Toler as Charlie Chan.  The movies were quaint and charming, but underneath this veneer I sensed something else.  There was an undercurrent of urgency in the Chan films that made them so exciting.  Much of the action occurred psychologically, and to any sensitive or astute person, these mind games are powerfully seductive.  The films assumed their own cognizant reality in my mind, and night after night, I watched them with complete fascination, awe, and wonder.  Instead of watching a TV screen, I had the distinct feeling that I was looking through a magical window.  The TV screen became an anomaly, and I actually felt transported back into time.  I had then, and still do, an inexplicable feeling that these films were somehow to be very important to me.  These same feelings recurred time and time again as I began my search for the real Charlie Chan.

I found an anthology of Charlie Chan novels on the bargain counter at a local bookstore.  Opening the cover, I read this blurb on the inside of the book jacket.  “On vacation in Honolulu in 1919, Earl Derr Biggers was impressed by a newspaper account of a Chinese detective named Chang Apana.  Six years later, Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police made his appearance in “The House Without A Key” and was an instant success.”

You can just imagine my excitement upon reading this!  I decided immediately to begin a research project on the life of Detective Chang Apana, who allegedly, was the model for Charlie Chan.  I felt that if I could get the University of Hawaii interested in this project, I could do it as an Anthropology directed reading course.

I did some preliminary research on Chang Apana, and then presented my findings to Professor Stephen Boggs of the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.  He became excited by my discoveries, and authorized a directed reading course to be done under his auspices.  Professor Boggs suggested to me the form that the project should take.  It was to be researched essentially in three parts:  (1) “Chang Apana as Charlie Chan”, (2) “Chang Apana the Legend”, and (3) “Chang Apana the Man”.

The Quest:

 I began my quest for the real Charlie Chan in the Hamilton Graduate Library located on the campus of the University of Hawaii.  I spent hours going over microfilm of back issues of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser.  Through the use of the newspaper indexes and a bit of serendipity, I started to piece together a nice picture of Chang Apana, but it was still sketchy.  I wanted to prove that Chang Apana really was the original of Charlie Chan.  The information that I gleaned from various newspaper accounts strongly suggested that he was the original Chan, but there was no direct proof.  The evidence was at best second-hand, or decidedly circumstantial.

 I can across a Star Bulletin article written in 1976 by Susan Yim entitled, “The Real Charlie Chan?”  Yim was not able to pin down any definite proof that linked Apana with Chan.  Acting on a hunch, I phoned Yim.  She was very personable.  I told her about my project and she seemed very interested in it.  We compared notes and she told me that if I came across anything definitive about Apana, to please let her know, as she was anxious to follow up on it.  In the Yim article there was a mention of an H. C. Ching, a retired Honolulu Police officer who knew Apana.  I phoned Ching and he gave me a delightful anecdote which I used in my completed project.

The Magic Begins:

 I felt that it was very important at this stage of my research to get as much documented information as I could on Chang Apana.  My next stop was to visit the Hawaii State Department of Health.  I wanted to secure a copy of Apana’s death certificate.  I knew that there would be a lot of valuable information contained on it.  At the counter of the Hawaii Department of Health, I filled out the form required to obtain a death certificate.  I took the completed form to the window.  The clerked asked me if I was a relative of Apana.  I told her that I was not.  She told me that as a general rule, only relatives of the deceased may obtain copies of a death certificate.  I told her that I needed it for a research project.  She asked me to wait for a moment as she would take it up with her supervisor.  I spoke to the supervisor, and he told me that there was only one person who could authorize the issuance of Apana’s death certificate to me, and that person was Dr. Thomas Burch, the Chief of the Hawaii State Department of Health.  The supervisor ushered me in to see Dr. Burch.  I explained to him about my Apana research and why I needed the death certificate.  Dr. Burch seemed fascinated by my project and he issued Apana’s death certificate to me.  Amazingly, all of these negotiations only took about five minutes.  The magic started to begin.  Apana’s death certificate was full of very pertinent data essential for the successful completion of my project.  From then on, no door remained closed to me in my inquires about Apana.

Chapter One:

"Madam Pele does not give up any of her native sons without a struggle.  Such was the case during the month of December in 1933. Mauna Loa crater began its eruption on December 2nd, coinciding with a turn for the worse in the health of Chang Apana, who had been admitted to Queen's Hospital in Honolulu, on that same day.  The volcano flared up again on December 8, the day the 'Black Camel' knelt at the door of the Apana home.  The molten lava spewing forth from the Mokuaweoweo vent was Madame Pele's way of shedding black tears of sorrow over the earthly passing of Apana."

Yours Truly At Detective Chang Apana's Grave In 1982

This picture was taken in 1982 at the beginning of my research on the life of Detective Chang Apana.  The gravestone to the right is that of  Apana.  The little boy on my lap is my nephew Andrew who is now a grown man.  If you had visited Apana's grave site recently, you would have noticed that the surrounding area is kept in a much better condition than it was in 1982.  In fact, Apana's grave had been "lost" for quite some time, and it was only with the expert help of the cemetery caretaker Tommy Wong, that I was  able to find the grave at all!  It had been totally overgrown with weeds and tall grass.  I worked on clearing and cleaning up  the site for some weeks to get it in the condition that you see in the photograph above.  I will be revisiting Detective Apana's grave site soon, and I will post video of it on this blog.  It will be a video tour that will make it easier for all to find his grave as it is in an out-of-the-way section of the Manoa Chinese Cemetery.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel - A Major Location For The Filming Of "The Black Camel" (1931)

I recently visited the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, also known affectionately as the "The Pink Palace".  Many scenes from the 1931 Charlie Chan movie "The Black Camel", were filmed there.  You might find this surprising, that even though I was born, raised, and lived my whole life in Hawaii, I had never visited the Royal Hawaiian Hotel before!  What makes this even more interesting is that I only live a couple blocks away from it.  The Royal Hawaiian Hotel is magnificent, and one can sense the history of the place just by walking around its gorgeous lobby.  I spoke to some of the staff about my forthcoming book "Charlie Chan's Hawaii", and also the Royal Hawaiian Hotel's connection with "The Black Camel".  They were enchanted, and to help me with my research, they gave me a free copy of the book "The Pink Palace", written by Stan Cohen, which is a lovely and succinct history of the famous hotel.  The picture at the top of this post is the actual cover of the book.

Detective Chang Apana's Induction Into The Honolulu Police Department's Hall Of Fame

On May 15, 2008, Detective Chang Apana was inducted into the Honolulu Police Department's Hall Of Fame, a distinction that was completely justified, albeit somewhat belated.