Hilo tsunami clock may move to new Waiakea site
Hilo’s tsunami clock could be moved from Kamehameha Avenue to a more visible Waiākea Peninsula site, with $200,000 set aside for the relocation.
One of Hilo’s most recognizable memorials may soon leave its long-time spot beside the Grand Naniloa Golf Course, where the tsunami clock has marked the edge of Kamehameha Avenue for decades. State Sen. Lorraine Inouye said she secured $200,000 in capital improvement funding to move the clock within the Waiākea Peninsula redevelopment area, part of a broader effort to remake one of the island’s most visible shoreline districts.
The push is as much about access as preservation. Inouye said the clock’s current location makes it hard for visitors to stop, park and take in its meaning. She wants the memorial placed where people can see it more easily, paired with a storyboard and treated as a historical marker rather than something motorists only notice in passing. The Pacific Tsunami Museum supports the idea, according to executive director Cindi Preller, who said Inouye reached out earlier this year.
That support reflects the clock’s emotional weight in Hilo. The face is frozen at 1:04 a.m., the time it was destroyed when the third and largest wave of the 1960 tsunami struck the old Waiākea Social Settlement. That disaster killed 61 people in Hilo and injured 282, inundated about 600 acres and caused more than $25 million in damage. Hilo also carried the trauma of the 1946 Aleutian tsunami, which killed 96 people there, making the clock a memorial to more than one catastrophe on the waterfront.
The clock’s history reaches back farther still. A historical marker says Mrs. Martha E.R. Wakefield donated it in 1939 in memory of Mrs. C.E. Richardson. The Pacific Tsunami Museum says Waiākea Kai School was rebuilt on much higher ground after the 1960 destruction, while the clock remained as a reminder of those lost. The Waiakea Pirates Athletic Club refurbished and re-erected it on its original concrete stand in May 1984, and later coverage said the club has spent 40 years maintaining the site and cleaning it monthly with flowers.
Any move will unfold inside a larger public planning process. The Hawaii Community Development Authority and the Department of Land and Natural Resources held a community meeting and open house on Dec. 4, 2023 to discuss re-envisioning the Waiākea Peninsula, which sits along the Hilo Bay shoreline near downtown Hilo, Hilo Harbor and the Hilo Airport. The County of Hawaii Banyan Drive Hawai‘i Redevelopment Agency also holds authority in the area under state law and County Council Resolution No. 481-16.
For supporters, relocating the clock could help the peninsula’s renewal carry Hilo’s history forward instead of burying it. The test now is whether the memorial can be given a more visible place in the new waterfront without becoming an afterthought to the redevelopment around it.
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