This silent 16mm home movie shows a trip to Hawaii around 1950. It starts with a cruise aboard a sailboat. The film begins at sea aboard the boat, in fair seas (:57). At 1:06 a sextant is used to locate position, while at 1:15 a woman takes the wheel. At 2:26, a group of tourists pose in leis, and at 3:45 the group takes a break for a drink. At 4:11 the captain is seen lashing his guests with a whip (!) while the boat rides at anchor. Starting at about 5:00, you will see a silent, commercially made movie of the eruption of the Mauna Loa volcano. At 8:30 the home movie footage resumes with imags of a large tall ship at anchor in Honolulu harbor, the Nippon Maru. At 9:00, a placid beach is shown on the edge of the jungle. At 11:26, a native girl is shown selling necklaces. The film ends with shots of sailboats at sea.
Nippon Maru shown in the film is a Japanese museum ship and former training vessel. She is permanently docked in Yokohama harbor, in Nippon Maru Memorial Park. She was built by Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation in Kobe, and was launched on 27 January 1930 alongside her sister ship Kaiwo Maru. She was operated by the Tokyo Institute for Maritime Training to train officers for Japan’s merchant marine. At the beginning of World War II, her sailing rig was removed and she served as a training and postwar transport motorship. In 1952, her rig was reinstalled and she resumed her training voyages until she was replaced in September 1984 by her successor, also named Nippon Maru.
The Muana Loa eruption shown in the film began on May 29, an island-shaking magnitude-6.4 earthquake occurred beneath Mauna Loa’s west flank. Sixty-four hours later, at 9:04 p.m., HST, on June 1, the eruption began, with fissures opening at the summit and uppermost Southwest Rift Zone of the volcano.
The fissure eruptions quickly spread down rift—from 3,845 to 3,350 m (12,600 to 11,000 ft) elevation—sending floods of lava to the west and southeast. Volcanic gas emissions fed a mushroom-shaped cloud up to 3,050 m (10,000 ft) high above the volcano’s summit.
By 10:30 p.m., the Southwest Rift Zone had “unzipped” down to an elevation of 2380 m (7800 ft), unleashing an 18-km- (11-mi-) long trail of spectacular lava fountains that fed several large-volume, fast-moving lava flows. These flows reached the south Kona coast in about 3 hours, endangering lives, destroying property, and severing the main highway and telephone lines along the way.
The eruption lasted 23 days and produced 376 million cubic meters (491 million cubic yards) of lava, with over 90 percent of that volume issued during the first six days of the eruption.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
