The village post office
“After all, without the post office where would we get to see all our friends and neighbors and catch up on all the latest news and gossip every day?”
— Virginia Dicks, Volcano newspaper columnist
Volcano’s first mail deliveries were an unofficial business. Letters were placed on inter-island schooners and trading ships and delivered by trusted individuals on an informal, voluntary basis. Mail destined for Volcano was off-loaded at Keauhou landing on the Puna Coast, then hand-carried up the Hilina Pali trail to be dropped off at Volcano House on the rim of Kīlauea Volcano.
The first territorial post office was established by royal degree in Honolulu in 1850, and the first post offices on the Big Island were established a year or two later in Hilo, Kawaihae and Kealakekua. Still the territory’s first postmaster, Henry Whitney, complained in 1853 that the inter-island delivery of mail was a hit-and-miss experience. The mail was so irregular that it was a “matter of complaint and annoyance to those residing on the other islands,” he wrote.
It would be years before regular mail delivery was established via a stage route running from the Pitman store in Hilo to the Shipman residence in with stops including Keaʻau and Volcano House. J.R. Wilson, owner of Volcano Stables in Hilo, operated the carriage service in 1893 even before the carriage road was completed a year later. He dropped off mail at the homes of local coffee planters living along the route and at a store in Mountain View.
At Volcano, the mail was left at the old Volcano House (today site of an art gallery), where it was left in slots that can still be see in the building today, with the legendary hotelier George Lycurgus serving as postmaster for several years. For many years, the hotel also served as the postal service for those in the village, about two miles away.
As late as 1946, some village residents still received their mail in a box set out on the counter in the old Hongo store, now Kilauea General Store. Whatever wasn’t claimed by the end of the day was tacked on the wall outside the store in the evening. But village residents still had to go to the post office in the park to buy stamps and send letters and packages.
Around 1947 or 1948 some villagers began to worry that an entrance fee would be charged for anyone entering the National Park, and they began lobbying for the establishment of Volcano’s own post office in the village. And in 1953, Volcano Post Office opened its door next to the Hongo store.
A local resident, Kazu Okamoto, said he was plucked off the street to be postmaster, even though he had no experience or knowledge about how to run the office.
“In those days you needed five years experience, but I didn’t have it. They were taking names off the street, but you had to be a Republican because that’s who was in charge then. And that’s why I am a registered Republican today,” Okamoto recalled years later.
“One day, somebody saw me and said this guy was looking for me, asking a lot of questions. He was from the Criminal Investigation Division, which in those days was how they checked on your background. I told him I was too young, but he said nobody else was qualified either. And later, Mrs. Hongo was the one who told me I got the job. The inspector came back and told me to read this book, the postal manual.” That’s all the training he got, but he kept the job for the next 37 years.
Originally there were only 16 boxes at the Village post office, located in the Hilo side of the Hongo store, where the automotive supplies were. A few years later, it moved to the other side of the store, a former barber shop, and 300 boxes were added.
“About 1970 or ’71, the postal service got the bright idea they were going to buy their own land and put up their own building to modernize and brighten up their image,” Okamura said.
Similar new post offices were built around the same time in other rural communities like Ke'eau, Mountain View and Pahoa. But Volcano was one of the few where the government bought the land rather than leased it. It paid $34,000 for the land, one of the few open spaces in Volcano that was zoned for commercial use.
When the new village post office was finally built and opened in 1978, it was a cause for celebration, with formal ceremonies that included the untying of a maile lei across the doorway by E.C. Chee, the manager of the U.S. Postal Service’s Pacific District and participation by more than 20 members of the Hawaiʻi County Association of Postmasters. The attractive, rust-colored wooden building provided more than 700 delivery boxes. And to this day it remains what columnist Virginia Dick noticed on the day of its opening: a community gathering place where you meet your neighbors and can get caught up on all the local gossip.