TEN
MAHALO ALOHA
The harbour at Honolulu was austere. Instead of palm trees and quaint thatched huts, there were military warehouses encircled by wide stretches of gravel and tarmac, a few scrubby bushes and clouds of mosquitoes. It was their last stop before California and, already glittering in her imagination, Hollywood. It was November 25, 1924,1 and Hawaii was the first English-speaking place Aloha had been to since leaving England in 1919. America in the 1920s was like nothing Aloha had ever experienced. Honolulu locals frequented strange restaurants where “you drive up, sit in your car and are served — called a ‘Drive-In.’”2 They also ate oddball foods, like ice cream “floats” or minced beef in a bun or mild sausage in a roll, served by waiters called “soda-jerks” in restaurants called “greasy spoons.” Most surprising though was that groceries sold only tinned pineapple. To find fresh, one had to travel to the plantations where the watchman might surreptitiously sneak a few unprocessed fruits.
If Aloha found Hawaii strange, the Hawaiians found Aloha equally bizarre. Disbelieving crowds asked about her name — they had never heard “the lovely word used in such a manner.” Newspapers were equally incred-ulous, refusing to believe their stories of adventure until they produced their scrapbook of newspaper clippings and photographs. A barrage of press coverage ensued with every major paper running lavish, and in many cases multiple, positive stories — they were particularly amused that Hawaii should be included in an around-the-world automobile race. Their success boded well for their arrival on the mainland.
Still, shortly before sailing on to the United States, the possibility of trouble arrived in the form of a misdirected letter. According to Aloha’s memoirs, the missive arrived for Walter at the Honolulu post office, except that it was actually addressed to a third party and had been sent with a Wanderwell Expedition return address. Naturally, with Walter and Aloha front-page news, the letter was forwarded to them. The letter was from Nell.
Had a letter from Walter the other day and he said he was going to Shanghai from India and expects to be there in a month or two. He also says he will be back in the States soon and I sure don’t like that. I would much rather have the ocean between us…
Something happened in Houston, Texas . . . I met a wonderful man, Oh! How I fell and it’s not over yet, I never knew I could fall so, so much in love.3
Aloha notes that she gave the letter to Walter, and that he was “a little sad about her wager attitude.” Whether the letter actually existed, or whether it was yet another of Aloha’s “massaging” of the facts is impossible to say, but her comments may have provided a convenient explanation for coming events.
*
Aloha and Walter boarded the SS Shinyo Maru on December 30, 1924, and spent the six-day crossing planning their adventures on the US mainland. It was clear now that no World’s Fair would occur in time to declare a winner in the Million Dollar Wager, and it was far from certain that Unit No I would surrender its assets, including footage Walter had sent to Nell to assist with her film lectures. They decided to tour California before heading to Detroit, where they would declare the race ended and donate No II to Henry Ford’s museum. With luck, there would be lots of pictures in papers, some clamouring crowds, and many packed theatres. Or perhaps Hollywood would make them famous first.
Aloha Wanderwell arrived in California on January 5, 1925. As usual, Walter had alerted the local press well in advance. And indeed, despite the slow, dull fog that oozed over the harbour, reporters were on the boat before it had even docked, arriving by tug and then fanning out to find stories of interest. When the third reporter asked Aloha to spell her name, she realized that these were beat reporters — none had heard of the expedition and it was only after seeing their publicity material that one fellow pulled out his notepad. Aloha recounted the expedition’s adventures, or tried to. She hardly knew where to start — perhaps the trip through Egypt, or the war in China, maybe their success in Tokyo? She said that travel had opened her eyes to the world’s fabulous diversity, that she’d experienced so many wonderful cultures along the way: Slavic, Bedouin, Malayan, Indian, Chinese. But here she was cut off. The reporter wanted just the facts, ma’am.
“How many times was the car repaired? How many miles have you covered? How much would it have cost if someone financed the trip from the start?” Momentarily, my enthusiasm was dashed and my high hopes shattered. I tried to explain that money could not purchase the experiences we had had. The young man was not interested in that; he didn’t care a hoot where we had been nor what we had seen.4
Aloha and Walter trudged down the gangplank, through the gloomy fog, and into the customs office where an official held out his hand for passports and papers.
Cap proudly produced the yellow clearance papers issued at the start of the round the world enterprise. I hated to give them up, for those pieces of paper had gone through many an international vicissitude. Often they had been dried out after a plunge through a river; they were mislaid once in India, and we thought they were lost.5
The clerk, however, was “unsentimental about its frayed edges, blurred purple ink and speared it down on a pin file.” He asked if they had anything to declare. Aloha’s mention of Kim, the monkey, produced the first glimmer of interest from the clerk. She opened her sheepskin jacket to show Kim clinging inside. “Hmm. Now some pets, no, but monkeys don’t carry disease. Thirty-five cents please.”6
*
Aloha sat in their room at the Whitcomb Hotel, sipping coffee and searching the San Francisco newspapers. For half an hour she found nothing. Then, in the “Ships and Shipping” section of the Tuesday evening Oakland Tribune, page 29, she spotted a two-column inch notice entitled “World Travelers Ending Up Journey.” The blurb mentioned “Captain Walter Wanderwell and his sister, Aloha Wanderwell, are planning today the last lap of a 36,000-mile journey during which they covered 39 countries.” After explaining that the couple were heading for Detroit, the article concluded by noting that “‘Wandy,’ a pet monkey picked up by the travelers in India, attracted nearly as much attention as the hardy adventurers.” Aloha looked over the page, noting the arrangement of stories. Their story appeared near the bottom of the page, after more urgent notices such as “Norwegian Ship Loads Fruit for Scandinavia” and “Lumber Carriers Are Busy Loading.”
Finally, bigger stories did appear, including a piece in the Los Angeles Times announcing the arrival of Captain Wanderwell.
Traveler Faces Charges
Globe-Trotter Held in Bay City for Investigation as White Slavery Suspect, Long in Police Eye.7
Walter and Aloha had been arrested by the San Francisco police after a tip from Agent Ralph Colvin at the Department of Justice. According to the Los Angeles Times story, Walter was charged with white slavery under the infamous Mann Act, legislation originally designed to prevent forced prostitution but used in this case because the authorities believed Aloha to be a minor. He was also charged with impersonation of a government officer. The newspaper article further stated that Walter was “the subject of a voluminous file in Federal offices, extending back to 1917” that investigated Wanderwell’s false name and uniform, his “German” ethnicity, his purported international travels, and most alarmingly, his habit of travelling in the company of “young girls.” Wanderwell’s spidery character was decided by the paper’s claim that “Federal officers in San Diego, Los Angeles, Spokane, Seattle, Albuquerque and El Paso, it is understood, have questioned girls who were traveling in Wanderwell’s company, but no formal charge has ever been made against him.”
Bail was set at $200, which Wanderwell paid, sparing Aloha a night in prison but doing little to calm her. She was understandably shocked and afraid: she was more than 6,000 miles from Nice and in the company of a man the papers were calling a possible spy, a fraud, and a pervert. Yet, she was also in love with this man, this adventurer who had shown her the world and taught her how to survive in it.
Walter was outraged and asked Aloha to stick with him. Yes, there were things she did not yet know, but the newspapers were not to be believed and he could explain everything. He hired the legal firm Ernest, Crewe to defend them against any charges (in fact, none had been laid) and to sue the newspapers for defamation. Aloha, nonetheless, was teetering.
