![]() His legend was cemented on November 19, 1967. Working the night shift, as soon as he finished work in the morning, he would take his surfboard and ride the waves for the rest of the day. Having dropped out of high school at 16 years old, Eddie got a job at a local pineapple cannery. Hawaiians became the servants to the tourists, and their culture as a whole was increasingly marginalised. citizen, it also came with an overbearing flood of tourism that quickly demoted native Hawaiians to the lowest rung of the ladder economically. This marked the end of a 50-year battle for statehood which the native Hawaiians so desperately wanted to stop the extortion and dominance of the wealthy white land owners who had been slowly taking control of their islands since the late 1800’s.Īlthough statehood granted Hawaiians the same rights as any other U.S. President Eisenhower signed the proclamation officially declaring Hawaii as the 50th state. The same year the Aikau’s moved to O’ahu, U.S. They connected to nature in the same ways their Polynesian ancestors had done and it built Eddie into the man we remember today. Although a telling sign of the marginalisation of Hawaiians at the time, the land was a blessing for Eddie and his five siblings. His parents struck a deal with the local Chinese Society who let them live on the 9-acre Chinese cemetery located in O’ahu, as long as they maintained the land. ![]() Sol and Henrietta Aikau, Eddie’s parents, moved to Hawaii’s North Shore in 1959 when Eddie was only 12 years old. ![]()
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